A Study On The Application Of Task-Based Approach To The Teaching Of Middle School English Listening And Speaking Class Activity Design And Effect

Many teachers have observed that communicating in English is always a hard job for Grade 9 students, who have learned English for many years. To help them out of this problem, the author of this thesis has conducted a study on the basis of Task-based Language Teaching. The study focuses on students' active participation in the classroom activities, using English to complete tasks, by communicating, thinking,cooperating and discussing. The author of this thesis tries to find out which method is better for students' listening and speaking by comparing conditions of two classes .To make the research specific and scientific, a survey is conducted to investigate into students' interest, ability and attitude in English learning. Based on the findings of the research, a detailed experimental scheme is designed. The research is posed in a middle school in Yixing, 86 Grade 9 students are used as the subjects for as long as 7 months. The experimental class received the task-based language teaching method while the control was taught with the traditional method. At last, based on the collected data, questionnaires and interviews, the author analyzes the influences of the task-based teaching.Questions of this research are: 1.How does task-based teaching method affect students' listening and speaking ability? 2.How does task-based teaching method change students' attitudes in listening and speaking? 3.How does task-based teaching method change students' behaviors in listening and speaking?The findings of the study are summarized as follows: 1 .Compared with the traditional teaching method, the task-based teaching class emphasizes the skills of listening and speaking, and it also advocates to use English in a real, practical language learning environment. Thus, students' listening and speaking ability is greatly improved. 2.The philosophy of task-based teaching method is "learning by doing", which is suitable for the middle students, as it can arouse students' interest,motivation and confidence in learning. 3.Cooperative teaching is employed in task-based language teaching, it can promote students' participation in English listening and speaking activities, so as to motivate students' interaction and expectation for the class.