On The Perceptions Of Task-based Language Teaching Among Middle School English Teachers

The Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) approach is a branch of the Communicative Language Teaching. Based on intensive research and teaching practices, the TBLT approach was put forth in the 1990's by researchers of language teaching. Under the guideline of"learning by doing,"the TBLT approach emphasizes that students should communicate by means of interactions in authentic contexts in the target language, perform tasks and thus construct language knowledge system through their personal experiences, ultimately improving students'language proficiency.The Ministry of Education of China formulated and published The New English Curriculum Standards in 2001, which highly advocates the TBLT approach in middle school English teaching. It has been in experimental implementation in China since then. But the actual application does not seem to be satisfactory. What are the causes of this present situation? Knowledge, understanding, and acceptance are the prerequisite to the successful application of a new language teaching method. What is task? What is TBLT? And so on. How middle school English teachers, the executioner of whatever language teaching approaches in the classroom, answer these questions is of extreme importance.Few surveys have been carried out in large-scale to investigate middle school teachers'understanding of the TBLT approach since the publication of The New English Curriculum Standards. To collect first-hand materials concerning middle school teachers'perception of TBLT, the author carried out a survey in the city of Guilin. In the survey, 120 English teachers from 8 schools were investigated. Questionnaire was the tool of this investigation. The major findings are: Middle school English teachers'global understanding of TBLT is superficial, they have some knowledge of the specific features of task and of the TBLT approach; Teachers'activities in their class show that although the teachers know task and TBLT theoretically to some degree, they cannot consciously and efficiently adopt the TBLT approach in their teaching. They are still heavily influenced by the traditional teaching approaches and the outdated evaluation system, and still cannot consciously and efficiently adopt TBLT in their teaching, nearly 10 years after the publication of The New English Curriculum Standards. As Guilin is one of the more developed cities in Guangxi, we can come to the conclusion that the overall situation of the TBLT approach in Guangxi could hardly be more optimistic than that of Guilin.Based on the findings, the author makes some pedagogical suggestions:1) For teachers: (1) Teachers'theoretical understanding of TBLT as well as the capacity of applying TBLT to practical English teaching should be improved. (2) Teachers should try to cultivate their own ability of innovation and rid themselves of the influences of outdated teacher-centered teaching approaches and take more receptive mind to the TBLT approach.2) For school authorities: (1) Provide the teachers with more opportunities to participate in teacher training programs. (2) The cooperation within and between schools should be enhanced. (3) School authorities should reform the teacher assessment and evaluation system.3) For education authorities: In view of the present situation of the understanding and application of TBLT in middle schools, the education authorities should launch an education campaign to familiarize English teachers with the TBLT approach.