Toward A Task-based Teaching Approach To The Cultivation Of The Autonomous Learning Ability Among Efl Students: A Case Study On Experiments Conducted In Suzhou Preschool Education School

Task-based teaching approach is now widely employed in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) classroom teaching. This paper reports the result of a case study, aiming at demonstrating whether task-based teaching approach effectively improves the autonomous learning ability among EFL students in Suzhou Preschool Education School, one of the three key preschool education schools in Jiangsu Province. It is found that EFL students in preschool education schools share much in common in their learning strategies, motivations as well as their drawbacks, so this study is of directive significance in improving students'autonomous learning ability of English as well as teachers'teaching efficiency in preschool education schools in Jiangsu Province or even in China as a whole. By means of questionnaires and interviews, the author has done much research on the condition and characteristics of students'autonomous learning ability in Preschool Education Schools, finding that although the students have realized the importance of learning English, they are weak in autonomous learning, and in lack of clear objectives, learning motivations, learning interests and effective learning strategies. This paper analyzes the causes for these problems and offers a solution with the task-based teaching approach to develop students'autonomous learning abilityBefore the research, the author has done much preparation. Besides the teaching plan, the author helped the students to reflect on their own learning styles and helped them to get familiar with all kinds of learning strategies. Based on the principle that in one group there are individuals with a variety of language proficiency but when integrated, each group's median level should be about the same as other groups'level, the author divided the students in experimental class into different groups and gave them a brief introduction to some related notions of the experiment, such as learning objectives, contents and task-based teaching approach.This experiment conducted in Suzhou Preschool Education School is divided into two parts. In the first part, the students completed the tasks such as'previewing and learning text by their own','designing a lesson for children and teaching them cell phone etiquette according to the text''text-based role-play'in groups; as an individual, they accomplished the task of'ordering a cell phone from a foreign website.'Before each task, teachers communicate with the students about the objectives, requirements and evaluation of this task; after each task, teachers made reflections and adjustments based on their own teaching experiences together with feedbacks of the students so that they can do better in the future. At the end of this part, teachers found that students, when processing the tasks, were able to make clear their learning objectives; some groups could independently obtain extra references from internet; they could put some learning strategies into practical use actively; classroom atmosphere improved; students'learning interests rose, especially for those who were unorganized in class previously.In the latter half of this experiment, the author made some adjustments as follows (1) teachers communicated with the students and rearranged the group members. (2) In the following experiments, they provided suggestions about how to infiltrate the learning strategies into their tasks. (3)They offered open suggestions so that the students had more choices. The latter half of the experiment aims to give guidance about how to set learning objectives, how to make plans and how to learn independently with the help of the teachers. The experiment included two units, four fairy tales. The author asked for suggestions about how to teach these texts from the students when designing the task and invited them to make learning plans for this unit.After heated discussions and vote, all the participants decided to accomplish three tasks: first of all, watched the movie Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and made comparison between the movie and original version in order to fully understand the text; secondly, chose from The lion and the Mouse and The Princess and the Pea to make picture books by themselves and then used them as textbooks to tell stories. It aimed to study the texts and increased their awareness of professional knowledge. The third task was to select a proper story and make a teaching plan of how to tell a story. By this way, students can learn how to choose a suitable story so as to improve their professional quality. Meanwhile, students also raised their opinions on standards of evaluation. After the experiment, the author found that the students participated voluntarily in this task; they designed the task independently and managed to finish it, which promoted class participation and stimulated their interests of learning English. During the experiment, students tried their best to use English to complete the task and overcome language difficulties by means of discussion, using dictionaries, surfing the internet and even going to the library, which, to some extent, enlarged their reading scales and information literacy. What's more, they had to make presentations for every task, and it thus improved their writing ability.We can draw the conclusion safely by comparing pre-experiment statistics with post-experiment statistics that task-based approach can both effectively improve students'autonomous learning ability and teachers'teaching efficiency.