任务型教学法-论文.doc

浙江外国语学院本科毕业设计(论文)正文目录Abstracti摘要ii1. Introduction12. Literature review22.1 Definition of a task22.2 Task-based language teaching in reading 3 XX 3. Application of task-based language teaching in reading 53.1 Pre-reading stage73.2 While-reading stage73.3 Post-reading stage94. Evaluation95. Conclusion12 Works Cited13On application of Task-based Language Teaching in English Reading in Junior High Schools Wu Xiangzhen Abstract: The teaching of reading in junior high schools is a crucial part of teaching English. The New English Curriculum, which advocates the method of task-based language teaching, has been carried out throughout China for many years. It emphasizes learning by doing and aims at providing opportunities for the learners to experiment with both spoken and written language through learning activities. The paper first analyzes some difficulties in teaching reading. Then it proposes the model of task-based language in teaching reading in order to overcome these difficulties. The third part explores its application at three stages: pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. Finally it evaluates the effectiveness of the task-based language teaching.Key words: task-based language teaching; junior high schools; English reading 任务型教学法在中学英语阅读课中的应用摘要: 初中英语阅读教学是英语教学中一个非常重要的部分。英语课程标准已经在中国普遍实施，并且它提倡任务型教学模式。任务型教学法提倡在做中学,并且通过活动旨在给学习者提供口语和书面语练习的机会。本文首先介绍了造成英语阅读教学的一些困难。然后提出了任务型教学英语阅读的教学模式为了克服这些困难。第三部分探讨了它在三个阶段的实施：阅读前、阅读中和阅读后。最后评价了任务型教学法的有效性。关键词：任务型教学法；中学；英语阅读 ii On application of Task-based Language Teaching in English Reading in Junior High Schools 1. Introduction When I worked as an intern in a junior high school, many students have low reading levels and limited skills. There are some difficulties in reading. The main difficulty is their limited English vocabulary. Some students lack English vocabulary, so they cannot understand the connotation of reading materials. However, if we want to understand the reading materials, we must have sufficient vocabulary. In other words, sufficient vocabulary can help us have a good comprehension of reading materials. But the junior high schools students have limited English vocabulary, which affect the comprehension of reading materials. Whats more, students dont know how to build up their vocabulary.Another problem is students bad English reading habit. The junior high schools students dont have a good habit of reading English. First, students have a small amount of English reading. Students only read the text-books and do exercises, then they dont read other English materials. Second, most students have no interest in reading English materials. Third, most students read the passage word by word, and they dont understand the meaning of the passage as a whole. They rely on teachers translation and explanation.In addition, many students have poor English reading skills. Most students have not mastered basic English reading comprehension skill. First, when students do some reading comprehension, they frequently read the article first, and then read the title and the last part of the passage to find out the answer. This is not only a waste of time, but also there is no effect to read in this way. Second, a large number of students dont pay enough attention to the topic sentence. They read the article word by word and cannot logically understand the passage. So teachers should develop students reading skill gradually because it is remarkably crucial for students to improve reading ability. According to the reading problems in junior high schools students, we can see the present situation of reading teaching in English clearly. In such a situation, is task-based language teaching effective in improving students reading ability? This is the issue the paper is intended to explore.2. Literature review2.1 Definition of a taskBefore we want to know task-based language teaching, we should first know what the meaning of a task is. Many people have given a definition to a task. A variety of definitions of a task can be found as follows:According to Long, a task refers to the all kinds of things people do in their daily life, at work and at entertainment. A task is that when you ask some other people what things they do and they will tell those things to you. But they are not the applied linguists. (Chen Yajie 3) In Crookess opinion a task is that the work is along with a purpose, and it is accomplished as a part of a course or work, or it is used to obtain the research data. Breen gave a definition to a task, any kind of language behavior that has been organized carefully, it has specific goals, appropriate content, specific teaching process and a variety of different results. So a task is considered as a series of work plan, whose overall goal is to promote the language learning, whether the practice is simple or the activity is complicated, such as solving the problem, make a decision through the group work. (Chen Yajie 6) According to Bygate et.al., a task is a kind of activity that is influenced by the teaching in short or long term, it needs the learners to pay attention to the meaning of the language and use the language to achieve the goal. (Chen Yajie 6) Willis thinks the task of language activities the learners use, they are not only to communicate objections, but also to achieve a goal. (Chen Yajie 6) Prabhu thinks “A task is an activity which requires learners to arrive at an outcome from given information through some process of thought, and which allowed teachers to control and regulate that process.”(Prahbu 24). Nunnan thinks “a task is a piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to express meaning, and in which the intention is to convey meaning rather than to manipulate form. The task should also have a sense of completeness, being able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right with a beginning, a middle and an end.” (Nunnan 8). Skehan thinks “a task is an activity in which 1) meaning is primary 2) learners are not given other peoples meaning to regurgitate 3) there is some sort of relationship to comparable real-world activities 4) task completion has some priority 5) the assessment of the task is terms of outcome.” (Skehan 9). Ellis thinks a kind of work plan requires learners to deal with the language when they are using the language in real life in order to achieve an outcome, and the evaluation of the results can see whether it conveys the correct or appropriate propositional content. So, it needs learners to focus on the meaning of the language firstly and take advantage of their knowledge of the language, although the design of the task may lead them to choose a specific language form in advance. A task aims at using the language and this using may direct or indirect relate to the language use in real world. Like other language activities, a task can involve output and receptive skills, oral and written communication skills, as well as a variety of cognitive process. (Edwards & Wllis 18) All the experts mentioned above had given their own definitions to a task on different aspects. For example, Breen sees a task as a work-plan, which have the overall purposes of facilitating language learning from the simple and brief exercise type. However, Skehan described the five key characteristics of a task.In my opinion, I think a task is that the teacher puts forward some requirements that you need to do some activities to accomplish by using some devices. A task is that people do some things in order to achieve some goals and the activities carried out by people become a necessity in the language using.2.2 Task-based language teaching in reading Task-based language teaching is a kind of effective approach which was first started and radically established since 1980s. It is a development of Communicative Language Teaching. It is first put forward by Prabhus. Some experts had given other definitions of task-based language teaching.Nunan thought task-based language teaching is an approach to the design of language course in which the point of departure is not an ordered list of linguistic items, but a collection of tasks. (Nunan19-38)Jane Willis thinks task-based language teaching is an approach to language teaching which makes use of authentic materials in communicative tasks. These pedagogical tasks reflect real-world tasks that the learners in a given situation would complete as a part of their daily life. Pedagogical tasks act as building blocks to an ultimate objective. Thus, TBLT relies both on the learners ability to learn analytically and on the teachers flexibility and creativity are demanded as he/she diagnoses the outcomes of each task and creates new materials in response to newly revealed learner needs. TBLT is a complex approach to language teaching, but in its complexity it responds to both current SLA theory as well as the practical needs of the classroom. ( Willis72-75) The task-based approach aims at providing opportunities for the learners to experiment with and explore both spoken and written language through learning activities which are designed to engage learners in the authentic, practical and functional use of language for meaningful purposes.(Hong Kongs English Syllabus) According to those definitions of task-based language teaching, a lot of scholars tend to put it into teaching reading in Junior English. In order to use it effectively, people do some many researches from abroad and at home.In other countries, Prabhu gave a definition to a task in his book Second Language Pedagogy. He carried out the famous Bangalore Communicational Teaching Project in India for around five years. He put forward a lot of task types, and designed the content into a variety of communicative tasks learning to let students learn by completing tasks. Prabhus Bangalore Communicational Teaching Project is a milestone in Second Language teaching and he has laid a solid basis for the further development of task-based language teaching. (Prabhu53-56) Jane Willis and Peter Skehan put forward a model for achieving the concerned about the balance the communication on one hand, and form a general on the other hand. The framework of the model is pre-task, during -task and post-task. Willis emphasized a methodology for using tasks to combine naturalness of communication with opportunities to focus on form. Skehan made a similar attempt to show how balance between form and meaning can be achieved. In addition, he tried to link the methodology to the information-processing framework more explicitly. They put tasks at the center of Second Language teaching and learning, which gives opportunities to learn well. Whats more, they gave a clear, practical and ready-made framework for task-based teachers and researchers. This framework results from extensive trials of TBLT all over the world. Regarding the methodological procedures for implementing the task-based language teaching work-plan in class, Rod Ellis takes into two kinds of procedures: the lesson plan and participatory structure. The purpose of the task-based methodology is to give opportunities for language learning and skills development by means of building the cooperation knowledge. According to these researchers and other researchers study, it contributes to the development of task-based approach. They give the direction of task-based approach in English teaching and learning as a foreign language. And also, they give a clue for our countrys study in task-based approach. In China, the research of the task-based language teaching started in 1990s. Xia Jimei and Wu Xudong firstly introduced task-based language teaching to China. And many researchers tend to put it into English teaching, especially in teaching the reading of English. With the carry out of The English Curriculum Standard, the study has developed furthermore. Nonetheless, their study is still at the beginning of the stage. In recent years, many scholars and English teachers strive to put the task-based language teaching into reading teaching such as Lu Li, Lin Lixian, and Ma Yinghua. Lu Li made an experiment of one-year task-based language teaching in the middle school and found that experimental class made more progress in listening and writing than the control class. Ma Yinghua analyzed the characteristics of the task-based reading instruction and made an attempt on the combination of task-based language teaching model with the traditional material. In her point of view, the effective integration of the task-based language teaching model with the traditional language-focused reading model brings about the improvement of students language comprehension ability. Their research enlightens, inspires and supports the task-based language teaching in English reading instruction. But it is a pity that their studies are only restricted to theory research or a separate lesson design. The research both at home and abroad shows that we should make more efforts on studying task-based reading instruction and put task-based language teaching into English reading class so that we can improve students comprehension ability, the talent of using language and some other capabilities. So we should use task-based language teaching in English reading class.3. Application of task-based language teaching in reading This part will demonstrate the procedures to carry out a task-based language teaching in English reading. All the traditional models of teaching reading cannot improve students language ability, so many experts attempt to find another effective way. They find the task-based language teaching is useful in teaching reading. So many teachers try to apply the model to teaching reading in English class.In this part, I would use the example that I used when I was a practice teacher in junior middle school. I would use the example to present the procedure of task-based language teaching in reading. The example is from the English textbook published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. The lesson is Module 3, unit 2. The title is The Library is on the Left of the Playground.Before using the example, I will introduce some models of teaching reading in English.Firstly, the traditional model. Based on bottom-up model of reading, this model uses traditional Grammar-Translation Method to teach reading. It is teacher-centered model. During the learning process, the teacher acts as a dominator and the students are only like receptacles. The teacher talks from the beginning to the end through the whole class. The teacher explains the grammar rules, analyzes sentence structures, translates the passage sentence by sentence and explains the keywords and sentences to students. In this kind of class, students almost have no time to read, to think, to speak and to practice. They have no opportunities to express their own ideas to the whole class and the teacher. Students are totally ignored by the teacher and they have no chance to communicate with each other. As a result, the students lack the ability to communicate with each other and lack the comprehension competence, then they cannot use the English language well. But it also has some advantages. It improves the students writing ability as well as it enables the students to form a more solid knowledge of grammar. In this model, I will introduce some grammar to the students and when the students cannot understand my instructions or some explanations, I will use the mother tongue to explain the instructions,Secondly, Question-and-answer model. In order to change the traditional model in English teaching and improve the students ability to use language, then teachers adopt the ask-and-answer model to replace of the traditional model. I will ask some questions to let the students answer. Through the process of question-and-answer, the students improve the ability of expressing themselves. Whats more, the Presentation, Practice and Production model. Almost all the teachers are familiar with the Presentation, Practice and Production (PPP) model of teaching. A PPP lesson would be started by the teacher introducing a new language item in context followed by some controlled practices, such as repetition, read the passage or dialogue and so on. Students then move on to produce the language in a more meaningful way, such as a role play, a drama, an interview and so on. After the students accomplishing the tasks, I will let the students present their achievements. Meanwhile, I will ask them to practice the language points they have learned in the class. I combine these traditional models with the task-based language teaching model. Then it improves the efficiency of teaching.3.1 Pre-reading stage In this stage, I introduce some knowledge that is necessary to achieve the tasks, and some other skills. And I put forward some tasks for the students to complete.(1) At the beginning of the class, I present some pictures to let students guess the words according to the pictures. Show the pictures to the students, and let them know the words and phrases: dinning hall, playground, school office, classroom building, sports hall, science building, the library and school gate. Let the students master the basic names of the building in school.(2) Practice to use those phrases and words that have been learned last class: behind, f