A Study On The Application Of Task-based Approach In Higher Vocational College English Teaching

Since1990’s, higher vocational college has undergone rapid development of20yearsand has become an indispensable part of China’s higher education. It is playing a more andmore important role in the way to improve people’s quality in resent years. The role ofhigher vocational college is to train applied talents in production, techniques, services andadministration so higher vocational college, as an indispensable part of higher education,should concentrate more on training the students’ practical use of English language skillsespecially on the ability to deal with everyday and business activities dealing with foreignersand foreign affairs. However, many of the higher vocational colleges are still adoptingtraditional teaching model, not being effective to stimulate the students’ interests andmotivation to improve their ability to use English. As a result the classroom teaching modelof higher vocational needs improving.The teaching principle in the English curriculum criterion issued by Ministry ofEducation in2001regulates “We should advocate task-based approach to foster students’comprehensive ability in the language use”, further defining the value of training thestudents’ English communicative competence. Though more and more English teachers haveapplied, have tried to apply or are applying task-based approach in teaching, many of themare still practicing traditional teaching model. Therefore, the realization of the purpose andthe actual traditional teaching model are in serious conflicts. At present English teaching inhigher vocational college is affected by test-oriented education and teachers devote much ofthe time to grammar teaching. Classroom teaching is still centered on teacher instruction andpractices teaching students in accordance with their aptitude to insure teaching effectsignoring to train the students’ listening and speaking abilities. The students’ incompetence inlistening and speaking leads to the decline in the students’ learning ability. We must changethis phenomenon to improve teaching method and classroom teaching effects to meet the need for the talents with vocational skills in the job markets. It is a very important project inpresent English teaching and research field.Task-based English language teaching is a new practical language teaching approachappearing in the1980s. It advocates providing the students with a series of communicativetasks. Under the guidance of the task goals, the students try to complete the tasks bycommunicating, interacting and discussing to improve the students’ communicativecompetence and ability to solve the problems. There are many researches on the applicationof task-based teaching approach, but the researches on its application to higher vocationalcollege are comparatively few. This paper aims at studying the actual effects of task-basedteaching approach in higher vocational colleges. It tries to prove the effectiveness andfeasibility of task-based teaching approach by comparing it with traditional teaching methodin experiments. It aims at putting forward a practical teaching model to improve Englishteaching quality by wisely applying task-based teaching approach in higher vocationalcollege. It is hoped that this paper will provide some useful references and suggestions inEnglish classroom-teaching at higher vocational colleges.