An Applied Study Of Task-based Teaching In English Listening In Senior High School

Task-based teaching method,one of the most effective language teaching methods,was put forward by foreign language teaching scholars in the 1980s after lots of investigations. It converts communicative language teaching theory into classroom instructions. Since new secondary school curriculum has been practised in China, many schools develop their teachings on the base of task-based teaching method."Learning from doing"is the focus of the task-based teaching method, which makes the learners deeply understand the target language, constructs the self-conscious knowing of the target language system. Furthermore, it highlights the purpose of the teaching,thus avoiding formlistic language learning which involves forms in the sake of forms. Since, to some extent, the"task"emphasized by task-based teaching is similar to the authentic communication ones,"having some communicative problem to solve"makes the task itself takes on many features of authentic communication, which improves the learners'communicative ability.In order to make listening comprehension meet the demand of the new English curriculum issued by the department of education of P.R.C,the author applies task-based language learning method to listening comprehension classes in a senior middle school and carries out an experimental study on the task-based listening teaching in senior middle school. The experiment is aimed to improve students'listening ability,their affective state in listening comprehension,and helps them overcome their weakness. Basing on the combination of the task-based theory and practice, with the purpose of listening task made clear,teachers choose proper listening material and perform task-based listening in pre-listening,while-listening and post-listening procedures, aiming to improve students'listening comprehension and their emotional condition and to help them overcom listening problems. This study lasts six months, involving 2 classes, altogeter 91 subjects in two natural groups in a senior middle school in Zibo and,one group functioning as experimental group and the other control group. Task-based language learning and traditional teaching methods are respectively adopted in the two groups,data are collected from questionnaires and tests. After six-month experiment,it can be concluded that the subjects have made some progress in listening and conquered many listening obstacles, therefore,they have much more interests and more confidence in learning English.