Application Of Task-based Language Teaching To Junior Middle School ELT

The Task-based Language Teaching is the latest second/foreign language educational model which is helpful to train the students’ ability of independent learning, cooperative learning and research-based learning. In this language teaching and learning model, a language classroom is full of bilateral activities which are targeted clearly, planned strongly, and well organized, and students can learn the target language mainly by doing things and interactions in English. Thus, it can be seen that a lot of students’ abilities to use English depend to a large extent on the organizational form of classroom teaching. The Task-based Language Teaching in junior middle school English teaching is an important change of English Teaching in junior middle school in China in the perspective of theory and practice, is the reflect of China’s new round of reform of English teaching. Through the implementation of Task-based English teaching in junior middle school, students can feel the charm of English in the language practice, and their enthusiasm and initiative to learn and practice orally has improved. That aside, the Task-based Language Teaching has urged the implementation of basic requirements for a new round of English teaching reform, for the realization of the exact teaching purposes of applying theory to practice.Current English education of middle school should be quality-oriented education, which is a kind of schooling that can promote students’learning ability and their lifetime development as well--it is considered as the main body of schooling. Students’ ability of mastering real language and practical communicative competence is receiving more and more attention. For English language teachers in junior middle school, trying to come up with ways in terms of implementing the quality-oriented education is really not easy. Actually, what our junior-middle-school English teachers face are children who just finished their primary school education. Their English level is uneven, many of whom even know nothing about English, hence the necessity to pay special attention to them. Consequently, in order to play a wonderful melody in English teaching career, relevant teachers are required to enhance our teaching methods under the new English Curriculum, stimulating the students’interest in learning, taking full advantage of the time for the teaching and training, thus promoting the efficiency of students’learning and teachers’ teaching. In the process of help students improve their learning efficiency by means of transforming learning strategies, their learning enthusiasm could possibly be cultivated and hence their quality and ability of learning reinforced. This is the main purpose of research on the application of the task-based model in the junior middle school ELT.However, in contemporary English teaching in junior middle schools in China, it is almost always the case for the English teacher to be taken as the center. According to modern teaching theory, it is the students that should be taken as the main body while teachers should be placed in a guiding position in the teaching-learning interactions. But in contemporary actual teaching, teacher-centered teaching is still the major form of English teaching, and one of the main reasons for the phenomenon is that the students usually take a passive and backward learning approach. They are often found in a passive state in the classroom--they can only passively listen, read and recite, and they do not have sufficient opportunity of positively thinking and asking questions. Single organizational form of teaching makes students feel boring, they are immersed in memorizing of the complicated language all day, gradually losing interest in English learning, which greatly prevents students from the improvement of their language comprehension and application. Educating content often focuses on grammar learning, but ignores the cultivation of students’English practical ability. This kind of one-sided passive teaching model, obviously, is far from the target of current education--to train applied talents, and also unfavorable for students to keep their learned knowledge affinity to the real life, which obviously deviates from the education aim of applying what they have learned to where the knowledge is needed in their future work or further study. To solve the problem, the three National English Curricula (2011) issued by the National Ministry of Education and the great reform of ELT in China has advocated Task-based Language Teaching. Because Task-based Language Teaching is a kind of innovative teaching approach that matches the concept of the new curriculum and contributes to the implementation of the new curriculum. Under the current spring tide of pushing forward quality-oriented education with the slogan of "Giving back students their learning right", it is necessary for teachers to study ways of abandoning the traditional classroom teaching of "cramming education", with the alternative ways of offering students more active and autonomous learning opportunities in class. Then a kind of teaching approach that takes the students as the main body, and that can cultivate students’communicative competence as the overall goal should be used in our everyday English teaching. And in this situation, Task-based Language Teaching has come into being.The Task-based Language Teaching is a kind of teaching approach that is specific to the concept that the task is regarded as the learning motivation, while the performance of the task is regarded as a learning process which could show the results and reflect the teaching achievements. Numerous experts have different definitions of "task". The so-called "task", in short, refers to "do things through language". In the process of "doing things", the learners are always in a positive and active learning psychology. The Task-based Language Teaching is a kind of task-centered English teaching method. It is the teaching task that is designed to let students complete a series of tasks according to their progress requirements of learning the language. By adopting English language tasks, the teacher can make students exchange and create meanings, and let them get language knowledge, language skills, intercultural communication awareness as well as learning strategies through doing things in English. English task-based teaching emphasizes on the basis of all kinds of English learning tasks, in which the students must learn to think and solve problems in the process of completing the task, namely, they must first consider how to complete a language task, rather than how to learn an English language form.Task-based English teaching focusing on the process of learning English emphasizes the multilateral interaction between students themselves and between students and teachers. It tries to make a natural and authentic language environment, in which the students can develop their ability to use English language, especially the English communication skills in the process of completing the tasks and through meaningful consultation and communication by doing things in English. The task should focus on how the students communicate information with each other, and how they solve problems through the communicative interaction, instead of concentrating on what kind of language forms they use. What is possible to happen in real life should be taken into consideration rather than "false communication". Students should put the emphasis on how to accomplish the task, and the standard of task evaluation is whether the task can be completed successfully.Task-based Language Teaching is helpful to solve several key problems that are usually very difficult in the traditional language teaching, such as those related to the relationship between language meaning and language form, etc. Traditional language teaching pays more attention to the form of language, rather than the meaning of the language, say; it pays more attention to the language structure rather than language function. Task-based Language Teaching emphasizes that students do things with the language, so that students should not only focus on language form or language structure, but also the language meaning or function. Only when they realize the meaning and function of a language, students may complete the task. Adoption of Task-based Language Teaching approach can change the situation that knowledge is still the greatest part in teaching while knowledge practice is a less greater part, which is conducive to the implementation of the new curriculum.Task-based Language Teaching not only focuses on the use of learning, but also stresses the learning to use. It is capable of mobilizing sufficiently the learning initiative of students, creating a pleasant atmosphere of the English in the class and helping students developing their ability of using the language. This teaching mode cares about the improvement of students’ integrated language ability, especially oral ability, the development of the four basic language skills, and the development of their communicative competence. When teachers design tasks, they must take full consideration of language programs based on actual life and specific communication purposes and then carry out a series of English language learning activities which will let students complete the task for the purpose.The result of Task-based Language Teaching has proved that the level of junior middle school students’listening and speaking ability has got significant improvement and their reading skills and written English proficiency has also got substantial progress by the practice of the Task-based English teaching mode, and the adaptability of English learning environment and self-leaning ability in English has been significantly enhanced. Meanwhile, it has greatly enhanced the student’s interest in learning English, and also significantly improved their motivation and language awareness. Therefore, the Task-based Language Teaching model for junior middle school English teaching is really an effective teaching model and worthy of adoption and promotion. The students have gained both the English knowledge of completing the tasks and the application ability through English Task-based Language Teaching, and learned more spoken English, grammar, and vocabulary, and it has also cultivated students’ability of using English in the process of completing real-life tasks. The ultimate goal of foreign language teaching is to learn to achieve the communicative purpose, and the progress of the students is the starting point and the end-result of English courses. The concept of task-based teaching breaks the traditional mode of English teaching that teaching dissevers from practical application and that language form breaks up with language meaning, by allowing students to actively participate and boldly practice in the process of task-based learning, in order to achieve communicative competence.Task-based classroom teaching is to set various tasks, and let students complete the tasks in the interaction with teachers and classmates in the process of "doing things", and communicate with each other, affect each other and complement each other, so as to achieve the goal of consensus. By sharing and creating, the fulfillment of tasks can then come out the language acquisition. In order to make the teaching and learning more closer to the targets and requirements for the senior middle school entrance tests and curriculum reform, as well as to improve students’ communicative competence, it is necessary for junior middle school English teachers to understand the background, characteristics, advantages and implementation of the approach in their classroom teaching. Since task activities need authentic language materials and target language environment, classroom language materials should source from student life experience. What actual life task-based teaching emphasizes is that in the classroom, teaching should let students accomplish all kinds of real life work in English (i.e., doing all sorts of things), so as to cultivate their ability of applying English to real life.In particular, it is an attempt that introduces the Task-based Language Teaching mode into our quality-oriented education, in the latest round of curriculum reform of English teaching. There are some inevitable loopholes and defects in need of improvement and perfection during the carry-out of English Teaching Curriculum Reform, which needs our English educators to look at the problems existing in the practical work and solve them with the viewpoint of development, such as the promotion of Task-based Language Teaching in junior high schools. Nevertheless, the fact that students of different regions and different English levels can get a different kind of teaching mode of the Task-based Language Teaching, and how to design the task and how to avoid the phenomenon of "Chinglish" does need our attention and reflection.Practice has proved, in English teaching, practice and application is the essence of learning English. Otherwise English teaching would be water without a source. In the past teaching experiences, grammar and vocabulary parts had much of the attention, resulting in one-sided accumulation, ignoring the English using in life, which actually go against the original aim of English Teaching in junior high school. Only by taking a teaching method that students love to see and hear, motivating the initiative and enthusiasm of students in the teaching practice, can good interaction between teachers and students be gained, so as to improve the level of teaching, improve teaching efficiency, promote the students’ ability and realize teaching goal.Task based language teaching provides such a path, and it enables the students to display their own strengths and expertise, encouraging students to apply theory knowledge into practice. Through the vivid scene, challenging tasks and the ever increasing level, it attracts the attention of students, helps them to make more effort in learning English, and also gains more abilities and progress. The junior middle school Task-based Language Teaching emphasizes on practice of English learning. In the practicing process, teachers and designers should do timely evaluation about the completion of the tasks of students’. The deviation in time would help students make progress in the process and growth in practice.This paper starts from the introduction of the related concept of Task-based Language Teaching mode, elaborates the connotation and extension of the task, Task-based Language Teaching, and at the same time, also introduces the compositions, types and characteristics of Task-based Language Teaching in detail. To expound the origin and development of Task-based Language Teaching in foreign countries, as well as the development process of it in China is also provided. Then it comes to how to apply Task-based Language Teaching to English teaching of junior high schools, and puts forward some suggestions and countermeasures of the individual, namely the goals, the operation procedures of the Task-based English Teaching, the collaboration of both teachers and students in the course of task-based English teaching in junior middle school and the evaluation and implementation conditions of task-based English teaching there. In terms of the above suggestions, it puts forwards the specific planning and prospects of the implementation of the Task-based Language Teaching in the author’s school, telling how to strengthen the students’ ability of English competence and how to improve the effect of their English learning. English teachers should take the Task-based Teaching theory as the guide, constantly explore it in the teaching practice and constantly accumulate their teaching reflections. Task-based teaching has brought about vitality in the English classroom, and at the same time also puts forward higher request of teacher’s professional level, teaching ideas and comprehensive qualities, which needs our foreign language teachers’unceasingly learning, groping for and cultivating students’comprehensive language ability to use English, to make each student obtain the maximum development.In diverse teaching activities, teachers act as separate roles. For example, the teacher has a great deal of authority in the sentence pattern drills and grammar activities, while in communication and acting activities, the authority of teachers is blurred due to students having a lot of self-control. Anyhow, the teacher’s role is more abundant in the task-driven learning activities, firstly the teacher must teach students’ independent learning skills through task-driven learning. Teachers should allow students’to have more communicative opportunities in an activity. At the same time, teachers should be not only the participants in the classroom communicative activities, but also act as "walking dictionary","database", etc. Starting from the teacher’s responsibility, he/she has to observe, monitor the progress of the class activities. Task-based teaching method is based on that students are the center. So students are the participants of the class activities in the Task-based Teaching, which requires them actively participate in various authentic and stimulant language tasks. It requires students to be daring to express themselves in group activities, to be creative in practice, and to positively practice the learned language. Because only through a lot of practice, can they achieve the perfect combination of fluency and accuracy in their use of English.Task-based Language Teaching has an important effect on junior middle school English teaching. It can effectively improve junior middle school students’interest in learning English and their ability of using the language. And it can make students cultivate their ability of applying English in life by practice to reach the goal of language learning. Based on that, the author designs the related teaching experiment by the means of proper application of Task-based Language Teaching in a junior middle school in Luzhou, Sichuan. It aims to verify the availability of Task-based Language Teaching mode, and tries to offer some useful suggestions for junior middle school teachers. The result of the experiment shows that the students in the experimental class have got effective improvement in English listening and speaking skills as well as the abilities to use English. It also shows that the approach can greatly improve the students’interests in English learning--through the application of the approach in the junior middle school of the author’s; the students have tasted the charm of English in practice, and raised enthusiasm and initiative in performing English tasks. On the basis of her own practice of Task-based Language Teaching, the author puts forward the following suggestions:The first is about the optimal choosing of teaching materials; The second is about the corresponding improvement of teaching conditions; The third is about the bettering of evaluation and the fourth is about the improvement of teachers’ qualities and the improvement of teaching.