The Application Of Task-based Teaching Method To The English Writing Teaching In Senior High Schools

Many English teachers and students agree that the teaching and learning of English writing is an extremely laborious thing. Lots of teachers are well aware that there are many drawbacks in the traditional teaching of English writing. Teachers emphasize too much on grammar and vocabulary, but ignore the practical language learning. So it is difficult to improve the writing skills of learners. Many learners make mistakes in the structures of sentences and the spelling of words. They also tend to mix up the parts of speech of English words and misuse tenses and voices of English verbs, etc. Teachers are all beset by marking compositions as it usually costs them a whole week to mark all the compositions of one class. In the end, to mark compositions has become teachers' big burden. An important reason for this problem is that we fail to employ scientific teaching methods in the traditional English writing teaching.On the basis of task-based teaching theory, this thesis digs into the following two questions:(1) What effects does the task-based teaching method have on the promotion of high school students' writing motivation and enthusiasm?(2) What effects does the task-based teaching method have on the improvement of high school students' English writing ability?After sixteen weeks of experiment, the author employed SPSS software to process the data collected in the second term of the academic year of 2015. As an addition to the task-based writing test, a questionnaire is designed to investigate students' motivation and reaction to the teaching method employed in the English writing classes. The study reveals that (1) students from the experimental class have improved their interest and confidence in writing significantly due to the application of task-based teaching method in English writing teaching, while those students in the control class taught with traditional teaching methods have no obvious improvement in the above mentioned two aspects; (2) due to the application of task-based teaching method in English writing teaching,students in the experimental class have apparently improved their writing test scores while the control class taught with traditional teaching method haven't improved theirs distinctly. The study indicates that using task-based teaching method to guide English writing teaching is both feasible and effective.Due to the limitation of time and place, there are two main limitations in terms of experimental duration and the sample size. The experiment only lasted for 16 weeks and only 60 students took part in the experiment so that the results of the study might be cautious to make generalization.To seek for a more precise conclusion, the future research should last longer and cover a larger sample size. The author wishes that the study could provide some references for the application of task-based teaching method in English writing teaching in senior high schools and enhance the efficiency of English teaching and learning.