Application Of TBLT In Polytechnic English Intensive Reading Class

Task-based language teaching refers to an approach based on the use of communicative and interactive tasks as the central unit of planning and instruction in language teaching. It is a new branch of Communicative Language Teaching since 1980s, so it emphasizes"learning by doing", that is, learn a language by fulfilling a set of communicative tasks. It aims to arouse learners'interest in learning English and promote learners'comprehensive language competence by simulating a real life in which learners can use the target language to communicate and interact with each other. The core concept of TBLT is to resemble activities which people carry out in everyday life and reproduce processes of everyday communication. It combines learning the target language with using the language in our daily life, developing learners'competence of manipulating language in real life. In other words, it enables learners to communicate by fulfilling the tasks.Different from other ordinary universities, polytechnic education always stresses on developing technical workers in order to meet the requirements of the times and the changing society. Therefore, polytechnic students have their own characteristics to be trained as technical workers. Most of them have relatively poor English language foundation. Besides, polytechnic college still employs traditional teaching approaches, resulting in students'negative attitude and low interest in learning English. In that case, polytechnic English teaching should focus on students'essential English knowledge and their basic skills; meanwhile, teachers should pay more attention on the improvement of students'comprehensive ability and practical communication in English.Therefore, implementing TBLT in polytechnic college English teaching is an argent measure to change current situation. Nowadays, in China, the TBLT model began to be widely employed and developed rapidly in primary and secondary schools. Some researchers and teachers carried out their empirical studies on TBLT and reported its effectiveness in second and foreign language teaching. However, there is little attention paid to the investigation of the implementation of TBLT in polytechnic college English teaching, especially the application of TBLT to polytechnic students in English intensive reading class. In other words, there has a big blank to carry out an empirical research on the effect of using TBLT to improve polytechnic students'English competence.Under this circumstance, the researcher tries to do an empirical study on the effect of the application of TBLT (Task-based Language Teaching) to polytechnic students in college English intensive reading class. It aims to investigate the effect of applying TBLT to polytechnic students in English intensive reading class by comparing with the PPP model. The research questions are listed as follows:1. Does the application of the TBLT model have a more effective result than the PPP model in motivating the students'interest?2. Does there exist some differences between the TBLT model and the PPP model in developing students'comprehensive language competence?3. Does the TBLT model have different impact on different proficiency level of students?Taking the opportunity of teaching English as an intern in Shanghai Institute of Communication Technology, the researcher chose 90 students to engage in the present research. They were freshmen of Grade 2008 from the Department of Business English. The students came from two classes with similar level of English proficiency. The researcher chose 45 students respectively from these two classes in which the researcher named one class as the experimental class (EC) in which the instruction of each unit followed the TBLT model in accordance with Willis'framework, while the other one as the control class (CC) where the traditional PPP model was carried out. Tests, surveys, interview and SPSS software were employed as instruments in the experiments with the purpose of comparing students'attitudes towards English learning, their classroom behaviors and academic achievement under the two different treatments.The data derived from the four-month research fully confirmed that the TBLT model applied to polytechnic English intensive reading class has some advantages as follows:1. The TBLT model can stimulate students'interest and cultivate their motivation about language learning.2. The TBLT model proves an appropriate and more effective way to apply in polytechnic English intensive reading class and improves students'comprehensive language competence, especially reading and writing skills.3. The TBLT model significantly affects the students who have a relatively solid language foundation and competence. They can get faster and more remarkable progress than relatively poor students.4. The TBLT model can foster students self-learning by providing opportunities for students to complete some tasks independently and help to enhance students'confidence and promote their collaborative learning.It has been proved that TBLT has a profound impact on polytechnic English teaching, and it is indeed an effective teaching approach in improving the polytechnic students'English proficiency. However, the teaching method is not a perfect one and it is necessary for English teachers and language experts to combine TBLT with other effective teaching methods, depending on the actual contexts of ELT in China, to produce ideal teaching results.