Research On Task-based Approach In Classroom Language Teaching

This research focuses on task-based approach in classroom language teaching Task-based approach has become an acceptable method for many language teachers. It originated in 1982 and it is the latest development from the Communicative Method. Originally developed by N Prabhu in Bangladore, southern India, it is based on the belief that students may learn more effectively when their minds are focused on the tasks, rather than on the language they are using. Task-based approach language teaching has made much progress since 1989. Nunan's book Designing Tasks for Communicative Classroom symbolized for the task-based language teaching in the classroom. English language teachers (ELT) in China are different in choosing effective way of practice, They feel it hard to achieve the education objectives set by the Ministry of Education and to prepare qualified students for the society. The New English Curriculum Criterion points out that: the general aim of English teaching in the stage of elementary education is to cultivate the students' comprehensive ability of using English. It also emphasizes the function of the language and proposes the "task-based" teaching method to develop students' language competence and teachers are required to use Task-based language teaching method. The purpose of this paper is to enable language teachers to design the tasks efficiently and suggest that teachers could combine the traditional grammar-structure with the task-based teaching and establish the unique teaching method through fulfillment of the tasks, and students could improve their interlanguage.This paper is composed of five chapters. Chapter one makes a brief introduction about the paper and illustrates the purpose of the paper.Chapter two gives a brief description about the history of language teaching and introduces some theories related to the language teaching and language learning and acquisition. The communicative language teaching (CLT) and Task-based language teaching (TBLT) are mainly discussed. In this chapter, the framework and the principle of task-based approach are also described in details.Chapter three concerns the factors under the investigation. Research method and teachers and students under the investigation, questionnaires in the research are reported in this chapter.Chapter four presents a sample for task-based approach in classroom language teaching. In the presentation, the whole teaching process was recorded and analyzed. In this chapter, an assessment was made for the sample to support the task-based language teaching.Chapter five makes a conclusion about the task-based approach and suggests that teachers should keep balance between meaning-focus and form-focus when adopting the task-based approach in their teaching. And the task-based approach should give a holistic analysis and a general evaluation in language teaching.