An Action Research On Task-based Language Teaching

The task-based language teaching emerged in the 1980s based on the development of applied linguistics, the second language acquisition, learning theory and the instructional theory. It focuses on "learning by doing", and it is always organized around a variety of different kinds of tasks which are related to the real life, taking the learners' desire of accomplishing some specific tasks as the motivation of their further communicative learning. Many researchers have proved that it is a creative teaching approach theoretically. It is also suggested in the National Standard for Compulsory Senior English Curriculum. However, in much of the task-based language teaching literature, relatively little attention is paid to the practice of classroom activities. Since the classroom activity is a variable to affect learners' learning, we have to take it into consideration and make it serve as an active element for students' English learning. So this thesis explores two aspects of task-based language teaching as follows: its feasibility in creating a student-centered English classroom in my school and its effect on changing students' learning behavior, attitude, cooperative awareness and creativity.As opposed to much traditional or fundamental research, this thesis applies action research. The essential feature of the method is trying out ideas in practice as a means of improvement and as a means of increasing knowledge about teaching and learning. The result is improvement in what happens in the classroom and school, and better justification of the educational rational of what goes on.During the school year 2005-2006, I conducted an action research, which is made up of three sub-actions. They are an action research aiming to improve the students' participation in speaking classes; an action helping students become autonomous learners in reading classes; an action fostering a creative writer in writing classes. By implementing TBLT, all of them contributed to create a student-centered English classroom. Through the action research and data analysis, the research achieved the predicted result, which shows that task-based language teaching is an advanced and efficient approach which puts the students in the first place and which reflects the language value.