An Empirical Study On The Task-based College Oral English Teaching

Nowadays, English as a communicating tool is playing an increasing important role. Andoral English that has been overlooked is also of growing concern in society. The core of oralEnglish teaching in Higher Vocational College (HVC) is students’ fully development of oralcommunicative competence, which is determined by HVC’ s teaching objectives and the desire oflearners. Therefore, authentic learning materials should be introduced into the learning situationof oral English classes, and teachers attempt to link classroom language activation outside theclassroom to put up with the shortcoming in traditional teaching models. Task-based LanguageTeaching Approach (TBLT) is the very way to achieve those goals.In the past decade, TBLT is an important teaching method of great influence. It is a newbranch of communicative language teaching, which makes students learn and use the language inthe process of doing something. Moreover, it offers students opportunities to make language inthe classroom meaningful. Students can enhance their harmonious environment. TBLT combinesthe language learning with its application organically.The present study was intended to investigate the influence of TBLT on students’ oralEnglish in Higher Vocational College. And how to improve students’ oral English through TBLT.The research questions to be addressed in the study are as follows:1) In what aspects does the TBLT model have a better effect on vocational college students’oral English than the traditional approach?2) How does the TBLT model influence vocational college students’ oral English?The research design included a three-month experiment of the TBLT model and two oraltests using genuine PETS-2oral testing papers as the instruments. The experiment involved80students from two parallel freshman classes of Hunan vocational College of Science andTechnology. One class was chosen as the experimental class for the TBLT implementation, andthe other as the control class, following traditional approach. The students majored in businessEnglish. They were of similar age and taught by the researcher. Before the TBLT implementation,the pre-test was conducted to ensure both classes instructed in traditional method. Besides, therewere a questionnaire at the beginning and another one at the end of the experiment. Thepre-questionnaire was devised to know about students’ attitudes and their current situation ofspeaking English before TBLT was used. The post-questionnaire aimed to confirm the changes inthe students’ attitudes and feelings of speaking English and the effect of TBLT, and find out howthe TBLT model could influence vocational college students’ oral English.Based on the data collected from the study, the major findings are summarized as follows: 1) According to the comparison between the results of the pre-test and the post-test, thescores of students in experimental class is more significant than that of students in control class,in terms of fluency and complexity;2) In the post-test, TBLT class and traditional class have almost the same result in accuracy.This may confirm Ellis’ argument that L2learners follow a U-shaped course of development; thatis:“initially learners may display a high level of accuracy only to apparently regress later beforefinally once again performing in accordance with target-language forms”(Ellis,2003:23).Therefore, it cannot be judged that students in the experimental class haven’t made progress inaccuracy, but rather they are undergoing a developmental stage in their L2acquisition.3) According to the survey, relevant listening, linguistic knowledge and backgroundinformation (“i+1” input) during the pre-task stage help vocational college students betterunderstand the language, and activate their learning mechanism. While in the task cycle, studentsare given much more opportunities for oral practice and interaction between students and teachers,which not only reduce students’ anxiety, lighten the students’ psychological burden and increaseself-confidence, but also can facilitate their meaning negotiation. This is verified the hypothesis ofsecond language acquisition.