Open AccessThis study is devoted to the writing performance of Chinese EFL learners in EPPW (English Practical Paperwork Writing) course within the framework of task-based language teaching, focusing on the investigation of the influence of modes of task presentation upon the textual metafunction in the aspect of coherence, cohesion and accuracy. Three common modes of task presentation were then chosen as subject: a traditional approach- in full Chinese version and a context- situation approach in Chinese or English respectively. Three homogenous groups of college students from our college who were taking their EPPW course participated in the study and task presentation was achieved by 3 aforesaid modes respectively for 3 tasks of various genres, which stood for high, medium and low level of complexity respectively. Contrastive textual analysis and survey revealed that the context- situation approach of task presentation was more effective in the teaching of EPPW compared to FC in enhancing the writing behavior for modest Chinese learners; furthermore, the results also showed that ES outperformed CS in mean scores and implementation of high complexity task.