A Study On Application Of Task-Based Language Teaching Approach In French Listening Class

This is an empirical research on the application of Task-based Language Teaching(TBLT) to the French listening teaching.Listening is Cinderella skill second language learning (Nunan 2001). It is important means of absorbing language information and cultivating the abilities of speaking and reading and writing. In all language activities of human beings, listening take a great proportion (45%). Whereas, the current situation of French listening teaching in China is unsatisfactory and the traditional teaching method, which prefers grammar to listening and speaking, is dominated in French classroom. Hence, to improve listening teaching effect is becoming an urgent problem and needed research for scholars.TBLT, put forward by the Indian linguist N.S. Prabhu in 1982, is a "a learner-centered and learning by doing" language teaching approach which the task is designed to arouse students’interests, experience and cognition and stimulate their enthusiasm of learning. In TBLT class, learners cooperate and interact one another actively and autonomously.Based on the researchers’experiences on French listening teaching and problems in TFS4, this study, applying TBLT approach to the French listening class, makes an attempt to find a more efficient way to improve listening and serve for the teaching, learning French and TFS.The research adopts experimentation, documentary method and questionnaire survey. The experimentation is the key method, and others serve as supplement. It takes 58 sophomores majoring French as the subjects of study in 16 weeks. There are two tests in the experimentation. At the beginning of the semester, the first test is carried out, and then after the experiment at the end of the semester, the second test is done. The questionnaire survey follows the application of TBLT, aiming at testing the students’satisfaction degree. After collecting data from the experiment, the scores from two tests and the results of questionnaires are put into SPSS17.0 and Excel.Then the paired-samples T test and reliability statistics are produced.Within verification by analysis, three findings have been arrived at in the thesis. Firstly, the benefit of TBLT in teaching French listening is that the scores in class dictation and TFM 4 dictation rise to some extent. Secondly, the scores of excises in past TFS papers and in back of textbooks are increased rapidly, which reveals that students’listening comprehension had a significant improvement. Thirdly, students express their satisfaction more on TBL than the traditional method.Based on the above findings, some implications are presented for French listening class:First of all, applying TBL in French listening class, students’ competences in homophones, liaison, and the sequence of gender and number have been improved. The practice of TBL on this aspect will be carried on in the future. Secondly, the scores of conjugation and words spelling in written part changed a little, so listening teachers should strengthen the written practice in TBLT class and TBL can be used as a long-term method, because it does help the listening class. Thirdly, teachers should attach importance on students’enthusiasm and cooperation and inspire students to ask questions and to analyze and solve issues on their habits in task-based listening class.