A Study Of Feasibility In Applying Task-Based Assessment In Pre-School English Teacher Training At Vocational College

Over the recent years, a noticeable trend has been seen that vocational education has been attached much importance in terms of education policy, and in the meantime, China's vocational education has made a historic breakthrough, making up half of higher education. Foreign language talents have been in great demand, in the wake of globalization and China's reform and opening-up. Since 1990s, low-aging, which is the one of three tendencies arising in the international second language teaching reform, has incurred a boom in foreign language teaching for pre-school education. However, a critical shortage of qualified pre-school English teachers has become a bottleneck of pre-school education. Against this backdrop, the major of Pre-school English Education began to take shape and flourished. Now the concern of pre-school English teacher training is how to make the trainees meet the demand of real-work language proficiency and ability requirements.In 2006, the Ministry of Education urged vocational colleges to earnestly practice a"Working plus Teaching"talent training model, or, put in another way,"working-process-oriented"model. This model was first put forward in Germany in 1996, highlighting"real-work tasks. The Task-based teaching concept, sourcing from Jane Willis, claims that: learners should repeatedly practice and employ these fixed expressions in various contexts (tasks), thus forming their own language systems;learning is a course of social exchange and individual's socialization in the process of implementation of task. This study, based on the national training requirements of pre-school education,"working-process-oriented"model and task-based language teaching concept, is to find out how to make the teaching of students, majoring in Pre-school English Education, effectively meet the demand of real-work language proficiency and ability requirements, in a bid to comprehensively develop students'language proficiency and working ability.In this study, the author employed a compound of research methods, including questionnaires, face to face interviews, and observation. Questionnaires and interviews concern teachers, students, and kindergartens; as to observation, it concerns an ongoing task-based teaching project. Based on the data collected and analyzed, the author observes that task-based assessment (TBA) applied in the pre-school English teacher training is theoretically well-grounded and positively appreciated by teachers, and that it can stir up students'interest, build up their confidence, and effectively promote their language proficiency and working ability. Incidentally, the research program has also won acknowledgement and support from the kindergartens in the neighboring cities, as proves TBA's acceptability to the public concerned. Therefore, conclusion is reached that TBA is of high feasibility to be applied in the pre-school English teacher training.This paper includes six chapters:Chapter 1 is introduction, which mainly provides the information of the foreign language education backgrounds in vocational colleges, and introduces the necessity and significance of this research.Chapter 2 is literature review, which introduces TBA concept and its development in China. The chapter mainly discusses the core concept of TBA and its characteristics and connotations.Chapter 3 discusses the trend of pre-school English education, and points out its predicament in the real teaching situation. It illustrates the characteristics of PSET (Pre-school English Teacher, hereinafter referred to as PSET) training in foreign languages vocational colleges and the advantages of task-based"work-process-oriented"new training approach for PSET. After that, it puts forward the feasibility of applying TBA into PSET training at vocational colleges, and conducts an analysis on the practical framework of the application.Chapter 4 introduces the Methodology of the research, expounding on the research process, detailed question designing, subjects, procedure and methods to be used.Chapter 5 analyzes the data in three aspects: students, teachers and employers. The results show that the application of TBA greatly enhances students'language proficiency and working ability, is positively appreciated by teachers and improves their teaching effect, and won acknowledgement and support from the kindergartens in the neighboring cities.Chapter 6 is Conclusion. The study finds that TBA is feasible to be applied in the PSET training, and it is also worthy of promoting in other vocational English teaching fields. The chapter also points out the limitations and the implications of the study.