An Empirical Study Of Task-based Teaching Of English Learning Strategies To Middle School Students

Being one of the most popular languages in the world,English has become an important tool for the international communication and the exchange of science and technology.In order to help students master and use this tool effectively,teachers of English in China come to focus on the process of language learning,trying their best to“encourage students to discover the law of language,learn the language knowledge and skills step by step,adjust their emotions and attitudes,gain effective language learning strategies and develop the autonomous ability to study by experiencing,practising,participating,discovering and cooperating”1,which is the theoretic perspective of the task-based teaching method proposed in the new English Curriculum Standards for secondary English education(issued by the Ministry of Education of China).The task-based teaching method has been used widely in the middle schools and become the research hit in English teaching ever since.However,the author of the present study found the following problems in the application of the task-based teaching method to the middle school English teaching during his teaching practice in a middle school and through his questionnaire survey among the students:1.Students possess inadequate awareness of language learning strategies and weak ability of language learning strategy application.2.Students show passive performance,are ill self-organized and are lowly motivated in interaction.3.Students stay less productive in the achievement with low language competence.Therefore,the purpose of this study is to build a new language teaching model in which the training of middle school students' language learning strategies are incorporated into the process of task-based English teaching so that English teachers in the middle schools can improve the effectiveness of English teaching and students' ability to use language learning strategies in their English learning.Based on the related researches on the task-based Language Learning and language learning strategies,this study composes the Task-based Language Learning Strategy(TBLLS)teaching model by integrating language learning strategy teaching into the Task-based Language Teaching.The TBLLS teaching model can be implemented in the following three steps: In the phase of ‘Pre-task',the teacher,in the explicit way,teaches students the knowledge of language learning strategies to enhance students' awareness of language learning strategies in the language learning tasks;In the phase of ‘During-task',the teacher guides students to use the language learning strategies properly in specific English learning tasks and teaches language learning strategies in the implicit way to improve their ability to use language learning strategies;In the phase of ‘Post-task',the teacher asks students to self-evaluate their use of language learning strategies and makes a summary to strengthen students' awareness of using learning strategies.In this way,the teacher makes use of such three steps as ‘Strategy Input,Strategy Training,and Strategy Stress' to gradually improve students' awareness of language learning strategies and their ability to apply them.The author applies the TBLLS teaching model in a group of Grade 8 students in Wenzhou No.3 Middle School,Zhejiang Province and does a teaching experiment for six weeks to verify the effectiveness of the TBLLS teaching model.In the experiment,the author uses such research methods as classroom observation,individual interview,test and questionnaire survey to collect data.Through data analysis,the following findings are obtained:1.Students' awareness of language learning strategies and their ability to apply language learning strategies get improved.2.Students' performance in class gets better.3.Students' English competence get raised.The findings above suggest that the TBLLS teaching model has a positive effect on improving the awareness of English learning strategies of middle school students and their ability to apply them.The study of the TBLLS teaching model can be relevant to those who abide by the middle school New English Curriculum Standards and apply the Task-based Language Teaching method to their English teaching.Due to lack of time and energy,there exist limitations in the present study.For example,the experimental time is short,and samples are inadequate.In the follow-up study,the author will expand the sample to all classes in Grade Eight,and invite students in Grade Eight from two other middle schools to attend in order to make contrastive study on the effectiveness of TBLLS teaching model.