| Many colleges offer programs for Music, RE. and Arts majors. College English is a compulsory course for these majors. Generally speaking, majors of Music, RE. and Arts have relative weak English foundation and low interest in learning English. The English teaching effect has been doubted. In order to improve the English learning effect of Music, RE. and Arts majors, this paper puts forward the idea of applying task-based language teaching (TBLT) in college English teaching for Music, RE. and Arts majors.TBLT promotes the principle of "students as the center, tasks as the measures". Task-based learning emphasizes the "meaning first, using first" principle in language learning. It requires teachers to design related tasks according to the learning content and guide students to the real language environment. Students can complete tasks through their experience, participation and cooperation through help from teachers and classmates, enhance their communication skills and abilities to solve practical problems.In order to find out whether TBLT is effective or not in College English teaching for majors of Music, RE. and Arts, the present study uses questionnaires, interview and classroom observation survey to examine the effect of applying TBLT in college English for Music, RE. and Arts majors. The author investigates teachers’understanding of TBLT, classroom implementation of TBLT and teachers’perception of evaluation mechanisms. The results reveal how teachers influence the implementation of TBLT. According to the results, to some extent, teacher’partial understanding of TBLT, lack of abilities in designing and operating tasks, insufficient training about TBLT and the un-objective traditional evaluation system hinder the smooth and successful implementation of TBLT. In terms of the students, the author investigates the students’ view about the teaching methods, learning initiative and learning psychological disorder etc. The results reveal how students influence the implementation of TBLT. The results revealed that students are accustomed to listening to teachers’explanation. To some extent, students’weak consciousness of learning by inquiry, insufficient capacity of autonomous learning and inability to use the target language to answer questions actively hinder the smooth implementation of TBLT.This study adopts the method of empirical study and tries to confirm the effectiveness of applying TBLT in College English teaching for majors of Music, P.E. and Arts. The author conducted an experiment for a semester in the two parallel classes that she taught. The subjects of the experiments involved 43 students from Electromechanical Class 5141 and 41 students from Arts Class 5141 in the Yangtze University College of Arts and Science. Arts Class 5141 served as the Experimental Class and Electromechanical Class 5141 as the Control Class. TBLT was adopted in the Experimental Class and the traditional teaching approach in the Control Class. The research procedure consists of five stages. The experiment was based on Willis’ framework. The author made some modifications to make it better suit majors of Music, P.E and Arts. In Stage One, students of the 2 classes were given a pre-study questionnaire to investigate their attitudes and interests to College English teaching; In Stage Two, the author collected and analyzed the average NEMT score of the two classes to find out their English foundation and situation of learning English; In Stage Three, the classroom experiment was carried out. The experiment was designed to examine and observe the changes and differences in the two classes after implementing the different methods; In Stage Four, after the teaching experiment, students of the two classes were given a post-questionnaire to investigate their attitudes and interests to College English teaching after the experiment; In Stage Five, the post-test, the final exam of the term, was carried out to examine the students’comprehensive English level and ability to analyze whether the overall level of English of these two classes had any differences after the implementation of TBLT and traditional teaching method. The pre-experimental data collection and analysis of the NEMT’scores of the two classes showed that the average score of the two classes was 77.68 and 75.45 respectively and the difference was not significant. The post-test results showed that the average score of the experimental class was 89.35 and that of the control class was 78.89. The data collected were calculated and analyzed quantitatively by the software of EXCEL and SPSS 16.0. Analysis revealed that there were significant differences between the two classes. This showed that the application of task-based language teaching had significant improvement effect in College English.Classroom observation and data analysis showed that:1) the students of the experimental class became more active and gained more interest in English study; 2) the teaching atmosphere was livelier in the experimental class, and that the students took part in the class activities voluntarily. However, the research still leaves some problems unsolved concerning the application of TBLT to College English teaching, for example, how to effectively carry out TBLT in the English class of a big class, how to improve the evaluation system of task-based language teaching when applying TBLT in College English teaching. It is proposed that more research and exploration are required to solve these problems in the future.Nevertheless, as a short-term experimental research based on a small-scale investigation, it has some limitations unavoidably. The experiment proved that task-based language teaching has some positive significance in College English teaching for majors of Music, P.E. and Arts and has certain reference and guidance significance for the education researchers and scholars. The author hopes that these research results can provide some enlightenment for College English teaching for majors of Music, P.E. and Arts. |
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