Task-based Language Teaching In Extensive Reading For Business-oriented Students

In the context of globalization, teaching English as an international languageinstead of a foreign language has gained universal acknowledgement among languageresearchers in China.As one of the basic four language skills, reading plays an essential role inlanguage learning, but extensive reading does not attract much attention in languageteaching. The dull teaching approach results in students’ loss of reading motivationand interest, so as to weaken the teaching efficiency. Especially for theBusiness-oriented students, the weak language background with no effectivenessteaching method, result in the dilemma of improvement in English language ability.Different from the traditional teaching method, the task-based language teaching(TBLT), which puts emphasis on “learning by doing” and make the students to becentered in class.In this thesis, the author tries to implement TBLT in extensive reading class forBusiness-oriented students, for the purpose of testing whether TBLT is more effectivein arousing students’ reading interest and motivating their autonomic learning than thetraditional teaching method.The subjects chosen for the experiment are73freshmen who are internationaltrade majors from the School of Economics and Finance in XI’AN internationalstudies university. This research lasted all-together16weeks and consists of3parts,which is pre-test, experimental teaching and post-test. With the help of statisticalsoftware SPSS, the data were collected and analyzed. The results of the experimentprove that TBLT is more effective than the traditional teaching method in improvestudents’ reading ability.This study supplies certain implications for applying TBLT in extensive readingclass for business-oriented students. There is still room for improvement in thearrangement and implementation of tasks.