IMPACT OF PRACTICING AUTHENTIC TASKS ON IMPROVING ENGLISH GRAMMAR SKILLS

Abstract

English is vital because it is one of the main ways to communicate and interact with other people around us. It keeps us in contact with other people. Many countries in the world use English as their first language and many countries use it as a second language. From very early periods many scholars introduced and practiced various methods to teach English as a second language. This study focuses on one such topic “Improving English Grammar Skills through Task Based Language Teaching method at secondary education system in SL (SIBA university – Kandy based study) related to Teaching English as a second language. Hence, this research sets out to probe whether the implementation of Task Based Language Teaching in a comprehensive English grammar class would have a positive effect on students’ study enthusiasm and language proficiency. The research was conducted using 30 English Diploma students of Department of English and Modern Languages of Sri Lanka International Buddhist Academy (SIBA Campus) as the sample. The main objectives of the study were to find out the reasons for the difficulties faced by the students when communicating in English, to reduce those difficulties in communicating using new methods in teaching. The research problem is the low scores of the students’ grammar proficiency obtained from the pre research. The main objective of this study is to use the Task Based Language Teaching to the students to experience communicative grammar learning with various meaningful tasks in the grammar class. The procedure included isolating problems and planning, implementing actions, observing and reflecting, test and questionnaire. The sample was given a pre-test and a post- test to compare the results and the final results have proven that the methods used are prolific in improving English grammar skill. In conclusion the application of task based language teaching can improve the students’ grammar proficiency.