An Empirical Study Of Improving Learner Autonomy Based On Task-based Language Teaching(TBLT)

In recent years, there have been many debates over the teaching mode in the EFLclass, many scholars and frontline teachers have been seeking a way to foster leanerautonomy(LA) with the concept of lifelong education. As far as we can tell, there hasbeen the grammar-translation approach, the audio-lingual approach, the total physicalresponse and the communicative approach respectively in the EFL class. And as thenewest development for the communicative approach, task-based languageteaching(TBLT) emphasizes“learning by doing”and organizes EFL class withstudents-centered mode which undoubtly disproved the mastering position of theteacher in traditional sense. TBLT tries to find out and constructs a good learninghabit and learning autonomy that come into existence by performing EFL class in theway of doing tasks. During the process of completing tasks, the students wouldexperience success and acquire knowledge. In 2001, Chinese Education Ministrypublished general high school English curriculum standards which promoted the mainidea of fostering learner autonomy. By analyzing relative concepts and documents,there’s a potential cause and effect relation between TBLT and learner autonomy(LA).As some kind of capability, LA means that students should basically know what tolearn and how to learn without the help of the English teacher, and by distributingtasks to the students who is the center of EFL class, the students complete tasks totallyor basically all by themselves while with the teacher monitoring and assisting beside.In fact this process is actually what we call“fostering students autonomous andindependent learning skills”. In 2005, Chinese Education Ministry advocated thenew English textbook“go for it”which is edited under TBLT scheme. This is justanother demonstration of integrating TBLT with LA.The author makes an attempt to use TBLT in EFL class which aims to improvestudents English performance and at the same time to foster students’autonomouslearning skills, making a step closer to the lifelong education concept. To testify thehypothesis, the author conducted an empirical experiment. This experiment wasconducted in two classes which is taught both by the author, they were divided intothe experimental class in which TBLT was used and the control class in which thetraditional 5 step teaching approach was used. The experiment duration lasted 6 weeks,a pretest and a questionaire was conducted before the experiment. The two was toinvestigate students’English proficiency and their current conditions in learningautonomy. A posttest was conducted at the end of the experiment, after comparing thetest result, the author found that the proficiency of the experimental class has gonemuch farther ahead than the control class, so the hypothesis that TBLT could improvestudents’English proficiency was testified, then the author conducted anotherinterview in the 2 classes to testify the second hypothesis: TBLT could foster students’autonomous learning skills.After 6 weeks’experiment, the students have got different levels of improvementin their learning attitude, cognition strategy, self-identification and capability ofindependent learning as well as their English proficiency. But as other factors stilllimits this study, so at the end, the author hopes to attract the concern by different specialist and scholars from related fields.