A Study On Application Of Task-based Language Teaching In Senior Middle School English Writing

Language is the most important tool of human for thinking and communication and is also an important condition to participate in the social activities.With the development of economy and society in China,foreign language has become one of the essential bridges for communication and exchange of the citizens around the world.In the globalized society of economy,English as an international language plays an increasingly important role of media in the world of exchange and communication.As an impulsive course,English teaching and learning are very popular.In China,English teaching has gained a universal attention.The major teaching task is to train students to learn to use language correctly to find and solve problems emerging in life and work,especially in communication tasks which are frequently encountered in our everyday practice.Teaching English writing is more and more concerned by the practitioners in almost all perspectives related to the language.Under the requirement of the new senior English syllabus,the goal of teaching senior high school English is to strengthen and increase the students' knowledge of English further so that their listening,speaking,reading and writing skills can be developed step by step to reach an agreeable achievement.As one of the four important skills,writing is a significant means of communication,which embodies the students' comprehensive language skills best.Writing requires students to analyze the material and have ability to deal with the task seriously and accordingly.Just because English writing is crucial to teaching the language,English teachers should pay more attention and stress on English writing teaching.In China,many scholars and teachers have done a lot of theoretical researches and practices,but because of various causes and the influence of diversified factors,the research effect is not directly and entirely applicable to No.23 Senior Middle School in Tangshan,where there is a comparatively different teaching and learning situation.The current English writing teaching in the school is still a weak link in teaching and there exists a series of problems.First of all,exam-oriented education in the schools forces the students to face the pressure of entrance exams.Most English teachers are passively adopting a measure to train students' reading ability while ignore more or less students' writing skills' cultivation.Besides,many students are lack the interest of English writing or consciousness of improving writing skills in the course of English learning.Task-based language teaching is a study of foreign language teaching in the framework of second language acquisition.It is a language teaching approach which emerged in 1980 s,emphasizing on “Doing in learning”.It is also a supplementary development of communicative teaching approach.Task-based language teaching has inspired a new thought,which emphasizes the importance of learning tasks.Namely,learners should first consider how to finish task,rather than how to learn language form.It apparently focuses on the practice of language,which fully reflects the students as the subjects in the process of language learning and in the development of human-oriented educational philosophy.The meaning of tasks in the task-based teaching activities and previous teaching activities are distinct.Previous teaching approaches focus on language knowledge learning,whereas,task-based language teaching approach emphasizes the realization of language awareness and perception through the tasks.Previous teaching approaches usually do not create enough simulated teaching environment to sustain language learning,and consequently lead to a separation between classroom language learning and practical use.But task-based language teaching approach emphasizes an authenticity of the situation,which is close to student's real life.It encourages students to express their true feelings in the real situation,so that they can apply what they have learned.In the former teaching activities,teaching has been straightforward to let the students learn language knowledge,and students have become passive receivers.This is not beneficial to their exploratory autonomous learning.Task-based language teaching activities are connected to each other around a unified goal of a different stage of the tasks or steps.The activities in task-based language teaching reflect the “Doing in learning” principle.Since the implementation of the new curriculum standard in our country,many schools in China have undergone an exploration of the task-based teaching mode for English teaching in senior middle schools.In this context,the researcher puts forward three hypotheses.Compared with the precious writing teaching approaches,task-based language teaching approach can greatly improve the students' writing level and students' interest in writing through cooperation while finishing learning tasks.Compared with the precious writing teaching approaches,task-based language teaching approach can help students develop better writing habits,independent thinking ability and problem-solving ability to enhance their writing motivation.Compared with the precious writing teaching approaches,task-based language teaching approach works more effectively in high school English writing teaching aiming at developing students' writing performance.In order to verify these three hypotheses,the author takes notions of Nunan and Willis as her main basis of theoretical support,and expounds the advantages and disadvantages of using task-based language teaching approach in No.23 Senior High School in Tangshan.It adopts three research approaches_questionnaire,case study and test to collect data,and SPSS software to analyze the data to sort out the problems.The research results show that task-based language teaching approach helps stimulate students' interest and motivation to try their utmost to complete the task and to master the language knowledge during the progress even without their own awareness of it.It does not only help students develop good writing habits,but also support teachers to cultivate students ability to think independently and solve problems cooperatively.The writing teaching effects exhibit a significant difference in No.23 Senior High School in Tangshan in developing students' writing performance.The author clearly points out that English writing teaching in the school must apply task-based language teaching approach more effectively and extensively if teachers desire to achieve an advanced level in teaching writing and if students are longing for reaching a more satisfactory writing competence.Meanwhile,teachers must bear in mind another task of developing students' cooperative learning awareness and capabilities of finding questions,analyzing questions,solving problems,thinking independently,and expressing freely.