A Study On The Application Of Task-Based Language Teaching To Large Classes Of Vocational Colleges

At present, large-class teaching has become a main model of English teaching in colleges. Based on relevant data, since 1999, when colleges and universities increased the enrollment, the size of class becomes larger than before and the number of students in each class has increased to 60 in general. Limited by the number of students, teaching facilities and teaching time and so on, teachers cannot focus on every student in the teaching process, which is bad for the improvement of teaching quality. Therefore, it is urgent to find an effective approach to solve the current problems and improve the current situation. Compared with students in regular institutions of high learning, students in vocational colleges, especially non-English majors, have a weak English foundation since middle school or primary school. Having entered college, however, students usually have a strong desire to get a new learning approach to improve their English foundation and to adjust well to the new academic environment. It is found that the traditionally teacher-centered teaching approach is not suited to English teaching in large classes, with which problems in large classes cannot be solved but become even worse. Hence, it seems very important whether students can find a new approach to motivate their interest and promote their English proficiency.Nowadays, more and more teachers apply the approach task-based language teaching (TBLT) to solve problems of traditional approach in English teaching, motivate students'interest and improve their English level. TBLT is different from traditional teaching approach, in that the essence of which is"learning by doing,"which means learners perceive, learn, and use target language in practice by means of participation, experience, interaction, communication and cooperation with their cognitive ability and resources of existing target language.The aim of the thesis is to investigate if TBLT has beneficial effects on English teaching of large classes. The experiment was conducted in two large classes of Jinan Vocational College for a period of three months from March to May in 2010. One class is the experimental class and another one is the controlled class. The author adopted the research methods of test, questionnaire, interview and classroom observation, and analyses the experimental data by qualitative and quantitative methods.According to the results of analysis, the teaching techniques and strategies of TBLT are suited to English teaching of large classes and it made differences in the post-test scores of students in experimental class with a remarkable promotion comparing with that of pre-test and students in controlled class. Also, from the analysis of classroom observation, interview and questionnaire, the results can be obtained that the students'interest was significantly aroused, as well as their confidence increased and participation activated, according to which, a better learning environment was created.However, there still exist some problems unsolved. For instance, the classroom is still difficult to be controlled especially at task-cycle phrase; the participation of the low-level students is not satisfying mainly because their foundations are too weak; it is a little hasty for the students to complete the task perfectly.Aiming to solve the problems above, the author put forward some suggestions for further study, expecting to obtain a better promotion when applying TBLT in large classes in the future.