A Study on TBLT in College English Writing

Abstract

Writing, as the important aspect of language teaching is regarded as a complex cognitive activity and the difficult part in college English teaching. This paper analyzes the current situation of college English writing teaching, reviews the development of task-based language teaching and related background rationales, testifies the effectiveness of task-based language teaching in college English writing and proposes suggestions to future study. KEYWORD: College English Writing; Task; Task-based language teaching (TBLT) International Conference on Social Science, Education Management and Sports Education (SSEMSE 2015) © 2015. The authors Published by Atlantis Press 1288 The experiment started from September 15, 2013 and lasted 15 weeks till December 30, 2013. Because there was no separate writing class in our university, writing teaching was involved in the comprehensive English class. The writing teaching took one period (50 minutes) every other week. In control class, the writer adopted traditional product approach, as the following steps[3]: Step 1: The teacher introduced the topic and requirement of writing and offer a model composition and helped students to analyze the structure and explained some writing skills in it. Step 2: The students imitated the model and wrote the compositions individually. Step 3: The students revised their compositions and handed them in. Step 4: teacher marked and commented on their compositions. While in experimental class, the writer used taskbased approach in writing teaching. Based on Willis’s framework of TBLT mentioned in previous chapter, the procedure was designed in three stages: pre-task stage, task cycle and post-task stage. The experiment lasted for 15 weeks, after the experiment there was a post-test for experimental group and control group at the end of the term. This test for the two groups uses the writing topic of CET4 at the same time and the same place. Then there was a questionnaire for experimental group on their interest in English writing and attitude towards TBLT and three days later after post-test, there was an interview held for 12 students from experimental group in the classroom in order to get a deep understanding of the students’ attitude toward TBLT[4]. 3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION In order to explore whether task-based language teaching will bring forth significant improvement in college EFL learners' writing proficiency, the analysis based on quantitative data is supposed to provide readers with more direct and convincing evidence. Table 1 Independent samples t-test results of the pre-test Group N Mean T Value Std. Deviation Sig. (2-tailed) Pre-test EG 54 8.1296 -.025 1.67159 .980 CG 58 8.1379 1.80106 Note: EG=experimental group; CG=control group; N=number As is shown clearly in Table 1, it is a comparison of writing proficiency in pre-test between experimental group and control group. In the pre-test the mean score of the experimental group is 8.1296, a little lower than the control group which is 8.1379. t=-.025, Sig. (2-tailed) is .980 (p > .05) means two groups showed no significant difference in their writing performance before the experiment. We can be confident that any effects due to instruction are not related to prior knowledge or ability of any group and the proceeding statistical analysis is meaningful. Table 2 Comparison of content, organization and language of control group in pre-test and post-test Group N Mean T value Std. Deviation Sig. (2-tailed) Content Cpre Cpost 58 2.7069 3.0345 -3.947 .77252 .70001 .000 Organization Cpre Cpost 58 2.8621 3.0000 -1.383 .73624 .81650 .172 Language Cpre Cpost 58 2.5517 2.6379 -.962 .77624 .71814 .340 Table 3 Comparison of content, organization and language of experimental group in pre-test and post-test Group N Mean T value Std. Deviation Sig. (2-tailed) Content Epre Epost 54 2.8333 3.6852 -8.801 .69364 .74793 .000 Organization Epre Epost 54 2.7407 3.4815 -6.571 .75698 .77071 .000 Language Epre Epost 54 2.5370 2.9074 -4.169 .84033 .85271 .000