An Experimental Study Of Task-based Approach To EFL Writing Teaching In A Vocational College

Vocational Technical Education has been developing rapidly in our country these years. It has been playing a more and more important role in cultivating practical talents wanted in every technical field of our society. Responding to the objective, vocational English teaching,as a significant part of Vocational Technical Education in China, aims at developing the overall proficiency and emphasizes the importance of communicative competence in English. However, there has been contradiction between the objective and the traditional teacher-centered, examination-oriented approaches applied in English classes. The New English Curriculum Standard (2001) advocated applying the instruction in EFL classes, with the emphasis on developing the students'integrative competence by means of experiencing, practicing, participating, communicating, cooperating and so on. From then on, this approach has become the focus of discussion. In order to improve the present situation of vocational English teaching, more and more English teachers of vocational institutes have been engaged in or trying the practice and research of task-based learning (TBL),which combines the best insights from communicative language teaching with a systematic focus on language form.Writing has always been considered as one of the most important part in English skills, which reflects the learner's language proficiency in an authentic way. What's more, writing is regarded the most difficult part in vocational English by the students. Therefore, the present paper is intended to explore an effective and feasible model of TBLT, especially in vocational non-major English classrooms, so as to improve the quality of English teaching in vocational institutes. Two classes from Yangquan Vocational and Technical Institute, Shanxi were selected respectively as control class and experimental class. The traditional approach is applied in the writing teaching of control class, while TBLT is used in the writing teaching of experimental class. The results of the experiment reveal that the application of Willis'framework for TBL to Chinese writing classrooms will have some positive influences upon vocational college EFL learners'understanding of a good piece of English writing, greatly help them to solve some problems related to composing, and thereby improve their writing competence. Five chapters are included in the present paper. The current situation in vocational English teaching is introduced in Chapter One. It is pointed out that task-based approach should be advocated in vocational English teaching. In Chapter two, relevant theories of task and task-based approach is given in details in order to interpret the feasibility of TBLT in the teaching of vocational English writing. In Chapter Three, the methodology of the study is stated, including the purpose, methods, subjects and the procedure of the experiment. Chapter Four analyzes the results of the experiment in several aspects and gives a summary. Then in Chapter Five, the conclusion of this paper is stated and this part also points out the limits of the study and the suggestions for further research on this subject.