A Study On The Application Of Task-Based Approach To Xinjiang Non-English Major Minority Students' English Writing Teaching

Writing is an important productive skill of language.During recent years,writing is more and more important and its significance is showed clearly today.It can embody the proficiency and the level of the English learners.Without this kind of output factor,we can hardly evaluate the effect of language learning.Therefore,many educators,especially English teachers attach great importance to writing teaching.During many years,teachers usually use traditional approaches such as the product writing approach and the process writing approach in China.By implementing these approaches,students' writing ability is improved in a certain degree.However,both of these two teaching approaches have some disadvantages.The product writing approach only focuses on the writing product,while the process writing approach only focuses on the writing process.For English learners,writing is still an obstacle.With the development of second language acquisition research,psychological linguistics and social-constructivism theory,the task-based approach in writing has drawn the most attention.Because it focuses on not only the writing product but also the writing process and it achieves the balance of forms and meaning of language.The paper is based on the social-constructivism theory proposed by the notable psychologist,Vygotsky,and attempts to find out the answers to the following questions:1.Can the task-based language teaching improve non-English major minority students'English writing achievements?2.Does the task-based language teaching have positive effects on non-English major minority students' interest,attitude,and self-confidence in English writing?In the experiment,83 subjects are chosen from Xinjiang University of Finance and Economics.They are all non-English major minority students.Class 1 which contains 42 students is chosen as experimental class(EC),and Class 2 which contains 41 students is chosen as control class(CC).The researcher carries on pre-test and post-test in experimental class and control class respectively with the attempt to explore the practical effects of the task-based writing teaching approach through qualitative and quantitative research.Questionnaire and interview are also designed for EC.The data is analyzed by SPSS.The results demonstrate that there is a significant difference in writing achievements in EC before and after the experiment.Meanwhile,the questionnaire and interview in EC illustrate that the training of the task-based approach contributes greatly to the improvement of the students' writing achievements and has positive effects on non-English major minority students' interest,attitude,and self-confidence.This study focuses on the English writing teaching for non-English major minority students aiming at applying the task-based approach to classroom writing.It mainly adopts the experimental research methods to test the effectiveness of the task-based English writing teaching approach for minority students.The results of the experiment show that there is a significant difference between EC and CC.So the author can conclude that task-based approach is practicable in English writing teaching for non-English major minority students.It can greatly increase students'initiative,confidence and interests in English writing.