Computer-Assisted And Task-Based College Oral English Teaching

With the development of the globalization, English plays a more and more important role in the communication all over the world. Great importance has been attached to English teaching in the China's college education. However, Chinese college students lack the communicative competence of English, which has been proved in some researchers'surveys. Therefore, language teachers are expected to find new methods to help students improve their oral English skills.Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has been widely adopted by the domestic foreign language researchers in recent years. It aims to create a"real language environment"and facilities learners to do tasks required in target language. This"learning-by-doing"teaching method is quite different from the traditional one, which focuses on"the grammar teaching". In addition, the author tries to integrate one of newly cross-disciplinary computers into TBLT. In fact, although computer-assisted language learning (CALL) it alone does not constitute an instructional approach, it serves as a supplement to a certain method of teaching.So far, most of the researches just focus on either the implementation of TBLT or the application of CALL, few researches have integrated the two into one, let alone from the perspective of the oral English teaching. This thesis, therefore, is intended to integrate CALL into TBLT by explaining and illustrating how to appropriately integrate the current CALL technology into TBLT in the college English classrooms so as to improve students'oral competence. An experiment is accordingly conducted to verify the effectiveness and feasibility of such a teaching method.The thesis is divided into five parts.Chapter One is an introduction, which briefly points out the study purpose, research background and significance.Chapter Two is literature review, which lists the definition of oral competence, and the current situation of college students'oral English competence in China, presents the definition and the theoretical foundation of TBLT, and introduces the definition, theoretical foundation, necessity, feasibility and advantages of CALL. Chapter Three is the implementation of TBLT within the context of CALL, which illustrates the task designing principle, the teacher's and learners'role in the class and a sample of an oral English lesson.Chapter Four is the experiment, which introduces the process of the teaching experiment of the TBLT with the aid of computer and its results.Chapter Five is a conclusion, which offers the findings, the limitations and the suggestions for the further study.