The Application Of The Task-based Approach To The Instruction Of English Listening In Senior High Schools

Listening, speaking, reading and writing are the four essential skills of language competence. The mastery of a foreign language requires balanced development in these four areas. However, in China, English listening teaching has been neglected for a long period of time. In senior high schools, due to the historical and practical reasons, there still exist many problems in both teaching and learning. Many teachers are indifferent to their listening instruction and they still adopt the traditional approach, while quite a few students take little interest in listening and their low efficiency in listening can't meet the ever-increasing economic demand of the world. Therefore, it's important to find a better way to improve the instruction of listening.The Task-based Approach is the approach recommended to be applied in senior high schools by China's Ministry of Education. Nowadays, in China, many books and articles have been written on the adoption of the Task-based Approach in reading, writing and speaking, yet few of them have a systematic study of the application of the Task-based Approach to listening teaching. What this thesis focuses on is the application of the Task-based Approach in senior high schools. It provides a briefly study on the literature review of listening comprehension and the Task-based Approach. It makes an analysis of what is drawn from the experimental teaching. Lots of works and the experimental teaching on the Task-based Approach show that this kind of teaching approach is an advanced and efficient one which puts the students in the first place and which reflects the language value. It proves that the Task-based Approach is effective in enhancing the students' English listening competence. But, every coin has two sides. Apart from the strengths of the Task-based Approach, the author also points out its weaknesses.