Application Of Task-based Language Teaching To College English Class

Task-based language teaching approach (TBLT), combining the advantages of both traditional and modern language teaching theories, allows students to learn and use the language by a series of interacting tasks, emphasizing communicative activities which made the aims of study as a guide in the real situation. Students can autonomously acquire language through analyzing, inferring, understanding and using language when plunged into communicational environment. In the learning process, emphases are on the understanding of the meaning and uses of language rather than the mere static forms of language. Learning from "doing-it" is the key to language learning. The interactive learning styles will be promoted, i.e. learning from experiencing, practicing, participating, communicating and co-operating. Students can understand the language, use the language, learn to co-operate, find out and solve problems from finishing tasks and then develop their thinking and creative abilities and cooperative spirits in an overall manner, and experience the success.In current trend towards teaching efficiency, task-based language teaching approach enjoys popularity in middle schools. However, due to some teachers’lack of systematic theoretical knowledge, the English classes are often filled with disordered aimless activities. To deal with this problem and meet the urgent needs for college English learning, the author tries to make use of speech act theory to enlighten and interpret task-based language teaching in college English class.This study reveals that there is a common core between speech act theory (SAT) and task-based language teaching:"do things with words". Therefore in the paper, an initial attempt, based on cognitive science and constructivism, is made to explore the characteristics that TBLT and SAT share, namely, sociality, interactivity, contextuality, dynamicity, and, the most important, doing things with words, from which principles of designing tasks based on SAT for college English teaching are hereby deduced. Furthermore, the thesis explains in terms of the three sub-acts proposed by Austin:the locutionary act, illocutionary act and perlocutionary act, that task-based English class should settle down three important issues:language focus, implementing the task and task-based evaluation to achieve the success of communication according to students’ actual English levels. Based on the result of the research combined with Willis’teaching mode, the author gives some suggestions to the task design for each stage and provides a case study for the application of TBLT to college English reading class from the perspective of speech act theory.Nevertheless, this study has some limitations and then the thesis suggests that more experimental studies are expected to further consolidate and refine the application of TBLT to college English teaching.The thesis is made up of six chapters. The first chapter is introduction. It states the research background and presents the subject matter and the thesis organization.The second chapter is concerned with literature review of TBLT. Here the author sums up the accomplishment achieved by previous scholars and professionals. Meanwhile, the author points out the deficiency of the existed research.The third chapter deals with theoretical preliminaries by providing speech act theory, focusing on Austin’s classification of speech acts and illocutionary acts. Searle’s development of speech act theory, including his proposal of felicity conditions. In this chapter the development of studies on college English teaching is also discussed.Chapter Four and Five explores how TBLT is applied to college English classes in the perspective of speech act theory.The final chapter, Chapter Six deals with research findings, and limitations of the research, implications and proposals for further studies.