A Study Of Application Of The Task-based Language Teaching Approach To English Listening & Speaking Class In Higher Vocational Education

With the development and promotion of basic education curriculum reform, classroom teaching reform has gradually become the focus of curriculum reform. Especially for higher vocational education, the ministry of education has emphasised the basic requirements of English teaching. It issues that to the teaching target, communicative competence is the aim and it is the most important to apply the knowledge of language to its practical use in real life communication. To meet this requirement, many students-centered teaching methods have become more and more popular.The task-based language teaching method is quite popular in English teahcing at home and abroad. This teaching method is based on a comprehensive research results of English methodology, English linguistics and education psychology. At present, a lot of practices of the task-based language teaching method have been done in junior middle schools, senior middle schools and universities in order to improve classroom teaching. However, still very little is done about it in vocational colleges. According to the present situation of English-learning with the students in vocational colleges, this thesis tries to find out a practical and effective method to improve the listening ability of students in a vocational college in light of the task-based language teaching theory.Based on the theories of task-based language teaching method, this study has made an experimental research on the use of task-based language teaching method in English listening & speaking course in a higher vocational college where the author of the thesis has been teaching. This study has made a scientific and systematic anaysis of the results in order to examine whether the task-based language teaching method can improve the. teaching of English listening or not. In addition, this thesis tries to find out the shortages of the application of this teaching methodology in a higher vocational college for a future research in English teaching methodology in higher vocational colleges.The main research methods in this thesis involve a questionnaire, a classroom experiments and some tests. The experiment shows that the application of task-based language teaching method in English listening course is quite successful. It not only improves the students'listening strategies, but also helps the students with their all-around development of English. But at the same time, the author of the thesis finds that there are still some difficulties with the application, such as language learning condition, former learning mode and so on. In the end, the author gives some suggestions to solve these problems.