An Empirical Research On Applying Task-based Approach To English Class Activities In Senior High School

Task-based language teaching is an approach which regards task as the core unit to plan, organize, implement the second language teaching, where the learner’s own cognitive abilities are performed fully during teaching process. By the means of participating, experiencing, interacting, exchanging and cooperating, the learner has to mobilize some of the target language resources, perceive, understand and apply the target language in practice. The task of teaching "mission" is not a language problem, but a communicative problem which needs to be solved by learners with target language, by which teaching activities have a clear purpose. This study selects two classes of 108 students in a Harbin Senior Middle School as experimental subjects and discusses the relationship between task-based approach and test performance of learners, which is an empirical research. It pays much attention to analyze the relationship between classroom activities design and the ability to train high school English language learners and candidates’ performance. And it also further explores the applicability of the task-based approach used in domestic high school English teaching.This dissertation consists of five chapters: The first chapter briefly describes the background and significance of this research, the development of foreign language teaching in the new century and gradually makes linguistic research combined with other disciplines by which people can profoundly and comprehensively perceive the language learning process. The main research goals are converted from teaching to learning while teaching aims are also converted from focusing language knowledge to improving students’ proficiency of language. The second chapter mainly explains the development of the theory of task-based teaching system, the basic characteristics and the basic principles of task-based teaching, by which we can summarize, organize, and then analyze the principles inherent in the advanced educational concepts and language teaching ideas. The third chapter is the research of task-based approach applied in high school English classroom activities. A variety of research tools, such as questionnaire, interviews, observation, and testing, are used. We also further analyze the current English textbook and design different class activities in the experimental classes and control classes. By implementing different teaching strategies, we collect, analyze and present data. The fourth chapter is data analysis and conclusion. Experimental data indicate that task-based approach has played a significant role in improving English scores of secondary students and inferior students; It can effectively improve the internal polarization phenomena in English class; Nearly natural language learning environment and abundant language input with a lot of purposed language practice can effectively promote interaction between students and teachers and among learners to enhance the learning effect; The "experience" learners’ test performances are better than those of "teaching" learners. Data show that the overall task-based teaching can improve students’ learning motivation, attitude and other key factors, which can better correct the negative aspects of traditional classroom activity which only focuses on the effect and ignores the development of student proficiency. The fifth chapter presents the implementation of improvements of the task-based teaching used in the high school classroom activities. Combined with experimental results, the author summarizes the advantages and problems of task-based approach, grades and sorts the problems which still survive and we have to face with. We also summarize and evaluate the teachers’ proficiency in adopting task-based approach, the activity design and its effects. This paper is aimed at providing scientific reference for teachers to effectively implement task-based approach in the English classroom activities and improve students’ learning abilities and test scores.