According to the newly-revised English Curriculum Standards (2011), writing should be paid more attention to when teaching English, but the reality is that, many teachers in China, especially in some poor and remote areas, teaching writing has been neglected or even ignored since the improvement of writing abilities usually make less progress in the marks than reading and listening in college entrance examinations, as Liu ying(2015) said in his research。 However, on the contrary, in English speaking countries, reading and writing abilities are at least equally treated。 Daniel& Franklin(2016) has done a research in college students, which shows that English writing can be improved as well as the other abilities。 What’s more, the research also shows that reliable increases in writing performance during a student’s college years; and moreover demonstrated that such longitudinal changes can be effectively measured。 They call for more such outcome assessment in higher education as an essential tool to enhance student learning writing skills。         

Task-based Teaching is one of the teaching approaches applied in English teaching。 It focuses on the use of authentic language and designs tasks to lead students to use the target language and practice it。 In China, English Curriculum Standards (2011) promotes the task-based language teaching approach to English teaching in primary and secondary schools。 So task-based teaching is considered as a dominant teaching approach in senior high school。 It is a modern language teaching approach for second language learners。 It 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。 Therefore, this study intends to probe the effectiveness of Reading for Writing classes and the current situation of Task-based Teaching in Chinese senior high school。

1。2 Significance of the Research

1。2。1 Theoretical Significance论文网

With this study moving on, some new views and teaching methods will be provided to support Reading for Writing classes。 Current studies have shown the irreplaceable and significant workout brought by combining English reading with writing。 However, it still remains theoretical to some extent。 Based on the current achievements in this field, the researcher believes that Task-based Teaching will make new and different efforts to it。

1。2。2 Practical Significance

Through this study, the researcher will figure out how do reading tasks promote the process of students’ writing and what does the combination of reading and writing promote writing ability。 This study will probe the feasibility of applying task-based teaching methods in Reading for Writing Classes, which may provide the teachers with another option to organize the writing classes in a new way。 And this study will find out what kind of tasks are most widely designed and used in current senior high school English teaching。

1。3 Questions of this research

In this research, three research questions are put forward。 They are:

1) How has the task-based teaching approach been applied in writing classes in senior high school?

  2) What kind of tasks can be designed to promote reading for writing classes?

  3) To what extent, can reading for writing classes have more advantages than traditional writing classes?

2。 Literature Review

This chapter gives a general description to the definition of task-based teaching, its advantages, the current situation and nature of reading and writing, the connection between reading and writing and the definition of Reading for Writing Classes, domestic and abroad research about current situation。 

2。1 Task-Based Teaching Approach