A Study On Task-based Cooperative Learning Approach To Business English Teaching At Vocational Level

With the growing integration of global economic, Business English, as the common language of international trade, has become a significant requisite skill for international trade practitioners. Business English is a branch of English for Specific Purposes. Business English course hence differs from General English in that it is characterized distinctively in its own knowledge structure and curriculum system, which requires that teachers should fully consider those features in their teaching as much as possible. Thus, the present study has applied Task-based Cooperative Learning Approach to Business English Teaching at vocational colleges in China so as to effectively improve students' practical ability of Business English by stimulating their interest to Business English learning and by developing their potentials through learning in a cooperative way with proper use of authentic tasks.Cooperative Language Learning (CLL in short form), first appeared in the US during the late 1960's and 1970's and refers to the instructional use of small groups in which learners work together to accomplish meaningful school tasks. The notion of "task" derived from the Task-based Language Teaching. In order to finish the task, learners take "significance" as the center, conduct "meaning" construction with mobilizing resources of language and non-verbal as much as possible, in order to achieve some sorts of communication. The process of accomplishing a task and solving a problem with cooperative efforts would facilitate learners'natural and meaningful language use, and create an environment that is conducive to learners of language acquisition and internalization.One hundred and nine sophomores majoring in Business English have been selected as the subjects in present study, which has lasted for one semester (=18 weeks). A comprehensive examination consisting of a written examination and an oral test was conducted to collect data for statistical analysis with SPSS, the results of which indicate that a semester's experiment has obviously improved students'achievements in Business English, especially the outperformance in oral test. Moreover, the research results have also indicated that the process of accomplishing a task cooperatively is closely related to students'emotional factors. Task-based Cooperative Learning Approach has so far been proved to work well in arousing students'interest, increase their motivation to learn Business English, develop their teamwork spirit and communication skills and establish a more interesting and lively atmosphere in class.Task-based Cooperative Language Learning Approach is an attempt to enrich Business English Teaching that has a good practical prospect and can serve as a reference for the reform of Business English Teaching at vocational college in China. According to the practical teaching contents, teachers are supposed to design the tasks that are at the right level within the capacity of learners, so as to cultivate students'ability of practical use of Business English and teamwork spirit. Finally, the author has put forward some problems existing in the process of the implementation of the teaching experiment, and provided some solutions to them. Moreover, the author has made some suggestions for further research.