A Study On The Writing Task Design Of Successful English For Vocational Colleges (Book ?) From The Perspective Of Task Evaluation Theory

The quality of the task design in teaching materials has a direct impact on the overall quality of coursebooks and the development of the students'learning ability, especially the writing task design in English coursebooks for higher vocational students of relatively poor English proficiency. The thesis will survey and evaluate the writing task design in Successful English for Vocational Colleges (Book III) (hereinafter called SEVC-3) by addressing the research questions:1. What are the features of the writing task design in SEVC-3 from the perspective of the Task Evaluation Theory of Rod Ellis? 2. What are the major strengths and problems of the writing task design in SEVC-3? What are the possible reasons for the problems?The Task Analysis Theory (Ellis,1998) will be adopted as the analytical framework. SEVC-3 jointly published by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press and Cornelsen Verlag GmbH & Co. OHG will be used as research material. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses are conducted based on the questionnaire and interview with 106 non-English sophomores and 5 English teachers from Hunan College of Information. The following findings and results are obtained:1. The writing task design in SEVC-3 is appropriate on the whole; the tasks in each unit are basically helpful to improve students'English; the tasks generally satisfy the students'needs for the tasks are based on the learners'future job and cultivate their fundamental business writing competence; most of the task design is summative, and suitable for the teachers'lecturing and class test.2. The main strengths of the writing task design in SEVC-3 are as follows:the writing task in each unit has a clear objective; the writing task is closely linked to the topic of each unit, demonstrating its practical and vocational nature of the topics and reflecting the employment-oriented principle of vocational education; the pattern of samples plus simulation writing is adopted in each unit. The major problems of SEVC-3 are:the difficulty of some writing tasks is somewhat high, lacking progressive change from unit to unit; except the business-related topics, there is lack of variety in topics and thus the writing tasks are somewhat monotonous and seem uninteresting; and it appears that there is no logicality among the writing tasks of all the units. The possible reasons for the above problems include:the learners'English proficiency in higher vocational colleges is relatively low; writing tasks in SEVC-3 are somewhat difficult; the coursebook developers are not quite clear about the students'needs of writing, and it seems that no sufficient learning needs analysis is conducted; and the coursebook developers have not practical business experience.Based on the above findings and results, some suggestions as to the teaching and development of writing tasks in English coursebooks for higher vocational teaching put forward...