Research On The Application Of Task-based Language Teaching To English Listening And Speaking Class At Vocational Colleges

Compared with other forms of education, Higher Vocational&TechnicalEducation has a late start in China, but it has grown and developed at amazingspeed since1990s. It is playing an important role in cultivating practicaltalents for the society, so it is regarded as a sort of cardinal education form byChinese Ministry of Education. With the further globalization of the economyin China, the nation demand for professionals engaged in business activities,service and production has increasingly added. Nowadays the practical talentswho can communicate in English is required eagerly. Facing the fastdeveloping Higher Vocational&Technical Education, the ministry ofeducation has emphasized the basic requirements of English teaching. Itissues that to the teaching target, communicative competence is the aim and itis the most important to apply the knowledge of language to its practical usein real life communication so as to meet the special requirement of thesociety.However, the outcome of the English teaching in higher vocationalcolleges in China is not satisfying, especially in the English listening andspeaking teaching. Nowadays, most teachers in higher vocational colleges arestill using the traditional teaching methods to teach English listening andspeaking. As we know, the traditional teaching methods have manyadvantages, which have been proved effective. However, when using thetraditional teaching methods, most teachers will take too long time in teachingof each lesson. The students are in a state of passive acceptance, which lacksof interest of learning English. So the achievement of the students in Englishlistening and speaking has not been improved. Therefore, in order to improvethe situation, in view of advantages and disadvantages of higher vocational college students, more and more English teachers are exploring task-baskedteaching approach.How to improve the English listening and speaking level of students inhigher vocational colleges so as to make them apply English freely aftergraduation in their career is a new topic that most teachers are exploring. Thisstudy introduces the definition, background, theories and principles oftask-based language teaching and explores and analyzes the theory value andpractical implication of it. Based on the teaching experiment in classes, thisthesis researches the application of task-based language teaching approach inEnglish listening and speaking class in higher vocational colleges, withpurpose of providing the vocational college English teachers the completecognition of this new teaching approach, and give them motivation to use iteffectively.This thesis is divided into five parts. Chapter one is the introduction, inwhich it describes the research background, research purpose, currentproblems existing in English listening and speaking class in higher vocationalcolleges in China, as well as the framework of the whole text. Chapter two isliterature review. It gives the definitions of “task” and “TBLT” respectively,and introduces the features and principles of TBLT as well as the presentstudying conditions at home and abroad. Chapter three is the experiment. Thischapter describes the hypotheses, subjects, instruments and experimentalprocess of the experiment. The author carried out the experiment ininternational accounting major in international education college in InnerMongolia Business&Trade Vocational College. Chapter four is the datacollection and analysis in which the author collected the data from the twoquestionnaires and two tests and got the results of the experiment with thehelp of the SPSS software. Then she analyzed the outcome of the experimentand achieved the conclusion that the students in higher vocational collegehave a positive attitude to task-based language teaching, and employingtask-based language teaching approach in vocational college English listeningand speaking class is practical. The final chapter is conclusions and recommendations. It further illustrates the content of the thesis and providessome suggestions for the further study.The time that the author spent in studying the application of TBLT inEnglish listening and speaking class in higher vocational colleges is limited,and the author is also lack of experience in many aspects. So, there might besome flaws in this thesis and she wishes that the experts and tutors can giveher some suggestions. At the same time, she will continue to study the topicso as to improve the English listening and speaking teaching in highervocational colleges.