Application Of Task-based Language Teaching To English Reading Teaching In Senior High School

Reading plays an important part in the four basic skills of English, and it is one of major channels in obtaining information. Reading ability can reflect learners’ English ability. Developing students’ reading ability is not only an important goal of China’s senior high school English teaching, but also the focus of test. New English Curriculum Standards also make it clear that the high school should focus on training students’ reading ability. But the current English reading teaching is still confined to the traditional teaching approach, which hinders students’ reading ability in English reading learning. The traditional methods of teaching reading pay much attention to language forms and neglect training students’ reading ability,which leads the students to become passive receivers.To find a more effective way of improve students’ reading ability, many experts have done a lot of attempts and researches, the emergence of Task-based Language Teaching makes a reply to this question. Task-based Language Teaching emphasizes "student-centered", to promote "learning by doing", which gives a lot of time to the students and makes them learn actively with “mission”; In addition, it gives full play to the learner’s own cognitive ability and help changing their passive learning into active exploration. Students are learning the subject involved in the learning process, which will greatly stimulate the students’ motivation to learn English. High school English Curriculum Standards issued by the Ministry of Education in 2001 also advocate that Task-based approach should be used in the classroom to improve students’ language learning.In order to carry out the English teaching reform advocated by the Natural English Curriculum, in this thesis, the author attempts to apply Task-based Language Teaching into high school English reading teaching,and prove the fact that Task-based Language Teaching is an effective teaching method that can improve the senior students’ English reading and also improve their reading competence.The author did a four-month-experiment in No.12 Middle School in Hohhot. The students in two parallel classes in Senior Grade One were chosen as the subjects. One is the experimental class with 46 students and the other the controlled class with 47 students. Task-based Language Teaching is used in the experimental class but traditional teaching in the controlled class. The time of the experiment is from September to December of 2014. According to the result of the author’s experiment, students in the experimental class made big progress in English reading. The result shows that the implementation of TBLT in English reading teaching in senior high school is practical and feasible; TBLT can not only improve students’ interest in learning English reading, but also improve their English reading ability.