Task-based Language Teaching And Its Pedagogic Applications In Senior Middle School Classroom

As is by now well known, the term 'task' began to come into deliberate use in applied linguistics around the beginning of the 1980's. Since then, language tasks evolved from a varied collection of instructional activities in second and foreign language classrooms to a foundation for instructional planning, i.e. task-based syllabuses. Researchers are of the opinion that the term is useful, and that work on second or foreign language classrooms, syllabus design, and materials development etc. can benefit from a task-oriented perspective.In recent years, a number of researchers, syllabus designers, and educational innovators have called for a move in language teaching towards task-based approaches to instruction as they've found that TBLT has a lot of strengths. For example, it focuses on cultivating the students' ability of using language, of searching for necessary information, of cooperation, of creativity and so on. What's more, compared to form-based approaches, TBLT consists not of a sequence of preselected or preplanned language items, but of a sequence of communicative tasks to be performed in the target language.The purpose of this empirical study is 1) to investigate the basic mode for TBLT in senior middle school English classroom teaching; 2) to test the hypothesis that TBLT, as a teaching method, is more effective than the other formerly used teaching method (namely, the five-step method in this thesis).There are mainly five parts in this thesis.The first part is an introduction, which states indirectly the purpose and significance of this study;The second part is about literature review, with emphasis on task types and three exemplars of implementing TBLT;The third and the fourth part deals with the experimental design of this study . To test the hypothesis of this study, the author conducted an experimental research in two classes of the Middle School Attached to Northwest Normal University with around 110 students aged on average 16 over a period of twenty weeks.. The experiment consists mainly of two parts. First, a questionnaire survey was done to determine the suitable task types which could be used in classroom teaching; Second, two tests were given to the subjects both from the EC and the CC. Then the relevant data was collected and analyzed.The fifth part comes up with the conclusion. The statistical results reveal that TBLT is really more effective than the other formerly used teaching method .From the classroom observations and teaching practice, the author finds out that TBLT has many advantages. Finally, some limitations involved in this study are pointed out and some suggestions forfurther research are put forward, too.