The Application Of Task-based Approach To Oral English Teaching In Junior High Schools

English plays an important role with the deepening of China's reform and economic globalization,the exchanges between China and foreign countries become frequent;The Chinese have more and more opportunities to contact with foreigner.However,the current situation of English teaching is not satisfactory.Although many students can grasp grammar better,their interpersonal skills are poor.Most students' oral English is not satisfactory and “dumb English” really exists among the middle school students.The New Curriculum Standards emphasize that English teachers should teach the Basic English knowledge to the middle school students and train them essential skills.Meanwhile,teachers should pay more attention to fostering the students' capability of practical communication in English.That is,improving students' oral English level is one of the most important things in English teaching.However,the middle school students' oral English level is not optimistic.Their oral English is not very good;they have a little interest and confidence in oral English.To some extent,traditional teaching methods can not make students greatly love to speak English and improve their oral English.Therefore,it is urgent and important for us to improve the students' oral English by looking for a meaningful and valuable teaching method.Task-based approach becomes a popular word in English teaching circle.This relatively new teaching methodology was evolved from CLT(Communicative Language Teaching)and has developed since 1980 s,which emphasizes “learning by doing” and offers students an opportunity to use language in the classroom.Nowadays,in China,many books and articles pay attention to the adoption of this approach to the teaching in primary and secondary school and universities.Under this circumstance,the author attempts to discover whether this approach can help arouse the students' more interest in learning oral English than the traditional PPP approach.This paper is based on language acquisition theory,constructivism theory and social interaction theory as theoretical bases and takes Willis' TBA as model.It studies the application of TBA to Oral English teaching in a junior middle school.The subjects of this study are students in two different classes in Grade Eight in No.49 Middle School of Shijiazhuang,Hebei Province.The author chooses Class1 Grade 8 as the experimental class,using TBA,while Class2 as the control class,adopting traditional teaching method.The tools of this survey are two questionnaires,two oral test papers and an interview.The method and procedure of this study is as follows: The author first carried out questionnaire investigation and oral English test on the two classes before the experiment.The major purpose was to learn the students' attitude,interests,self-confidence and the level of oral English.The results showed that there was no significant difference between the two classes.According to the problems existed in oral English,the author taught purposely when carrying out TBA.First,the author introduced the background,illustrated the teaching tasks,and then allocated different tasks to different study groups,asked them to discuss and make reports,and finally,analyzed the language focus and guided practice.After the experiment,the author carried out the second questionnaire,oral test and an interview,the results indicated that TBA has a positive influence on students' oral English,and TBA is superior to the traditional teaching method.All data were analyzed with SPSS13.0 software.The author achieved the anticipative goals through the study.And the followings show that:1.TBA can improve students' oral English learning interest,arouse student's self-confidence,and build up positive attitude.2.TBA has greatly inspired students' impetus in English learning,improved their English level and communication skills.This study has some shortcomings,such as shorter research time,fewer and narrow subjects,which may affect the accuracy of data analysis.But it is assumed that the study may provide a truthful description of TBA in oral English in middle school.