An Empirical Study On Application Of Task-based Teaching Approach To Vocational College English Teaching

With the continuing intensification of international communication andcooperation, our society is in great need of professionals in all industries with goodpractical English abilities. While higher vocational colleges is a valuable source oftechnical talents, vocational college students are generally poor in English and shortof initiative in English learning. Traditional teaching is relatively monotonous, whichfocuses on imparting knowledge and ignores the development of learner autonomyconceptualized as the learning purposes and motives, autonomous perspectives onEnglish learning, setting learning objectives, selecting learning content, monitoringprogress of learning, autonomous skills of strategy use, and autonomous reflectionand evaluation of English learning. Meanwhile, the weakness in students’ autonomouslearning also makes it difficult to improve students’ English proficiency. However,task-based language teaching approach concentrates on “learning by doing”, fosteringthe students’development in an all-round way during the process of performing tasks.On the basis of relevant theories on task-based language teaching approach aswell as on learner autonomy, the author acquaints all with the situation of vocationalcollege students’ abilities of autonomous English learning, and makes explicit thepurpose and significance of application of task-based teaching approach. Under theguidance of Ellis’s Task-based Teaching Model, an empirical study is conducted inWuxi Institute of Technology with two classes of freshmen in2012as its subjects.The control group contains90students, while the experimental group has93members.In the former group, traditional PPP approach is applied and in the latter one,task-based teaching approach is adopted. The author acquires a relativelycomprehensive knowledge of changes in learner autonomy after the teachingexperiment through pre-and post-experimental questionnaires as well as interviewsafter the experiment. Besides, tests from Practical English Test for Colleges Level Bin June and December,2011are applied respectively to measure students’ Englishproficiency before and after the experiment. It is found in light of the results of the data that in comparison with traditional PPP approach, task-based language teachingapproach is more effective in fostering the development of learner autonomy as wellas improving students’language proficiency.Hopefully, the findings of this thesis will be enlightening to English teachers invocational colleges in classroom practice so as to improve the quality of Englishteaching.