A Study Of The Effectiveness Of The Task-based Approach To English Writing Teaching In Senior High Schools

Writing, which can comprehensively reflect students’level of cognition and ability of manipulating a language, is one of the most important parts in language learning. As an old Chinese saying goes "Reading ten texts is not that better than writing one". The importance and usefulness of writing can never be overemphasized. Swain (1985) also points out that "language output can foster learners to dispose language more deeply than language input can"However, it is not difficult to find that, although English teachers have put more emphasis on English writing teaching, students’writing problems still remain owing to the current situation of less effective English writing teaching in senior high schools.In order to find a more effective way to improve students’ writing ability, many researchers have done lots of attempts and researches. In the year of2001, the Ministry of Education of People’s Republic of China issued the new Standards of English Curriculum, which promotes that the implementation of the curriculum should cultivate students’ ability of applying language comprehensively on the basis of the task-based approach. It emphasizes "student-centeredness in English learning" and "the method of learning by doing". Students should be encouraged to get involved in the learning process actively so as to inspire their learning motivation greatly.In this thesis, the author attempts to apply the task-based approach into high school English writing teaching for an arousal of students’writing motivation, and for training students’sense of using proper writing strategies to improve their writing proficiency in the writing process.This research took students of Class3(the control class) and Class4(the experimental class) from Changji Foreign Language School of Senior One as the subjects of the experiment. In the process of the experiment, the task-based approach was applied in the experimental class while the traditional teaching approach was used in the control class. Through the analysis and comparison of the data collected before and after the experiment from the questionnaires and the pre and post tests of the two classes, it is concluded that the task-based approach can effectively improve students’ writing motivation, writing strategies and writing proficiency.