A Case Study Investigating The Implementation Of Task-Based Approach To Oral English Class In Middle School

Since the early 1980's, China has adopted different types of teaching approaches. Recently, the National English Curriculum Standard (NECS) has attached great importance to task-based teaching as it has been proven that it can effectively improve learners' communicative skills.The main objective of this research is to investigate the implementation of task-based language teaching to oral English class in Chinese middle school. The study was conducted on three grade seven English language instructors. In order to gather data from the participants of this research, open-ended interviews and observations were used. The classes were observed by using observation checklists while tasks were being implemented. The interview questions were taped recorded and transcribed to get detailed information from the participants and to cross-check the data gathered with observation data. The results showed that the target school was using task to teach oral English class.However, analysis of classroom observations and interviews results has identified some factors that affect the effective integration of TBA in spoken English class. This study highlights some issues that proved problematic while implementing the tasks: students' low proficiency, time constraints, low interest to get involved in the learning process, use of the mother tongue. At the end of this thesis, some recommendations are forwarded, which are based on the findings of the present study.