An Action Research On The Appmcation Of TBLT To Improve Vocational College Students’ Oral English Proficiency

Chinese vocational college students are different from other university students.The Ministry of Education has stressed that the English teachers should promote thosestudents’ ability of oral English communication. But in fact, most of the vocationalcollege students are of low oral English proficiency and they have less interest andconfidence in English speaking. The Task-based Language Teaching method which hasdeveloped since1980s emphasizes “learning by doing”. And it is efficient to improvethe students’ ability of oral English communication and the classroom atmosphere.Based on the theory of TBLT, this research tries to find an efficient way to improve thevocational students’ oral English level by conducting the action research project.An action research on TBLT training was carried out among36second-yearEnvironmental Engineering majors in Wuhan International Trade College. To discoverthe reasons why most students have low oral English proficiency, take no initiative inparticipating in classroom activities and lack interest in using English, the author firstmade some hypotheses, and then tested those hypotheses through preliminaryquestionnaire, preliminary interview and pretest among the students. According to theresults of preliminary questionnaire, preliminary interview and pretest, the authordesigned and put her TBLT training project into effect. The training lasted for threemonths from May to July in2011. Post-training questionnaire, post training interviewand posttest were carried out at the end of the experiment to find out whether thestudents make progress after applying the TBLT in the teaching with the comparison ofthe data before and after the experiment.The main research questions are raised as follows:1. Can Task-Based LanguageTeaching enhance students’ interest in English?2. Can Task-Based Language Teachingmotivate students to participate more efficiently in the class?3. Can Task-BasedLanguage Teaching improve the students’ oral English level?The literature study and the research project were concluded with such answers:1.The TBLT can help teacher develop an encouraging and cooperative English learningatmosphere and it can also strengthen students’ confidence as well as arouse students’interest in learning English.2. In the TBLT class, different students complete differenttasks, and it can not only improve individuals’ abilities but also promote the cooperationbetween the collective members. So the TBLT approach can motivate students toparticipate more efficiently in the classroom activities.3. The TBLT approach iseffective and helpful to improve vocational college students’ oral English proficiency.The author hopes that this action research can provide some help to other teacherswho are interested in conducting this type of research.