The effects of task-based language teaching on Vietnamese EFL students’ reading comprehension at a secondary school

The effects of task-based language teaching on Vietnamese EFL students’ reading comprehension at a secondary school

Nguyen Ha Thao Mi thaomi.nguyenha@gmail.com HUTECH University
Duong My Tham* thamdm@uef.edu.vn HUTECH University
Summary: 
Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is regarded as one of the most efficient methods for great exposure to the target language through meaningful tasks. However, very few studies have been undertaken on the application of TBLT in secondary education in the Vietnamese EFL context. This paper aims to investigate secondary school students’ attitudes towards the implementation of TBLT in an English reading class. The participants included 73 eighth graders at a Ho Chi Minh City-based secondary school. They were divided into two groups: control group and experimental group. Thirty-three students were assigned to the experimental group and they took a 17-week course with the intervention of TBLT while the others in the control group received traditional methods. The pretest and post-test were employed to collect the quantitative data. The results revealed that the students in the experimental group achieved better results in the reading comprehension post-test than those in the control group. It is, therefore, suggested that EFL teachers should consider implementing TBLT to aid students in improving their reading comprehension.
Keywords: 
English as a foreign language
reading comprehension
secondary education
task-based language teaching
Vietnamese secondary schools
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