Applying Task-Based Language Teaching To College English Listening: An Empirical Study

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has been an influential theory in foreign language teaching field in the past 30 years. Many linguists and language researchers have yielded a series of theoretical and empirical achievements since it originated. According to Brown(1994:84), TBLT refers to a teaching method that puts task at the centre of the pedagogical focus. It considers the teaming process as a set of communicative tasks that are directly linked to the curricular goals. The focus of this method is to enable learners to communicate effectively and appropriately in various situations in which he would be likely to find himself. TBLT requires students to engage in the interaction in order to fulfill a task. It is claimed"underlying language system will develop"(Skehan, 1994:190) while students focus on the process of performing the task. TBLT emphasizes the concept of"learning by doing"and"doing things by using language", avoids learning language for the sake of form, and its principle of authenticity stresses that the term"task"closely relates with the communicative activities in our daily life. Therefore, it is very helpful to foster the communicative ability of students. Recently, language researchers and language teachers make a large number of attempts and experiments by means of TBLT, in which it is proved to be effective in several aspects,while the effectiveness of TBLT is various depending on the different subjects and teaching contents.Integrating with the characteristics of English listening, the thesis attempts to apply TBLT to the college English listening and analyze the effectiveness of this approach. Altogether 68 cadets of College of Military Basic Education in NUDT from two intact classes participated in the quasi-experiment, one class being randomly assigned as experimental group and the other as control group. The experiment lasted an academic semester, from October 2007 to January 2008. The material used in the research was the textbook entitled New Horizon College English Book 1, published by Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. The author of the thesis designed the teaching plan according to the framework of TBLT presented by Jane Willis(1996), and taught both experimental group by means of TBLT approach and control group by means of conventional instruction. A pretest and a posttest were administered respectively, and a questionnaire was conducted in order to get information about emotional change of students during the process of the language learning. In the experiment, teaching listening by means of TBLT is the independent variable, and the scores of listening comprehension, emotional change of students and other effects obtained are the dependent variables.The thesis attempts to answer the following questions:1. Is it feasible to apply TBLT to the teaching of English listening course?2. Is TBLT more effective than conventional instruction to improve students'academic achievement in listening?3. Is TBLT effective to activate students'interests and improve their attitudes towards English learning? If so, how does it make the changes?4. What other effects are caused by TBLT?With the help of SPSS14.0 software and the results of questionnaire, interview, and classroom observations, the author of the research adopts qualitative and quantitative approaches to analyze the experimental data. Several conclusions about the effectiveness and influences of applying TBLT to college English listening have been drawn through comparisons and analysis.The results of the study and the analysis indicate that:1. It is feasible to apply TBLT to the teaching of English listening course, though it is more complicated and time-consuming than the conventional teaching..2. TBLT is more effective than the traditional instruction to improve students'academic achievement in listening .3. Students'interests and attitudes towards English learning have been improved significantly after the experiment.4. Students'oral ability and communicative ability have been improved accordingly, and the climate of the class has been changed greatly. From TBLT, students obtained cooperative learning and built up harmonious teacher-learner and learner-learner relationships.Based on the results of the research, the thesis proposes some suggestions on applying TBLT to the teaching of college English listening, and expounds the limitations of the research and further study in the future.The study is of great significance theoretically and pedagogically. Theoretically, the study testified to the effects of applying TBLT to college English listening teaching. In addition, the results provided a positive evidence for foreign language teaching. In practice, the study provided both language teachers and learners another approach to foreign language teaching and learning. Teachers can design the corresponding tasks in order to reach a higher target of practical teaching.