The Social Constructivist Theory & Task-Based Language Teaching

English Curriculum Criterion for Middle School explicitly stipulates that: the design of classroom teaching activities is profitable to developing the students'creativity and imagination. The opening Task-based activities and inquisitive learning content should be added to in teaching (during the course of teaching), in order to make the students have a chance to express their own opinions and viewpoints. That is to say, Task-based Language Teaching /Learning (TBL/TBLT) approach should be advocated to develop students'comprehensive abilities of using a language.The advocators of TBLT think, the best path of mastering language is to let the students do things, i.e. finish all kinds of tasks. TBLT aims at providing opportunities for the learners to experiment with and explore both spoken and written language through learning activities which are designed to engage learners in the authentic, practical and functional use of language for meaningful purposes. When students are doing things, they are always keeping a active ,positive learning psychological state. Communicative process among participants is a kind of interactive cooperation and a concrete incarnation of modern education theory---the students as main bodies, the teachers as guides(directors). The goals of TBLT are improving students'integrating language skills, making the students change learned knowledge and formed skills through completing tasks into competences of using English in the real life(world), to strengthen language practical process in order to reflect communicative nature of the language .As one of important theory basis of TBLT---social constructivist theory, advocates that knowledge is constructed by learners themselves, not taught by others. Learning is a process of constructing meaning actively(for learners), they emphasize: the initiative, sociality and situated ness. All these are in agreement with main views of TBLT. Social constructivist think, the meaning of classroom activities is that students could see their own learning result and new constructed meaning through finishing all kinds of tasks. At the same time, they have feeling of success and have got an confidence. The pursuance of TBLT is developing students'personalities and latent energy as much as limited, arousing the students'positive ness as much as limited, in order to make the students have confidence and chance to learn actively.In addition to a brief introduction and a conclusion, this thesis is composed of three parts. Firstly it presents main views and main representative figures on social constructivism . Secondly it is focused on tasks and TBLT, including the definitions and characteristics of tasks, components of a task, the designing of tasks, the principles and goals of TBLT, teaching modes, classroom teaching activities and performance assessment of TBLT. Thirdly it discusses the combination of social constructivist theory, TBLT and English teaching reform . Appendix is about teaching plan case of TBLT.