The Application Of Task-Based Language Teaching To English Speaking Class In Primary School

At the present time,the Task-Based Language Teaching(TBLT) is paid much attention to in the foreign language teaching field in our country.In 2001, the Ministry of Education in the country passed the New Curriculum Standard,which suggested adopting TBLT in English teaching in schools and English teachers should prevent language knowledge from being only taught to their students.It is obvious that the TBLT is considered to be a good teaching way of being able to overcome the defects in the traditional teaching method.The very famous scholar Skehan(1998:8) also says the Task-based Approach is regarded as the most effective means currently available to cultivate students' language performance.However,despite numerous lectures,seminars,demonstration lessons and journal articles,many teachers still feel perplexed by this new approach.A great number of English teachers of primary schools in rural areas don't know about the TBLT very clearly.Especially,most of them don't know there is such a teaching method in the world.On the one hand,most students in primary school are interested in English and they like it very much.They're in good memory and they're also very active.On the other hand,the traditional teaching method still remains prominent in English class.Students study some English words and they're taught some English sentences while they never go over them.Day by day,week after week,they forget what they have learned.What's more,English is not paid much attention to and it is often taken place of by other main subjects in daily teaching of primary school.As a result,the atmosphere in class is very dull and students' interest in English is weakened and students in primary school have a poor foundation for English learning. According to the above situations,the researcher in this thesis does a teaching experiment in a key primary school of one rural area in Lintong,Xi'an.And he does this experiment in two classes of Grade Six.There're 40 Students in each class respectively.One class is chosen as the Experimental Class(EC),and the other one is chosen as the Control Class(CC).The researcher applies the TBLT in EC while the traditional teaching method still remains in CC.And the teaching content is the same in these two classes.The aim of the experiment is to prove whether the TBLT can improve students' speaking ability in EC of primary school in the rural area or not. The thesis consists of five chapters.Chapter 1 belongs to Introduction part.In this chapter,the author talks about the significance of research,the background of research,research questions and the organization of the thesis.Chapter 2 belongs to Literature Review.In this chapter,the author introduces the opinions and researches about the TBLT at home and abroad,the theoretical bases for TBLT and the principles for designing tasks.Chapter 3 belongs to Methodology part,which tells us the methodology for this research,for example,something about participants, instrumentation and the detailed procedure for the research.Chapter 4 belongs to Data Collection and Analysis.In this chapter,the author again shows two kinds of sources for the data collection.Then he analyzes the data in details so as to answer the three questions above.Chapter 5 belongs to Conclusion part.The author firstly makes some conclusions from the discussions.They're shown in the following sentences.(1) Some changes in the experimental class:Firstly,the students' affection,motivation,belief and learning strategies for English learning are better than those before the experiment.Secondly,most students regard the TBLT as the good teaching method.By this method,the friendship and cooperation between them become closer and closer.They get many chances to perform before class,so they have strong believes in themselves when communicating with each other in English.Most of them have an integrative motivation.Thirdly,pair work or group work plays a key role during the completion of each task.Lastly,students' speaking ability is stronger than that in CC in such aspects as fluency,pronunciation,grammar accuracy and expressive content.(2) Some changes in the control class:Firstly,they have a kind of low affection,motivation,belief and learning strategies for English learning.Secondly,they have little opportunity to speak English.They do not have some believes in themselves when they communicate with others.And most of them have an instrumental motivation for English.Lastly,their speaking ability is poor in such aspects as fluency,pronunciation, grammar accuracy and expressive content.in one word,it's proved that students' speaking ability is improved by the application of the Task-Based Language Teaching in the Experimental Class.And there're many distinct differences between the Experimental Class and the Control Class.Then the author talks about some implications and suggestions for English teaching and he also talks about some limitations in the thesis.