Using task-based learning to improve students' understanding of news articles

The purpose of this study is two fold. Firstly, it aims to find out whether the Task-Based Learning helps students improve their understanding of news articles. Also, it aims to investigate the extent to which the designed TBL materials should be modified to suit the teaching context at Nakhon Phanom Wittayakhom School. Subjects of the study were 39 students who enrolled in the English 5 (E 43101) course. These students were selected from the total of 86 and all of them were in M.6/1. The research instruments included the Task-Based Learning Unit with students' handouts, pre-test and post-test, students' learning diaries, tape recording of students' informal group discussion, and teacher's journal. Scores obtained from students' reading comprehension tasks at pre-test and post-test were calculated and then compared and interpreted to shed light on improvement of students' understanding of news articles. The repeated information and ideas occurring in students' learning diaries, informal group discussion transcripts and teacher's journals were identified and summarised. The study found that the TBL unit had impacts on students from all language
proficiency groups (i.e. Above Average, Average, Below Average) as their
post-test scores (X) were higher than pre-test scores at the statistically significant
analysed level of .05 (19.076 /8.307). All of them were satisfied with the TBL
tasks as it helped improve their understanding of news articles with some
techniques of how to read, analyse, summarise, and answer the questions about the
given news articles. However, some tasks need to be modified considerably to suit the future teaching.