A Study On The Application Of Task-based Language Teaching To Oral English Teaching In Junior High School

Task-based Language Teaching(TBLT), which has been widely accepted and supported by linguists and English teachers all over the world was put forward and developed in1980s. TBLT advocates that language teaching be task-based, and that language learners learn the target language while fulfilling the tasks. In a TBLT class, teachers design tasks that are closely related to students’everyday life, study and work, so that the students can fulfill tasks and learn English in a real situation. This learning-while-doing method not only helps students learn English, but also helps students learn to use the language in a real world. Ever since it was put forward, various researches and studies on TBLT have been done by specialists, scholars and English teachers from all over the world, and a large number of books and journals have been published, which makes TBLT a popular topic. Nevertheless, the studies on the application of TBLT in specific fields are rare, especially in oral English teaching.With the increasing international communication between China and other countries, more and more qualified English speakers are desired in all walks of life. The English Curriculum Standards has made specific demands in improving students’oral English ability. However, under the pressure of examinations, the English teaching in China usually focuses on reading, writing and some other aspects that are closely related to marks in examinations, while oral English teaching is always ignored. Even in some classes where oral English teaching is implemented, the teaching activities and teaching skills are boring and meaningless, so that students’ are inactive and unwilling to speak English in class. In order to improve the present oral English teaching, this paper applies TBLT to the oral English teaching in a junior high school, and this study is to verify that TBLT is more efficient in improving students’ oral English ability. This study will provide a basis for a wider application of TBLT to oral English teaching.This research is based on Second Language Acquisition Theory, Communicative Teaching Theory, Constructivism Learning Theory, Humanistic Theory, Willis’Model for Task-based Language Teaching, and Canale and Swain’s Communicative Competence Model. During the research, literature research method, survey research method, and experimental research method are adopted. A question whether applying TBLT to oral English teaching in a junior high school can efficiently improve the students’oral English ability is raised by the author, and a experiment of applying TBLT to oral English teaching is implemented for a term, with two classes in Grade7involved in the experiment. The conclusion that applying TBLT to oral English teaching can efficiently improve the students’ oral English ability is eventually drawn. The whole research procedure is as follows:The author makes a literature review of TBLT on overseas and domestic research status, sums up the designing principles by comparing and analyzing others’ points of view, and proposes an implementation model for the TBLT in oral English teaching, based on Willis’ model. TBLT and traditional teaching are respectively used to teach oral English in two classes for a semester, during which a questionnaire and two tests are carried out. The testing results of the students’ oral English are compared and analyzed, and the conclusion is eventually drawn.