Exploration And Practice Of Task-based Writing Approach In Junior Middle School Under New Curriculum Standards

With the implementation and further development of the new curriculum reform, task-based language teaching method has become the mainstream of all the teaching methods, which has been applied vastly in different versions of textbooks. The promotion of the task-based language teaching has brought vitality in language teaching, and it also put great challenge to teachers. Teachers should adjust themselves on time and welcome the challenge and opportunity in language teaching. The New Standards put forward a higher requirement for students’ comprehensive language abilities, which contains a clear standard for listening, speaking, reading and writing. As an important language output skill, writing is tested in the High School Entrance Exams, which takes a proportion of12.5%of the total. Students’ writing ability is far from satisfaction and it is a big problem for both students and teachers. Writing needs a serial of scientific training with effective methods. How to improve students’ writing ability and how to instruct students more effectively have become a hot topic among the teachers in junior middle school.Based on the concept and teaching aims of the New Standards and guided by the communicative teaching method as well as the second language acquisition theories, the author actively made an exploration and practice of the TBLT model in junior high school, tries to find out the benefits of the TBLT method and its superiority. Different from the traditional style of teaching focusing grammar and vocabularies, the new standards helps students to develop their integrated language competence and advocate the skills into practice. It also promotes quality education (as opposed to exam-orientated education) and the all-round development of the students. The New Standards proposes a higher level and requirements for English writing. The ultimate goal of English teaching in middle school is to consolidate the four basic skills and improve students’ comprehensive ability. In line with the New Standards, the author made a lot of research and investigations of the Exams in different areas and current teaching and writing situations in junior middle schools in China, tried great efforts on the study of the TBLT as well as the feasibility of its implementation. During the research, the author collected lots of data and information and they were quite useful for further analysis.In this thesis, the subjects selected for the study are Grade Eight students from two intact classes with100students respectively from the Sub High School affiliated to Xi’an Jiaotong University. The author applied TBLT in writing in the experimental class, while in the control class the author implemented traditional3Ps-based (presentation, practice and production) writing approach. After one-term experiment, the author analyzed the dada and made a comparison of the two classes to find out the benefits of the TBLT method and its superiority. Through the experiment and exploration, TBLT has been improved to be a much more effective method in improving students’ writing ability. Students’ comprehensive abilities of using language are greatly improved, their sense of cooperation and interests in writing has been largely improved as well. In addition, students developed effective writing strategies in the writing practice in TBLT teaching mode. Meanwhile. teachers also benefit from TBLT teaching mode. Facing the challenge and opportunity, teachers began to understand students more and improved their teaching a lot. Teachers and students learn from each other and they promote to be better to meet the requirements of the New Standards. The author hopes more and more reaserches will cover this topic to share the perception and improvement of the TBLT.