The Application Of Task-based Teaching Approach To English Reading Teaching In Secondary Vocational School

Since reading is an important way for people to acquire information,it has always been the focus of language teaching.The improvement of reading ability is conducive to the integrated training of learner's speaking,reading,listening and writing.However,the current situation of English reading teaching in secondary vocational school is not satisfactory.Traditional teaching approaches failed to cultivate students' reading ability.This thesis is based on Willis' task-based language teaching(TBLT)theory.It is an attempt to study task-based teaching of English reading in secondary vocational school.The ultimate purpose of the thesis is to find a more effective approach to arouse students' interest in reading and to improve their comprehension ability in English reading.In traditional English reading class,the teacher is the center and the purpose of teaching is to explain language knowledge to students.The teaching procedure mainly involves reading,explaining,practicing and asking questions.At the same time,the contents of teaching are irrelevant to students' real life,and therefore they are lack of authenticity.As a result,students lose interest in learning and lack learning motivation.Accordingly,students' reading ability is unsatisfactory.The task-based teaching model can avoid the defects of the traditional reading teaching model,it takes the student as the center of learning and helps students gain language knowledge by doing some tasks.The author takes two parallel classes of a vocational school as the experimental class and the control class,and then carries on teaching experiment for a semester(20 weeks).In the experimental class,TBLT theory is adopted in English reading teaching;in the control class,the traditional PPP teaching model is applied.The author employs the statistics software SPSS as the data analysis tool to analyze the results of the experiment.After the experiment,it focuses on students' reading emotional manners,strategies as well as the receptivity to Willis' TBLT theory by the questionnaires and the interview.The experimental result has showed that Willis' task-based language teaching theory is more effective than the traditional PPP teaching model in improving reading ability;students hold a positive and affirmative attitude to the new teaching approach.The thesis includes six chapters.The first chapter mainly presents the research background,the necessity and the significance of this research.Chapter two reviews the definition of “task” and “reading”,comparison of TBLT model with traditional PPP model and many related considerations.In chapter three,the theoretical framework of task-based language teaching are presented.Chapter four is research design,including research questions,subjects,instruments and the research procedures.The fifth chapter covers the results and the discussion through detailed data analysis of the experiment,questionnaire and interview.It proves that theTBLT in English reading is effective and it can improve students' reading comprehension ability by inspiring their reading interest and using proper reading skills and strategies.Chapter six is the conclusion,which summarizes main research findings and points out its pedagogical implications as well as limitations of the present study.