Task-basedTeachingofReadinginAnIntegratedEnglishCourse

Task based Teaching of Reading in An Integrated English Course 吐哈石油外国语学校 张勤辉 国家级一等奖 An Integrated English Course published by Shanghai Foreign Language Press is a textbook for foreign language schools in China The present prevailing Task based Approach is applied in the tasks to help the student think independently with the help of tasks and also attaches equal importance to the training of language skills As teaching reading is an important part of English teaching this paper will discuss the task based teaching of reading in An Integrated English Course The teaching of reading usually falls into three stages pre reading while reading and post reading For each stage the text offers certain tasks for the students to accomplish This practice ensures that the students always read with purpose and help to improve the effectiveness of reading 1 Pre reading Tasks By pre reading task it means the tasks or activities that students do before they read a text The purpose of pre reading tasks is to arouse the student s interest and motivate the students so that they could be engaged with what they are going to read The frequently used tasks in pre reading stage are predicting and skimming According to the methodologists predicting is an important reading skill The students predictions will get their minds closer to the text they are going to read The reading results as several experiments show are better than those that students start reading with no tasks According to the psychology of the young students predicting can be done in two ways The first one is predicting based on the title A good title always conveys the most important information of a text It gives the students a hint of what the text is about At the moment the students get the hint their brains begin to predict what they are going to read and an active reading process is ready to begin Here take a reading class as an example The title of the text is How to Lay the Table which tells where to put the knives the forks on the table in a Western food restaurant To begin predicting some students may not know what to do and where to begin If so the teacher can 2 help them by asking some guiding questions For example for the text title above the teacher can ask three questions to help them begin Question 1 Have you had Western food Do you know how to set the table Question 2 What utensils do you need Name some you know Question 3 How do you place the spoon Do you place it up or down For these questions students can answer them in chorus And then let the students go on with their predictions in pairs or groups At last the head of each group is required to report their discussion and share their ideas with the class In this predicting task the students are motivated for next step and also they could prepare some lexical terms related to the reading material It s a common practice for the teacher to use pictures to help students start predicting This is predicting based on pictures another pre reading technique frequently used in this textbook The purpose of predicting is to have the students get closer to the text However for the young students they sometimes find it difficult to start predicting about certain topics Pictures may help this problem The use of pictures is helpful for two reasons first it offers students concrete materials to start the tasks they first describe and then compare or summarize and then leads to develop the topic second pictures are visible they convey direct information to the students so the use of pictures could help the students build up confidence to start predicting Sometimes the textbook provides necessary pictures but it is not enough so it is the job for the teacher to find more pictures to benefit the predicting task Take Shanghai the Largest City in China as an example Before reading the teacher shows a picture of the Oriental Pearl TV Tower and asks Where is it Students can answer the question easily The teacher then goes on to show other pictures that can symbolize Shanghai such as the Jin Mao Building Huangpu River and Nanjing Road These pictures show the students what the city looks like The more important task is to explore the students knowledge by asking them similarly related questions In this ask and answer interaction the students may get an impression about the city On this base the teaching can move to next stage Tasks not only get the students ready to read but also should help develop their 3 reading skills The second type of pre reading task also reading skills is skimming Skimming means reading quickly to get to the gist This kind of tasks aims to help the students get the main idea of a text or a paragraph of a text There are many situations where skimming is used For instance there is such an activity in Shanghai the Largest City in China The textbook lists four words climate area water resources and topographical features and asks the students to use them as the subtitle of each paragraph In our teaching practice all the students are required to finish the task in a very limited time so they don t have enough time to concentrate too hard on specifics They just spend more time on those items that are more important To help the students read more effectively the textbook offer different tasks for different texts It may ask general questions that allow the students to concentrate on one or two things e g Why does the writer write the article What do you learn from the story It may provide five statements of which one represents the main ideas and then ask the students to read the text and decide which one is correct It also provides subtitle or key sentences for different parts of a text and asks students to put them in the right place Pre reading task plays a crucial role in teaching reading A successful pre reading task contributes more to the teaching of a text In the textbook several pre reading tasks are applied to stimulate the students interest and make their reading easier It s more significant that these tasks always help them to advance from leaning to read to reading to learn 2 While reading Tasks The second stage of teaching reading is while reading This stage aims to help the students understand the content in details and the structure of the text In this stage there are different ways of exploiting different texts focusing on the process of understanding rather than the results of reading In the textbook the mostly frequently used type of tasks in this stage is scanning Scanning means to read the text for particular bits of information they are searching for This means that the students do not have to read every word and every line The key point in scanning is that the students have some tasks in his mind So the tasks 4 should be clearly given in advance When scanning they should ignore the irrelevant parts In the textbook the students scan figures phone numbers persons a specific event vocabulary etc Questions for a scanning activity are often about specific information In Shanghai the Largest City in China students scan to answer questions and do true or false They are required to answer questions like How many seasons does Shanghai have How large is Shanghai Can you name one of the symbolic buildings in Shanghai They also have to judge whether the statements are true or false such as Shanghai is on the east coast of the Pacific Ocean Shanghai is an excellent port The 113km long Yangtze River flows through the city etc Text is to present information In this stage students always tend to read the text time and time again but finally they get nothing They cannot answer the teacher s questions about the text In order to retain the information there must be some tasks to help the students in the course the reading When information in text form is transferred into another form it can be more effectively processed and retained As the fact shows sometimes the text is difficult so it s difficult for the students to summarize and demonstrate his or her reading results In order to solve the problem some transition devices are applied For example in Facts about Food before the students begin to read the text the teacher shows a table as follow Direction Read the passage and complete the table which compare the three meals MealDescriptionTimeFoodDrinkWhere Breakfast Lunch Dinner This task tells the students that they have something to do they have purpose while 5 they are reading It is important that the students fill in the table while they are reading rather than after they finish reading Then a follow up activity can be conducted based on the results of the while reading task When using the transition devices in while reading stage it is necessary to ensure that it is suitable to summarize the text Students attention should be focused on the main meaning of the text The task also should simplify the text to help the output stage In while reading stage the tasks are designed to help the students understand the text in detail The students have to do the task while they are reading During this stage the teacher also helps the students to understand the words and structures in the course of reading by helping them read between the lines 3 Post reading Tasks After the reading is finished usually students will read the text aloud or paraphrase sentences according the teacher s requirement But this kind of practice is not adequate for the students to fully understand and master what they have learnt They have no opportunity to produce their language So in this stage the teacher must be inventive The post reading tasks aim to consolidate or reflect what has been read in the text The tasks should relate to the text and the students own knowledge interest or views These tasks should provide the students with opportunities to use what they have read or what they already know In addition post reading tasks finally enable the students to produce language based what they have learnt Post reading tasks appears in many forms both oral and written The principle is going from easier tasks to more difficult ones and imaginative ones This helps the students feel they are advancing ahead in using the target language so they will be confident and interested in using the language After reading a text the teacher usually will check how much the students have learnt from the text from words phrases to ideas Retelling is a tool to do this job In doing a retelling the students try to use the words phrases or useful sentences in their own language It helps the students consolidate the language points Additionally 6 it is a good way to improve spoken English and the ability to speak After the students have finished a text it is an effective method to rewrite it into a dialogue and act it out In the process of writing they have to consider the style so in terms of vocabulary they not only use the words and expressions from the text they have read but also will they use other words synonyms or antonyms In this way they learn how to write and then they act out the dialogue In order to build up creative thinking among the students for some texts that the students hold different views toward it discussion can be employed to let them develop the topic Here guiding questions are needed to help the students After reading People And the Planet 1 that is about the world s population growth and environment the discussion guide goes like this Question 1 What s the situation in China Question 2 Do you know anything about family planning in China Question 3 What do you think of the One Child Policy In the discussion the students will use the words they have just learnt and will produce new ideas Of course before they discuss the teacher will talk about his own idea to set an example so that the discussion could not go to far If the teacher always performs the written post reading task in the form of essays the students will get bored As mentioned above the teacher must be inventive To try another way will arouse students interest again In Unit 10 the students read three articles about the environment and pollution The first post reading task was to write a passage to describe the pollutions around us and the ways to protect the environment The result was that the students views were limited no ideas were produced in the writing They were emotionally restrained In order to improve the writing on this topic the type of task was changed They were required to edit a newspaper to report the environmental pollution and protection They had great interest in doing the work After two days preparation they finished editing the newspaper It was really a great job They not only used the words and expressions learnt from the textbook but also used some new words about this topic This fact shows that students became emotionally involved in the subject of reproduction Therefore the design