| In 2009, the Ministry of Education of China issued the Secondary Vocational School English Syllabus (the new edition), which emphasizes"to cultivate students'English competence both in life and in the professional situation"(2009), this new syllabus highlights the respects of life and professional situation, making the tasks of establishing vocational school much clearer and more definite, and further being full of professional features. The issued document gives us useful direction on the English course of Secondary Vocational Education and states clearly that the aim of English course is not only to establish a solid linguistic basis for the students, but also to cultivate the students'practical language skills, especially the ability to deal with foreign affairs and business activities in daily life. And now in the daily teaching activities, many vocational school teachers have gradually changed the traditional model of English language teaching ----teacher-centered model, instead, they pay more attention to the learners'linguistic competence of using English to communicate with others and keep social relationship.When teaching in the vocational school, the author noticed that although most teachers paid much attention to the classroom teaching process, the assignment, which covered about 1/3 of the whole time in learners'learning activities, was relatively stressed little. And there were many problems existed in the current English assignment design, correspondently the students did not finish the tasks in a good quality. So facing this problem, the author searched for many references to find the answer. During the search, the author found Task-based language teaching approach was an effective way to solve this problem. This approach became noticed in the 1980s with the idea of learning by doing, and it emphasizes learner is the center in learning. It advocates that students should be given a series of tasks to fulfill, and they can solve the tasks by means of communicating and cooperating with others in a group under the direction of task goal. Through the interaction with others, students'interest in learning can be elevated and certain ability can be improved, including the ability of creativity, cooperation and so on. Moreover, students'linguistic competence can be definitely promoted through finishing the tasks. According to this theory, the author put up a hypothesis which was to change the current English assignment design and elaborately design some reasonable and diversified English assignment to enhance learners'interest in learning English, with the purpose of finishing the tasks on time and improving their English level.In order to verify this hypothesis, the author carried out an action research in the experimental class, which had the same English level as the control class. In the experimental class, the author carefully designed some tasks for them to do while in the control class, the tasks given remained as before. During the 8 weeks of implementation, the author carefully kept the record of the process of this action research in virtue of teacher log and interview of the students. After the experiment, the author held a test to compare with the results of the test before the experiment, and carefully contrasted and analyzed the data collection.In the end, the author proved the hypothesis was correct, since the students'interest in learning English was improved and their English scores were greatly progressed than the test former. Based on this study, the author also brought up some suggestions for the Secondary Vocational School teachers when they design the English assignment, such as the teacher should first of all hold the belief that learners are the center in learning; teachers should design some paperless assignment by means of the advanced multimedia, such as the internet, radio; teachers should diversify the English assignment in form and in content; teachers should try letting students check their assignment mutually. |
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