任务型教学法在初中英语口语教学中的实证研究

发布时间：2017-04-17 15:58

Chapter One Introduction

Nowadays, Chinese people have much more opportunities to communicate withforeigners because of the reform and opening-up. So more and more Chinese peoplestudy English for many reasons and in many ways. Since the 1970s, many languageteaching methods have been introduced to the English classroom in middle school,such as the Grammar-Translation Method, the Direct Method, the Audio-visualApproach and the Functional Approach etc. These teaching methods are suitable forthe Chinese education pattern which is under the exam-oriented education for a longtime. So English teaching in the middle school classroom is managed byteacher-centered approach. And the teachers in general pay more attention to thegrammar and vocabulary which could make the students gain more scores in the exam.The students are just regarded as followers and the teachers are controllers. If thingsgo on like this, the students would lack interests and lose their enthusiasm in learningEnglish. The teachers ignore the students’ language competence of speaking inEnglish and this goes against that language is an instrument of communication.Although the students have learned English from primary school or even younger,their language competence are weak especially in oral English. A universalphenomenon is that most of the middle school students do a good job in analyzingsentence structure, reading comprehension and writing a composition, but it isdifficult to open their mouth to communicate with others in the English classroom orin the real life.

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Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Basic Concepts related to TBLT

As to the task-based language teaching (TBLT), we should make certainunderstanding about the definition of task firstly. Many scholars have their ownopinion about task. They account for the definitions of task in teaching, learning or onboth of the two aspects. In the following section, the author will list some typicalviews about definitions by some experts who make great contributions to researchesabout TBLT.In the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (7thedition), the definition of taskis interpreted as “a piece of work that somebody has to do, especially a hard orunpleasant one; an activity which is designed to help achieve a particular learninggoal.” and this is the understanding of “task” by most people.For the second language researchers and linguists, they have their own understanding about “task” from different perspectives. But there is no oneauthoritative definition which is accepted in general.The following will illustratesome descriptions of the “task” by some scholars’viewpoints.Long is one of the earliest scholars who does the research on TBLT.She claimed that “A task is a piece of work undertaken for oneself or for others, freelyor for some reward.”

2.2 Previous Studies of TBLT
Although TBLT is newly emerging teaching method in 1980s, it has attract manyscholars and researcher to study about it and developed rapidly. Some famous expertsand linguists who do the researches on second language such as Long (1985), Crookes(1986), Prabhu (1987), Nunan (1989),Willis (1996), Skehan (1998), Littlewood(2002), Ellis (2003) and other researchers have made great contribution on the studiesof TBLT on theoretical perspective or implementation. In this part of the thesis, somerepresentative studies on TBLT abroad and at home will be introduced briefly inchronological sequence.Prabhu(1987) firstly proposed to apply TBLT in secondary school classroom inhis Bangalore Project in the Southern India. He assumed that “when the students takemore attention on the meaning of language than the form they can learn languagemore effectively.” So this project rejects form-focus teaching and syllabus of language.Instead, it adopted procedure or task syllabus namely problem-solving tasks whichremain to be completed by the students. The whole project was divided into threeparts during the teaching procedure, they are pre-task, task and post-task. He believedthat unconsciousness learning is the most effective way of language learning and heemphasized that “not ‘English for communication’ but ‘English throughcommunication’; not ‘learn English so that you will be able to do and say things later’but ‘do and say things now so that as a result you will learn English’” which means“learning by doing”.(Xu, 2014) And he identified three types of tasks in his project:information-gap tasks, opinion-gap tasks and reasoning-gap tasks. Information-gapmeans that the learners share or exchange the information with partners bycommunicating. Reasoning-gap means that learners deal with the known informationto get new information by logic inference. Opinion-gap shows the viewpoints, favoriteor attitude of the learners by using the target language. Although there are defects inPrabhu’s teaching practice, it is of great help and laid a solid foundation for thefollowing researchers about second language acquisition and the development of TBLT.

Chapter Three Theoretical Framework............... 13

3.1 The Theoretical Foundation of TBLT....... 13
3.1.1 LanguageAcquisition Theory..............13
3.1.2 Interactive Hypothesis and Output Hypothesis...........14
3.1.3 Social Constructivist Theory...........15
3.2 Features of TBLT........... 16
3.3 Principles of TBLT.............17
Chapter Four Methodology................21
4.1 Research Questions.......21
4.2 Participants.........21
4.3 Instruments.....22
Chapter Five Results and Discussion.........25
5.1 Research Procedures................ 25
5.2 Presentation of Results..............31
5.3 Discussion of Results..................45

Chapter Five Results and Discussion

5.1 Research Procedures

Before the experiment, the pre-questionnaires are given to the students in EC andCC. The aims of the pre questionnaires is to find out students’ interests, confidence,motivation, anxiety feelings and other element in learning oral English. And theauthor also gives the same oral English pre-tests to the students in the two classes toexamine the oral English level of the students. The shortcomings and problems thatexist in the students’ oral English will be found out. And then, the author designed thetasks and activities according to the principles of TBLT for EC in the process ofimplementation. The tasks and activities are designed to improve the students’ oralEnglish effectively.The author uses Willis’ teaching model for TBLT in EC which contains threestages namely pre-task, cycle task (during-task) and language focus (post-task). Theadvantage of this model is that it could give the students more chances to learnEnglish. The implementation of TBLT all depends on the task designing while the taskdesigning must abide by the principles of TBLT. The task designing is the key point ofTBLT and the purpose of the task is mainly to cultivate students competence oflanguage using and facilitate the development of attitude, enthusiasm in languagelearning. So the teachers should design tasks scientifically and flexibly. In addition,the tasks designing should depend on the principles we have introduced in chapterthree. And the following figure shows the procedures in TBLT class.

5.2 Presentation of Results

Table 5.1 is the results of pre-questionnaires from EC and CC. According to thetable above, we could find out the students’ attitudes, interests and other opinionstoward oral English. The first question in the pre-questionnaire wants to survey thestudents’opinion about the importance of oral English. The results show that 33.3%of the students in EC think that oral English is very important and 32.4% of thestudents in CC think that oral English is very important; 36.1% of the students in ECthink that oral English is important and 35.3% of the students in CC think that oralEnglish is important; 19.4% of the students in EC think that oral English is notimportant and 20.5% of the students in CC think that oral English is not; 11.2% of thestudents in EC don’t care about this question and 11.8% of the students in CC don’tcare about this question.The second question in the pre-questionnaire wants to inquiry how much thestudents like to study oral English. The results of this question show that 8.3% of thestudents in EC like to study oral English very much and 8.8% of the students in CClike to study oral English very munch; 27.8% of the students in EC like to study oralEnglish and 26.5% of the students in CC like to study oral English; 38.9% of thestudents in EC don’t like to study oral English and 38.2% of the students in CC don’tlike to study oral English; 25% of the students in EC don’t care about this questionand 26.5% of the students in CC don’t care about this question.The purpose of the third question in the pre-questionnaire is to check out thefeelings of the students’ in learning oral English. The results show that 13.9% of thestudents in EC think that learning oral English is very easy and 14.7% of the studentsin CC think that learning oral English is very easy; 30.6% of the students is EC thinkthat learning oral English is easy and 29.4% of the students in CC think that learningoral English is easy; 41.7% of the students in EC think that learning oral English isdifficult and 41.2% of the students in CC think that learning oral English is difficult;13.9% of the students in EC think that learning oral English is very difficult and14.7% of the students in CC think that learning oral English is very difficult.
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Chapter Six Conclusion

6.1 Major Findings

Based on the study, we could find that it is feasible to implement TBLT intomiddle school oral English teaching. And the major findings of the study can besummarized as follows.The purpose of TBLT is to cultivate students’ language competence and achievehigh level by completing tasks in the class. Unlike the traditional PPP teachingmethod, which may cause the “dumb English” because it puts emphasis on thelecturing of the teachers and the drilling of the students. In the TBLT, the teachersdesign tasks and activities with a view to the students need. The tasks and activitiesare goal-oriented and specific operation, the students could achieve languageknowledge and language competence in accomplishing these tasks. So the languagecompetence could be improved with learning. The TBLT gives students a clear goaland purpose of language learning so they have internal motivations and positiveattitude to learning the language. In addition, the tasks designed by the teachers areprogressive and the learning is undertaken step by step. It makes the students feelcomfortable and easy in learning language. Besides, the tasks are designed in diversityto increase the students’ interests. The TBLT provides large amount of opportunitiesfor the students making language output. And is also helpful to cultivate the students’team spirit and strengthen self-learning ability, that is to say TBLT is helpful for thestudents to develop their abilities in analyzing and solving problems cooperatively.

6.2 Implications of the Study

Based on the major findings, we could get some implications in oral Englishteaching of Junior Middle school, such as the teacher’s role, the students’ initiatives,task designing, etc. The implication of this study could be summarized as follows:Firstly, the teacher in TBLT class. Teachers themselves should have betterunderstanding of the TBLT in order to apply TBLT to actual English teachingsituation. And teachers themselves should enhance teaching quality through enrichingtheir knowledge of language and learning more cultural information. Teachers shouldanalyze the requirements and the characteristics of the students before designing tasks.The TBLT is student-centered so it is necessary for teachers to make a thorough studyon the students’ needs and interests. If the designed tasks could arose students’interests and meet the students’ needs, the students will get more languageachievement and the environment of oral English class will be positive. Anotherproblem for teachers to pay attention to is that the students’ language ability isdifferent even in the same class. So how to design tasks which are proper to all the students is difficult for the teacher.Secondly, the students’ initiatives. In the TBLT classroom, the students aremain parts of class and the teachers are just helper, conductor, facilitator etc. Whenthe students doing the tasks, the teachers should walk around to give encouragementand necessary support on the language to the students. Sometimes the teacher alsocould be a member of the task participation to help students accomplish tasks. And the teacher severs as a partner could arouse students’ enthusiasm to take part in the taskcompleting. However the teachers should also supervise the students to use targetlanguage to complete the tasks instead of their mother tongue and at the same time tomake sure that every student in the classroom has chances to speak English and participate in the tasks. Besides, the teacher should have an appropriate attitude tostudents’language mistakes. During the completing of tasks, some students may makelanguage mistakes such as unsuitable words or wrong grammar. In order to make surethe smooth implementation of TBLT, the teacher should not correct students’ mistakes all the time. Instead, he or she should write those mistakes down and correct them inthe language focus part. And that the students are allowed to rethink or review theirtasks themselves is a good way to help students correct language mistakes andremember the language points well.

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