Application Of Task-Based Language Teaching In Chinese FLT Context

The ultimate goal of foreign language teaching is to enable the learners to use theforeign language in work or life when necessary. This can be put it the other way, todo things with language. Thus we should teach that part of the language which will beused, and we should teach language in the way that is used in real world. However,this is not always the case in foreign language teaching practice. Very often there is abig gap between the use of language in real life and the traditional foreign languagepedagogy. Real world communication is an integrated process which involves theactive interaction of communicators with language environment. Traditional teachingsyllabus, such as structural or notional and functional syllabus, has produced a set ofdiscrete and ordered language items and regarded teaching process as the process oflearning this set of discrete language items. However, the means that are used toachieve discrete language items can not make the language learning an integratedprocess. Since the 70s of 20th centuries, the focal point of language teaching andresearch has shifted from an emphasis on how to teach to how to learn, which showsthe view that the process of learning is important as the language itself, and a focusupon means rather than predetermined objectives. To foster communicativecompetence, or put it another way, comprehensive ability to use language, a teachingsyllabus and approach which involve both specific teaching objective (using the targetlanguage to communicate with others) and means to achieve the objective (classroomactivities which develop this capability) are badly needed in foreign language teachingpedagogy. Task-based syllabus and Task-based language teaching model derived fromit are the products of the need.Due to inherent language communication quality, adoption of task in foreignlanguage teaching can create an integrated language learning process which makes thelanguage teaching more life-like and socialized. Therefore, task-based languageteaching which uses task as teaching means can create a supporting conditionfavorable to catalyze learners natural and meaningful language use. Task performanceis the process of psycho-socio-linguistic interaction. In task performance, directed bytask goals, learners try to make use of all resources and adopt various means to getinformation, which make the learners in the state of active and natural learning. So far,task design, sequencing and integration has become a main means to achieve teachinggoals. The study and application of task has drawn much attention among researchersand teachers.In our foreign language teaching pedagogy, Task-Based Language Teaching iv(TBLT) has been widely accepted and advocated among researchers and teachers.However, advocating is one thing, implementing is another thing. Since in teachingpractice there exist some misunderstandings about TBLT, it is urgent for teachers tohave a deep and comprehensive understanding about the essence of TBLT and itsteaching model operation. For this reason, this thesis attempts to have an investigationin application of TBLT in Chinese FLT context.Better understanding on task is the prerequisite of its application. So begin withthe term 'task', this thesis discusses various task definitions given by researchers fromdifferent angles. Synthesizing the opinions of task, there exist two views on task:narrow sense task and broad sense task. Narrow sense task is limited tocommunicative activities which are used for the real life-like communication, whilebroad sense task involves not only real life-like communicative activities but alsocommunicative activities designed for the language form learning. Form is the carrierof content. To achieve communicative competence, task includes enabling task andcommunicative task. Enabling task is limited to meaning-focused communicativeactivity used for language form learning, while communicative task involves reallife-like communicative acti...