EFL Teachers’ Understanding And Implementation Of TBLT

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is a teaching approach rising in1980s, which emphasizes "learning by doing", i.e. learning a language by doing real-life things with the target language. This research attempts to explore high school English teachers’general orientation to TBLT and their specific knowledge about TBLT in implementing it; and also the sources of teachers’ TBLT knowledge and factors affecting their learning about it.As a multi-case study, this thesis has three participants, one from Nanjing, one from Wuxi, one from Changzhou, all using Advance with English as the teaching material. Classroom observation and interview were two important ways of data collection, and their related course wares and teaching plans were also collected. After the analysis of these data by using TBLT and teacher cognition theories, major findings are produced as the following:1) The teachers studied have their own understanding to TBLT which basically catch key features of TBLT such as focus on language use, learning by doing and learner centeredness. Their attitude to TBLT is generally positive and they deal with the Task/Project lessons regularly as TBLT, though there is some tendency to reduce the due time on them so as to cut off the task outcome and assessment, which is partly because of conservative beliefs and partly due to some defects of the textbook layout.2) Although without much explicit knowledge of TBLT, the teachers manifested a variety of implicit knowledge in their actual implementation of TBLT, especially seen in their Task/Project lesson plans and their classroom, such as awareness of goals, learners’ potential difficulties with tasks, input materials for tasks, task procedure and activities, teacher-student role relationship, and classroom settings for tasks. However some practices of dealing with Task/Project materials just as ordinary reading materials and setting activities not relating to the task goals were not uncommon in class.3) Teachers obtained their TBLT knowledge from two main sources:One is related to teachers themselves, i.e. their own experience, both as learners and teachers, and their personal reading; the other is related to external factors, especially teachers’ working contexts where their subject panel activities and communication with colleagues are influential.Therefore, great importance should be attached to teachers’ deeper and richer understanding of TBLT in order to reach a further development of TBLT in China. Only in this way can teachers apply this teaching method more effectively, hence making it more applicable to different teaching situations and more beneficial to students’ development of comprehensive ability.