Task Based Learning Strategies for Strengthening Reading Comprehension Skills

Abstract

This research project was developed with a group of ten fifth-grade students at San Francisco de Asis school, an elementary school located in Susa, Cundinamarca, Colombia. It emerged as a pedagogical innovation to fulfill the graduation requirement at the B.A in English as a Foreign Language Teaching at Santo Tomas University. The needs analysis survey revealed difficulties in the students’ reading comprehension skills. In response, a set of 10 lesson plans based on Task-Based Learning (TBL) was implemented to develop and strengthen these skills. The lesson plans incorporated reading strategies such as scanning, skimming, questioning, predicting, visualizing and summarizing, within the framework of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and aligned with standards set by the Ministry of Education in Colombia. This paper describes the stages of the pedagogical practice, highlighting the roles of the teacher- researcher and students in the learning process. Evidence of improved reading comprehension is provided through students’ artifacts, transcriptions of video recordings and teachers’ reflective journals. Additionally, the findings reveal further implications for future complementary action research implementation by the teacher-researchers or other EFL researchers. Keywords: Task-based learning (TBL), reading comprehension, reading skills, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), action research.