An Experimental Study Of Interactive Teaching In Large Task-Based College English Classes

College English Curriculum Requirements states clearly that the objective of college English teaching is to develop students' ability to use English in an all-round way,especially in listening and speaking.However,in traditional form-based classrooms,teachers play a dominant role and students are merely passive listeners. Throughout the years,people have realized the disadvantages and deficiencies of the traditional form-based teaching.Moreover,a large class with more than 60 students makes interaction rather difficult.It may bring various problems.Consequently,many English teachers and students are complaining about the large size of English classes. Some students lose interest in English learning.Recently,the use of tasks in language teaching has gained increasing acceptance in the language teaching field.This thesis is to study the teaching mode of applying TBI in interactive college English class in the hope of contributing to improving the current situation of college English teaching.This new teaching mode is to reinforce a learner-centered atmosphere,thus to promote students' communicative competence and English comprehensive proficiency.The researcher conducts a study to explore some questions as follows:1) Does TBI in the classroom more effectively facilitate interaction in large college English classes? 2) Are students' communicative competence and comprehensive proficiency in applying English improved through interactive teaching based on TBI? The subjects chosen for the study are Students from two large classes(one is the experimental group and the other is the control group,with each composed of two small classes.).They were enrolled in Qingdao Technological University in 2007. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used to collect and analyze data.Tests, questionnaires,interview and teaching video are used to collect data.SPSS 10.0 is used in data processing.It comes to the conclusion that task-based teaching can facilitate interaction in large English classes and foster students' communicative competence and strengthen their comprehensive proficiency in applying English.Meanwhile,teachers should adopt new and scientific teaching strategies and think creatively to design appropriate tasks,to activate and guide interactions between teachers and students,or between students and students,for it is through communicationthat learners acquire the target language.