A Task-based Language Teaching Approach To Garment ESP Course For Secondary Students

Secondary vocational and technical education is vocation-oriented and itsobjective is to cultivate practical talents in production, technology, service andmanagement and etc., which has been made corresponding advances in recent years.Also it is facing the challenge that is to combine work with learning and createsomething new and competitive, and the distinguishing features of vocational andtechnical education are its application and practicality in students’ language learning.However, secondary teaching of English for Special Purpose (ESP) has basicallyfollowed general English teaching mode from teaching links to teaching methods for along time without building the English language course system with somecharacteristics of secondary vocational education. Vocational students fear Englishlearning and have been tired of classroom teaching and professional English study, thecurrent situation of poor teaching quality and in a long-term recession. Therefore, theEnglish teaching mode should change and innovate in vocational schools, combiningthe curriculum reform with practice.ESP is learning-centered according to the students’ need of communication andthe need determines the teaching content and the teaching approach, which accordswith the training target of secondary education, conforms to the objective need fromthe society in order to have better foreign-oriented talents with the ability ofprofessional communication. And Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT)emphasizes “learning by doing” and offers students an opportunity to make languagemeaningful and useful in the classroom as a tool. This relatively new teachingmethodology has become crucial for EPS. TBLT and ESP teaching are closely linkedin terms of their common teaching notion and theoretical basis.Garment English, as a language for special occupation purpose, plays anincreasingly important role and has become the important course in the vocationalschool curricula. So based on the relevant scientific theories, ESP teaching modeshould be applied in garment English teaching so as to make students gain theessential abilities of applying English language for their future work within limited time. Thus improving the students’ ability of working and implementing necessarytasks is the most important part of vocational English teaching. Nowadays, in China,TBLT approach to language teaching is often applied in primary or high schools anduniversities，little relevant research and practice have been conducted in the TBLTapplication to special courses and vocational education. The author attempts to do thisresearch with a view to examining the effect of TBLA application to inspiringvocational secondary students’ interest in language-learning. She also intends toinvestigate whether this approach can help to effectively perform the working tasks byusing Garment English rather than the traditional approach like Grammar-translationapproach.This thesis explores a tentative teaching method by the applying a TBLT approachto Garment English course through literature review, experiment, questionnaires andinterview, and etc. In order to apply this approach to practice and test its real effect,the author designed a comparative empirical teaching research which lasted for18weeks with the comparison of two parallel classes. The experimental class adaptsTBLT to Garment English teaching while another class uses previous traditionalgrammar-translation teaching method. Pre-test and post-test, questionnaires andsemi-structured interview data are further processed and analyzed. Through a flexibleanalysis of specific teaching and learning process of “student-centered”, teachingactivities and complete various tasks related to career needs using English, studentscan appropriately implement the standard macro or micro aspects of simulationworking tasks, and reflect their strong professionalism.Experimental result showed that TBLT can be applied effectively in GarmentEnglish and improve students’ language skills and ability of implementing the worktasks in Garment industry. The questionnaires and interviews further reflect the realsituation of teaching process, indicating that Garment English has been greatlyimproved both teaching and learning. To a certain extent, the application of TBLTapproach reveals that a student-centered teaching could help students master bothEnglish language skills and professional knowledge. It can not only effectively migrate from theory knowledge to students’ occupational skills and ability, butincrease the fun and flexibility in classroom teaching and teachers’ professionalgrowth.