The Application Of TBLT In English Vocabulary Teaching In A Dongguan Senior High School

As a basic unit of language,vocabulary is important in language acquisition,language teaching as well as the actual use of language.With new requirements for vocabulary teaching being proposed in the New English Curriculum Standard(???,2011),more and more teachers and students pay an increasing attention to its teaching and learning.However,a number of problems still exist:limited time is devoted to vocabulary teaching in class(Scott,Jamieson-Noel,&Asselin,2003)and the teaching effectiveness is poor(???,2016);inadequate instructions are given to vocabulary learning(???,2017).Therefore,this study explores the vocabulary teaching and learning in a Dongguan high school where Task-based Language Teaching(TBLT)is applied as the main approach for vocabulary teaching.The purpose of this research is to find out if TBLT is advantageous for vocabulary teaching compared with the traditional way of teaching.With 80 students from two classes in a senior high school as subjects,the author conducted an experiment in two classes,which are basically the same in vocabulary and English level,one is the experimental class under TBLT,and the other is the control class under traditional teaching.The author observes students'performance in class and administers 2 sets of questionnaires,pre-and-post tests before and after a semester of vocabulary teaching to the two classes.At the end of the study,12 students with different language proficiency in the experimental group were selected for further interview so that the author was able to get more insights on students'perceptions for the use of TBLT.Results of the data analysis shows that students who received task-based vocabulary lessons generally outperformed those who were taught with traditional vocabulary teaching methods in the control class and TBLT contributes more to students'performance in the final vocabulary test.Besides,task-based vocabulary teaching seems to be effective in arousing students'interests in English learning.In sum,this study concludes that the application of tasks is effective in vocabulary teaching and it is applicable to English vocabulary teaching class in the sample school.