The Application Of Small Class And Task-based English Teaching For Senior High School

In recent years, small class teaching has been popular in the more developedareas in China. It promotes the idea of focusing on every student. There has been nodefinite definition for small class teaching. But from the form of organizing teaching,it means the reduction of the students quantity in one class. Still, merely the reductionof the students in one class did not really touch the essence of traditional Englishteaching, no substantial changes happened to the teaching methods, roles andrelationships between teachers and students. Meanwhile, the New English CurriculumReform advocates the implementation of task-based teaching, which is based on thetasks designed by the teachers according to the goal of the English Curriculum andteaching contents, providing teaching activities close to students’ real life, to attractstudents to get fully involved. Through thinking, researching, discussion,communication and cooperation, students learn, use English and accomplish thelearning task, thus mastering the English language skills. However, for a long time,English class teaching is mainly practiced by the combination of teachers’ explanationand students’ note-taking. Most of the students can not really dive into the real classteaching process. This teaching method ignored the multi-demands and potential ofteachers and students, who are independent individuals of different states. Meanwhile,the multilateral and multilevel interaction between students and students, teachers andstudents are overlooked. The dominant role of students are hidden under thetraditional teaching method. In such situation, there will be restrictions on the overallimplementation of language practicing activities, limiting the improvement ofstudents language skills. This is bad to create the indispensable communicativeatmosphere for English learners. Lots of students lose confidence in English learningdue to the factors above. Nowadays, with the promotion of Quality-orientedEducation, the small class and task-based teaching have become the main stream ofthe education development. The combination of the two methods make the Englishpractice accord with the teaching theories, and promote the reform of Englishteaching.Under such background, discussing the history of domestic and foreign smallclass teaching, taking the developed countries like America and large cities in Chinalike Shanghai as example, this thesis explains how small class teaching provides thestudents with more equal educational opportunity, how better the teaching resources are being used. Compared with a larger teaching class, small class teaching isequipped with more compact teaching programs and quicker paces. Students havemore access to a broader space of self-expression and development, which willactivate their interest, initiatives and enthusiasm of English learning. It can also makethe multi-channel communication and cultivation of English communicative skillspossible for the students. Thereafter, the thesis focuses on the task-based teachingmethod; comparing the domestic and foreign research, it points out that, task-basedteaching develops students’ sense of competition and creation during the process tocomplete the tasks. In the process of solving the problems, completion and expressionof the tasks, students gain the practice of lingual skills and English communicativeability. Based on the relevant theories, including Constructivism, Humanistic Theoryand Language Acquisition Theory, this thesis compared different performancebetween two classes by a teaching experiment, namely two basically equivalentclasses under two teaching methods: the traditional English teaching and small classtask-based teaching. Through this experiment, the author discussed the feasibility ofcombining small class and task-based teaching method in High School. At last,according to the New Curriculum Standard, this thesis analyzed the characters ofteachers and students. And on the basis of the character of New Curriculum, themental and cognitive law of High School students, helpful suggestions are given topromote the change of traditional English teaching mould to creative Englishteaching.This thesis is composed of four parts: the first chapter is a literature review. In thesecond chapter, the writer mainly talks about the relevant theories. The third chapter ismainly about an experiment for the High School small class plus task-based learningmethod. The last chapter concludes the roles of teachers and students and givessuggestions to the implementation of the above mentioned teaching method.