Application Of TBA And Web-based Autonomous Learning To The Teaching Of Postgraduates' Listening And Speaking

With the development of the Communicative Approach, the Task-based Approach (TBA) has attracted widespread attention in the worlds of linguistics and education since it came into being in the 1980s. In recent years, its instructional theory---"doing things with the language","learning by doing"has gradually been introduced to our English classroom teaching, and has become a trend of our English language teaching reform. The TBA has absorbed the merits of the former teaching approaches, and it does not repel with the other teaching approaches. The great merit of TBA is that the input materials of the tasks are chosen from real life, meanwhile, the circumstances and the concrete activities in fulfilling the tasks are close to real life, which is good for improving the students'practical ability of a foreign language. Apart from this, its maneuverability, practicability and interest also effectively stimulated the learners'motivation in study, and make them participate in learning actively. The TBA claims"learner-centeredness", and the teacher serves as the guider, they work together to fulfill the language teaching tasks, this helps the students acquire the language and enhance their practical ability naturally.Recently, contrast with the traditional receptive learning method, an up-to-date learning style---autonomous learning has drawn more and more attentions of people. Just as its name implies, autonomous learning views the students as the center, they shall achieve their learning objectives through their independent analysis, exploration and practice as well as interrogation and creativity. Meanwhile, the development of the multimedia, especially the web, has provided much more materials and circumstances for students'autonomous learning, which can effectively improve their autonomous learning ability.In accordance with the"learner-centeredness"theory, the thesis discussed a practical way of combining the TBA and web-based autonomous learning to the teaching of postgraduates'listening and speaking to make both teaching and learning more effectively and more appropriately. To test this model is effective or not, an experiment has been done. Two classes of non-English major postgraduates are involved in the experiment: one as the experimental group which is instructed with the new model; the other as the control group taught with the traditional teaching model. Through the questionnaire and the comparison and analysis of the English scores by both pre-test and post-test of listening and speaking in the 2010-2011 academic year of the freshmen selected who were given different teaching methods, the thesis got the conclusion that the students using the new model could do better in listening and speaking and make good use of what they have learnt. Finally, the thesis reveals some implications and points out some limitations of this study.