An Investigation Into The Implementation Of Task-based Language Teaching In Reading Classes Using Advance With English

Task-based language teaching has been practiced in China's English classes since the implementation of the English Curriculum Standards(2001,2003).How the situation is and what problems exist in the daily practice are worth probing into so as to guide future work.The present paper is an attempt to investigate the related issues in reading lessons using Advance with English in Xuzhou.The specific questions to be addressed are:1.What types of tasks have been designed for the reading section?2.How are the qualities of the tasks designed?3.How well are the tasks implemented?To answer the questions,lesson observations and interviews have been combined.First,recordings of 15 reading lessons were selected from a collection of experienced teachers from different middle schools in Xuzhou from 2015-2017.Secondly lessons were transcribed so as to help analysis and examination.Thirdly,the tasks were identified,classified,and analyzed using David Nunan's framework.While doing the analysis,five of the teachers of the observed lessons were interviewed to obtain more information about task designing and implementation.The following results have been obtained.1.Cognitive tasks occupy the overwhelming portion.2.As for the qualities of tasks,there is no design for time needed in some tasks;the input sources of some tasks lack variety and the input material are only from the textbooks;real-world activities are few,most of them are pedagogic activities.3.As for the implementation,quite a few problems exist.(1)Students in some classes are not very active.(2)The assessment after some tasks are simple and ineffective.Peer assessment and self-assessment are rare.(3)Some teachers talk more than their students.(4)Group work and pair work are not adequate.(5)In some cases,more attention is paid to the meaning with atotal negligence of the language form.(6)The tasks are often left unfinished due to the poor grading of the difficulty level of tasks.The results indicate that the daily practitioners in the English language classrooms are using tasks as a chief approach,the qualities in designing and implementation demand improving.