Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom-A College English Reading Course

Abstract

This paper addresses a preliminary study on incorporating task-based instruction (TBI) into a collegiate English reading course. Seven designed tasks are implemented to make a conventional English reading classroom into a communicative classroom. The investigation demonstrates that students show positive feedback toward this TBI English reading course. They report that TBI English reading course is more interesting than conventional reading course. Besides, their reading skills are trained more effectively than before because of the tasks they are engaged in. Moreover, their willingness to memorize vocabulary is stronger and their long-term memory of vocabulary retains longer because of the activities they participate in.