An Applied Study Of Task-based Approach In Senior English Writing Teaching

In1980s, through extensive research and practice, researchers and practitioners inlanguage teaching and acquisition create a language teaching method--Task-Based LanguageTeaching (Task-based Approach). Both language practitioners and researchers consider theTask-Based Approach as an effective teaching method in the language classroom, which hasmade a significant impact on English teaching and curriculum design.“National EnglishCurriculum Standards”advocates the employment of TBLT and focuses on developing thestudents’ comprehensive language ability of using the learned language to do things and solvethe problems in real life.In the process of language teaching and language learning, writing is a continuousprocess for the exchange of thoughts and feelings. Both the mother tongue and the secondlanguage writing are challenging. Learning a language is inseparable from writing. Writingcan not only consolidate the knowledge of the language but also it’s an important means ofcommunication. Writing is effective in promoting the students’ internalization of Englishknowledge. It helps test the learner’s use of syntactic structures and lexis and promote thepragmatic capabilities, which effectively promote the learning of target language.In China, English writing teaching is not effective enough. Although many Englishteachers have tried their best to improve the students’ writing ability in the process of Englishwriting teaching, they fail to get satisfying result. In fact, there are too many languagemistakes in students’ compositions. Vocabulary is the first problem. In the sentences which areproduced by the students themselves, a great number of mistakes can be found. Inadequatecontent is anther problem faced by student writers. In order to solve the problems existing inthe composition of the students in senior high school, exploration of effective measures inwriting teaching and the improvement of students’ writing proficiency has become the majorconcern for both practitioners and researchers in English Language Teaching.This paper, based on the English classroom experiment, focuses on the efficiency ofTask-Based Language Teaching in English writing teaching. The experiment results show thatTBA is effective not only in the shift of teaching and learning concepts, but also in the improvement of students’ English writing ability. It goes perfectly with the logical regularitiesof writing learning process. TBA is an effective way to motivate student’s interest andimprove their writing proficiency. It offers the students an environment where they can usethe target language as if they are in the real life situation. Students take active part in thelearning process. Thus, it is obvious that TBA can be applied in English writing teaching andshould be popularized. The theory should be encouraged to put into practice.This thesis consists of seven chapters. Chapter One gives a brief introduction, describingthe present situation of English writing teaching, the reasons of the use of the TBA in Englishwriting teaching and the significance of the present study. Chapter Two reviews someimportant ideas relevant to TBA and task. The theoretical foundation, the characteristics andthe model of TBA are covered in this part. It also provides the previous research about thetheory both at home and abroad. Chapter Three introduces the nature of writing, types andpurpose of writing, the importance of English writing teaching, problems existing in it. TBAcan be regarded as the solution of these problems. In order to test the effect of TBA in Englishwriting teaching, the author has carried out a teaching experiment. Chapter Four is thedescription of the application of TBA in English writing teaching, including the experimentalhypothesis, purpose, subjects, instrument and procedure. Chapter Five presents the datacollected from the tests and questionnaires. Based on the previous research, the authorcollected some data and made analysis on them. A detailed analysis of the information hasbeen done in order to testify the research hypothesis. After the experiment and the dataanalysis, the author presents major findings and implications of the experiment, which isdescribed in Chapter Six. The last chapter makes a summary and provides some suggestionsfor further study.