Burnout In Task-based Approach To High School English Learning & Teaching: The Causes And Recommended Solutions

With New English Curricula Standard being carried out, Task-based Approach (TBA), as a new idea or method of teaching, has been implemented in the English teaching practice in High Schools throughout China. However, due to the higher demands set on teaching staff, students and teaching facilities as a result of the motto of "student-centeredness" pursued by TBA, there have arisen a series of difficulties and problems in TBA. With regard to these difficulties and problems that have cropped up, a survey has been conducted from which we've found some serious burnout phenomena in TBA that can reflect three aspects: learning emotional exhaust, de-personality (inappropriateness of student's study behavior) and lack sense of accomplishment. This paper has tentatively and initially examined causal factors leading to the burnout phenomena in TBA from three perspectives of task-design, task-designers (teachers) and task-executors (students). The causes mainly includes: TBA's higher inherent demands upon teachers, students and relevant teaching facilities; failure to meet the objective and subjective requirements of TBA from the teacher and student's sides; improper task-designs and impractical task contents, all three of which have finally led to students' lack of confidence in their study and feelings of too much physical and psychological burden and pressure from their study. On the basis of these research findings, this paper undertakes to put forward a series of countermeasures against learning burnout with a view to furthering and bettering the implementation of TBA in High School English teaching, by means of questionnaire, interviews, dialogues, literature review, positivistic examination and data analyzing.The studies outlined above have led to the following three conclusions: (1) The choice of task-contents, task-design steps and task-implementing methods in TBA contribute significantly to ELB; and (2) The professional qualities and task-designers' knowledge structures have a close relationship with learning burnout in TBA; and (3) Some of task executors' qualities, such as environments, styles, attitudes, basis of knowledge, sexual differences and material conditions, etc.