Promote Interactions In The EFL Classroom Through Tasks

In the traditional EFL classroom, teachers emphasize too much on information input and skills training, while students' ability and whole-person development are neglected. Thus, traditional EFL teaching must be innovated so as to adapt to the social development. In China, since the EFL classroom is the main place for language learning, there should be made a significant breakthrough at first.Now, the new curriculum has come into the classroom. For EFL teaching, task-based learning is advocated by the English Curriculum Standards (2001), which embodies the advanced principles of learner-centeredness, learning from doing and the whole-person development.Since the nature of teaching is communication, so language acquisition is suggested as a result of interaction among teachers and students. In task-based learning, tasks represent an interface between teachers and learners because teachers select tasks which can reflect their beliefs and values; and learners in turn interpret these tasks in ways that are meaningful to them. In this context, teachers act mainly as mediator; students become autonomous learners who complete the task actively by the target language and use the language naturally so as to develop language competence. Thus, in the task-based classroom, learning takes place through meaningful interactions that are promoted by utilizing various appropriate tasks. Language learning is optimized ultimately.Social constructivism provides a special kind of educational psychology perspective that is related closely to language teaching. It emphasizes that learning occurs under the construction by the learner himself and learning is an active interactional process. Toward a synthesis, it is as the guideline for our classroom teaching.