Application Of Task-based Approach To Oral English Teaching In Vocational Colleges

With the deepening of China's reform and economic globalization, the exchanges between China and foreign countries become frequent; English plays an important role increasingly. The Chinese have more and more opportunities to contact with foreigners, so social requirements for oral English are also increasing. However, the current situation of English teaching is not satisfactory. Although many students can grasp grammar better, their interpersonal skills are poor. Most students'oral English is not satisfactory and "dumb English" really exists among the vocational college students. Vocational college students are a special class of students who are different from ordinary university students. Vocational education training goal is to develop practical workers instead of academic ones. The Ministry of Education emphasizes that English teachers should teach the basic English knowledge to the vocational college students and train them essential skills; meanwhile, the teachers should pay more attention to fostering the students' capability of practical communication in English. That is, improving students' oral English level is one of the most important things in vocational college English teaching. However, the vocational college students'oral English level is not optimistic. Their oral English is not very good; they have a little interest and confidence in oral English. To some extent, traditional teaching methods can not make students greatly love to speak English and improve their oral English. Therefore, it is urgent and important for us to improve the students' oral English by looking for a meaningful and valuable teaching method.Task-based approach becomes a popular word in English teaching circle. This relatively new teaching methodology was evolved from CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) and has developed since 1980s, which emphasizes "learning by doing" and offers students an opportunity to use language in the classroom. Nowadays, in China, many books and articles pay attention to the adoption of this approach to the teaching in primary and secondary schools and universities, but a few of them have a systematic study of the application of the task-based approach to the teaching in vocational colleges. Under this circumstance, the author attempts to find out the effect of using TBA to improve the vocational college students' oral language. Furthermore, this research intends to discover whether this approach can help arouse the students' more interest in learning oral English than the traditional PPP approach.This paper takes Willis'TBA as a theoretical basis. It studies the application of TBA to Oral English Teaching in Vocational Colleges. The subjects of this study are freshmen in two different majors in Materials Engineering Department in Hebei College of Industry and Technology. The author chooses Materials Engineering Class as the experimental class, using TBA, while the Metallurgical Engineering class as the control class, adopting traditional teaching method. The tools of this survey are two questionnaires, two oral test papers and an interview. The method and procedure of this study is as follows:The author first carried out questionnaire investigation and oral English test on the two classes before the experiment. The major purpose was to learn the students'attitude, interests, self-confidence and the level of oral English. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the two classes. According to the problems existed in oral English, the author taught purposely when carrying out TBA. First, the author introduced the background, illustrated the teaching tasks, and then allocated different tasks to different study groups, asked them to discuss and make reports, and finally, analyzed the language focus and guide practice. After the experiment, the author carried out the second questionnaire, oral test and an interview, the results indicated that TBA has a positive influence on students'oral English, and TBA is superior to the traditional teaching method. All data were analyzed with SPSS13.0 software.The thesis has been concluded as follows:1. TBA can improve students'oral English learning interest, arouse student's self-confidence, and build up positive attitude.2. TBA has greatly inspired students'impetus in English learning, improved their English level and communication skills, and met the needs of the society and employers.3. TBA has made a great alteration in oral English class from the teacher-centered to the students-centered. This study has some shortcomings, such as shorter research time, fewer and narrow subjects, which may affect the accuracy of data analysis. But it is assumed that the study may provide a truthful description of TBA in oral English in vocational colleges, the author thinks this thesis might have certain reference value to vocational English teaching and the study of TBA.