A Study On English Teacher Cognition Of Task-based Language Teaching In Primary And High Schools

The Ministry of Education of China published English Curriculum Standards in2001,which highly advocates the Task-based Language Teaching(TBLT)approach in English teaching,in order to develop students' comprehensive ability of using language.That prompts primary and high school teachers to implement task-based teaching approach and design task-based lessons.However,what is a task? What is TBLT? And how to implement TBLT in their classrooms? How primary and high school English teachers answer these questions is of extreme importance.This thesis intends to explore primary and high school English teacher cognition of TBLT.The themes to be addressed are teachers' perceptions of TBLT,teachers' understandings on stages of TBLT and teachers' attitudes towards TBLT.Both quantitative and qualitative methods are used in the study.A total of 229 English teachers from 186 schools in Jiangxi were invited to finish a questionnaire to investigate teacher cognition of TBLT.The questionnaire was mainly adapted from the questionnaires of Hung(2012)and Sheng(2007).It has been revised several times.The newly created questionnaire has value of the reliability 0.816.It is divided into two parts.The first part is about personal information of participants.The second part has 62 items and three open-ended items,which consists of seven categories:(1)teachers' understandings of philosophies underlying TBLT;(2)teachers' understandings of definitions of task and TBLT;(3)teachers' understandings of principles of TBLT;(4)teachers' understandings of features of TBLT;(5)teachers' understandings of stages of TBLT;(6)teachers' understandings of techniques of TBLT;(7)teachers' attitudes towards TBLT.The thesis also draws on supplementary qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with fourteen teachers who have various teaching experiences in schools.After analyzing the data,some major findings are as follows.First of all,most of the teachers have a certain level of knowledge about task and TBLT.However,most of them incorrectly think that TBLT is partly rooted in Psychological Behaviorist Theory.They misunderstand theoretical foundations of TBLT.A majority of the teachers could highlight several key concepts of TBLT,but few of themcould clearly distinguish task from exercise.Besides,teachers in primary school have a highest level of understanding of TBLT.It is most commonly used in primary school in that there is no pressure of examinations.There is no significant difference in gender,age,school locality,education background,and total number of years teaching English among teachers in the understandings of TBLT.Second,teachers have a good understanding on stages of TBLT.Many teachers would design tasks by themselves with the help of teaching reference books and the Internet.They are able to use tasks flexibly in English teaching.Most of the teachers follow the TBLT model advocated by Willis in their classrooms,but they would not follow it completely.Some teachers have improved it,combining TBLT with Five-step teaching method which contains revision,presentation,drill,practice and consolidation.What's more,it is found that teachers in senior high school seldom adopt TBLT because of examination-oriented education system,but teachers in primary school and junior high school use TBLT more often.Third,the research reveals that most of the teachers hold positive attitudes towards TBLT and are interested in applying TBLT in their classrooms.On the other hand,lots of teachers think that there are many challenges for implementation of TBLT including limitation of time and space,different language proficiency of students,negative effect of the examination-oriented education system,grammar teaching in TBLT and difficulty in designing tasks.The study offers insights into English teaching in primary and high schools in China.It is necessary for schools and local education administration to organize long-term and regular training courses about TBLT so as to improve teachers' pedagogic ability in using TBLT in their classrooms.Besides,the testing system should be reformed step by step and a task-based assessment system should be introduced to evaluate students' ability of using language more comprehensively.