A Study Of The Application Of Task-based Approach To The Teaching Of English Reading Comprehension At High School Level

Reading comprehension occupies an important position in English learning. It isspecified in New English Teaching Syllabus that raising students’ reading skill is oneof the primary purposes of English teaching. Through some years of teaching highschool students, the author has become fully aware that high school students are stillrather poor in English reading comprehension. Relevant research shows thatTask-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), which emphasizes "learning by doing", canstimulate students’ enthusiasm for learning and effectively enhance their specializedskills. This study, which is quite necessary, is intended to prove the effectiveness ofTBLT when it is applied to the teaching and learning of English readingcomprehension at high schools in China.First, the author briefly overviews the major researches relevant to the topic,before she states the background, purposes, and methods, as well as the structure ofthis study. Next, this thesis explores the theory of TBLT, focusing on the definition,features, and composition of its specified tasks, and probing into the theoretical basis,principles for designing tasks, and typical models of TBLT. Also, the thesisinvestigates the basic theory of reading comprehension, concentrating upon itsdefinition, strategies, and patterns. Then, the author describes the whole process of athree-month teaching experiment guided by TBLT, including the specific design, theimplementation of the major procedures, and specific analysis of the results. Thisteaching experiment aims at showing the different effects of TBLT and traditionalteaching methods that are respectively employed in teaching English readingcomprehension at the high school level. The experiment demonstrates that conductingteaching and learning of English reading comprehension in the light of TBLT displaysparticular advantages, not only showing the strong points of traditional teachingmethods, but also helping teachers dramatically raise their students’ communicativecompetence and reading comprehension proficiency, which can never be achieved ormatched by means of traditional teaching methods. Finally, the author arrives at the following conclusion: TBLT, as a contemporaryadvanced and scientific teaching theory or methodology, highlights intimateintegration of theory with practice and contributes to the realization of thecommunicative functions of language; it is capable of producing noticeablyremarkable effects, if it is flexibly applied to the teaching and learning of Englishreading comprehension.