The Application Of Task-based Teaching To English Speaking In China's Middle School

The Task-based Teaching approach is the teaching theories put forward by foreign language teaching method researchers and the second language acquisition researchers according to the large quantity of studies and practice in the 1980s. It has emerged to challenge the traditional form-based methodology. It regards completing the concrete task as the motive, displaying the task result to show the result of the teaching. For years now Task-based Teaching has had a significant effect on language teaching. Language experts and foreign language educators tend to agree that Task-based Teaching in the classroom is very important. The national New Standard for English Curriculum advocates the Task-based Teaching methodology should be implemented in middle school classroom. According to the teachers' instructions, it is required to improve the students' ability in complex language application. In recent years students' reading and writing have greatly been improved, but their speaking ability is still very weak. Chinese teachers find it very difficult to teach speaking.In Introduction, the thesis first describes the requirements of speaking ability for middle school students in China, then analyses the speaking problems in China's Middle School and the deficiencies of the traditional oral classroom, at last advocates that Task-based Teaching is the best way to solve the problem. Chapter Two expounds task definition, task components, task types, task designing principles and designing steps. It discusses how English teaching can benefit from these theories.At last describes Jane Willis' framework. Chapter Three and Chapter Four are the findings based on the experiment which aims to improve students' oral communication skills by using task-based teaching approach based on Communicative Language Teaching, cognitive approach and socio-cultural theory to stimulate students' motivation for learning and promote students' self-direction, and to develop and improve creative thought and inventive consciousness of students. The experiment is also attempting to explore principles of task-based teaching and its experimental research in oral English...