TBLT Applied To The Teaching Of Vocational College English Reading

Reading is considered as a royal road to knowledge and information throughout human history. The development of reading ability has received great attention in human history. Reading is viewed as one of the five basic skills(listening, speaking, reading,writing and translation), therefore, it is also especially significant in English learning in vocational colleges. China’s New Revised Curriculum for English Teaching clearly states that the “Task-based Language Teaching” approach should be advocated to develop students’ all-round ability in using a language. The Task-based Language Teaching is focused not only in China but also in some other nations and areas, such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, the USA and so on.The basic goal of the teaching of vocational college English reading is to improve the students’ reading abilities, understand practical writing and meet their future needs of front-line operational work concerning their foreign communication. However, up to the present, there have been still many problems concerning the teaching of English reading in vocational colleges. One of the major problems lies in a variety of the teachers still using traditional teaching methods, such as drill training, note-taking, choral response, reciting, etc. to teach students the important language points, and the other problem is that reading is still the weak point in the students’ English learning. As a result, the students have little interest in English reading and don’t know how to read effectively.This thesis puts forward a task-based teaching model under the guidance of the framework proposed by Jane Willis(1996) and Schema theory. Theoretically, it can be explained from the viewpoints of the language acquisition theory and social constructivism. The literature review indicates that the task-based teaching has been advocated in the academic circles, but the relevant research on English reading in the classroom settings, especially in Chinese vocational colleges, is still very limited. On account of this, the author conducted an experimental research on the task-based teaching in a vocational college English reading to see whether the application of Task-based Language Teaching helps enhance the students’ reading comprehension and improve their reading interests and to prove whether the task-based teaching approach is effective or not.This paper adopts the pre-test and the post-test, an interview and a questionnaire designed by the researcher as research instruments for an experimental class and a control class to collect data. The pre-test is given to the two Nursing classes in Grade One in Qujing Medical College with the purpose of seeing whether the experimental class and control class have a similar English level. The study lasted over a five-month period, and in the end a post-test including four reading passages with the same level as those in the pre-test was held and an observation was again made. The results of the subjects’ reading performance are then analyzed by using the SPSS 11.5 software package. Independent-Samples Test is used to examine the study hypotheses and the students’ answers. This research indicated that TBLT can improve the students’ interest in learning English in vocational colleges and enhance the students’ reading skills as well as the scores. Based on the findings of this study, it shows that it is worthy of making this approach popularized.In the end, although there are some limitations in this study, it also discusses the findings and suggests the implications for teaching and learning L2 reading. And it also proposes recommendations for future research on the related issues.