A Survey On The Application Of Task-based Language Teaching In Secondary Vocational Schools

The latest English Syllabus for Secondary Vocational School, issued by theMinistry of Education, advocates that the teaching of English should bestudent-oriented and should give full play to students’ learning autonomy. TheEnglish Curriculum Standards for Shanghai Secondary Vocational School indicatesthat the English curriculum should embody the concept of task-driven teaching. Itproposes that English teaching should break through the one-sided mode ofemphasizing grammar and rote learning. Teachers are supposed to make efforts tocreate lively and interesting teaching situations and design various tasks whichconform to students’ actual needs and future career prospects. Both the syllabus andthe curriculum standards stress the importance of English as a tool and its practicalusage. They advocate the application of Task-based Language Teaching to improvestudents’ language proficiency.Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT), a communicative approach toteaching, was developed in the1980s. It was based on a great amount of research onforeign language teaching and second language acquisition. It focuses on the use ofauthentic language and on students to do meaningful tasks using the target language.As it focuses on “leaning by doing” and “leaning by practicing”, TBLT advocates thatthe teaching, which is organized by tasks, should be based on students’ interests, lifeexperience and their knowledge level. During the implementation of tasks, studentsmake best use of their cognitive competence and the target language resources theyalready possess in order to perceive, acquire and apply the target language withgreater competency. TBLT puts emphasis on the importance of the communicationbetween learners and the application of the language authenticity. Learners lay stressnot only on language learning, but also on the process of language learning. In orderto promote the curriculum reform successfully and improve the English teachingquality in secondary vocational schools, it is quite essential to focus on the researchon Task-based Language Teaching.The thesis takes the English teaching in two of Shanghai’s vocational schools as its research subject. The research includes such aspects as an analysis ofthe English textbooks the two schools are adopting, questionnaire surveys ofstudents and English teachers, class observation, teaching case analyses andinterviews with students. By means of this research, the author identifies severalproblematic areas in the application of TBLT in vocational English teaching and putsforward a number of suggestions to address them. Among these suggestions, theinnovation of the thesis lies in building up the tasks bank, closely connecting theauthenticity principle with students’ job prospects as well as specifying and detailingthe task to give wide consideration to individual students and so on.