Application Of Task-based Instruction To College English Reading Teaching For Non-English Majors

Task-based Instruction (TBI) is an influential teaching approach put forward by anumber of foreign language researchers through long-term research and practice at the end of1970s. Its core concept is learner-centered, emphasizing learning by doing. It lays stress onlearner’s interest, authentic experience and cognitive level. TBI enables every learner toexperience, participate, communicate and cooperate with other members of the group. In thisway learner’s comprehensive ability of using language can be improved. The teacherelaborately designs a series of tasks that are closely connected with communicative objectivesand language items. After performing and fulfilling the tasks, learners can achieve thepurpose of using language correctly. So this approach was proposed by the National EnglishCurriculum by the Ministry of Education in China. As far as the author of this paper isconcerned, this approach is not only proper for Senior English Teaching, but also it caters tothe College English Teaching.At present, task-based teaching is widely used in English reading teaching in junior andsenior middle schools in China. However, researches and experiments of task-based teachingin college English reading are still few. And some college teachers in China think thattask-based teaching is helpful for the improvement of the students’ oral competence and it isof little help for improving students’ reading ability. It is known that reading is still importantin College English Tests4&6. In order to get high marks in the tests, some teachers stillemploy the traditional way of teaching in reading class, which is less beneficial for improvingthe college students’ English reading ability. Therefore, the author of this paper reckons that itis necessary to explore on the experiment of Task-based Instruction to prove that theTask-based Instruction is efficient and practical in college English reading teaching fornon-English majors and can be integrated into their English reading teaching.On the basis of Jane Wills’s framework for TBI, the experiment is carried out within onesemester from the beginning of September,2012to December,21,2012. The subjects are thesophomore of Grade2011from HeBei University of Economics&Business Law Faculty,Class One majoring in Science of Law is the experimental class, and Class Two majoring in Science of Law is the control class. Each class has40students. The experimental class adoptsthe student-centered TBI, while the control class adopts teacher-dominated PPP model(presentation, practice and production). The instruments employed in the experiment includequestionnaires, tests and classroom experiments.At the beginning of the experiment, all subjects in both EC and CC were required to takepart in the pre-test and answered the pre-questionnaire. Through the pre-test, it can be foundthat students’ reading ability in both EC and CC is almost at the same level before theexperiment. Then after the teaching experiment, the author required all subjects to participatein the post-test and answered the post-questionnaire. Through the experiment as well as thedata from questionnaire, the conclusion can be drawn that the English reading ability ofcollege non-English majors has been improved by the implementation of TBI, their Englishreading interest has been stimulated through implementing reading tasks. Throughimplementing learning tasks with their peers, their self-confidence has been established andtheir team spirit and sense of cooperation have been fostered.