Analysis On Task-based Language Teaching

Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) rose from 1980s and it has been developed for about 30 years now. As a branch of Communicative Language Teaching Approach, TBLT proposes the idea of "learner-centered" and designs a series of tasks to help learners to acquire the language. TBLT has become very popular among a great number of linguists and it quickly influenced the foreign language education all over the world. In China, the field of Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFL) started to research TBLT quite late and lacks the empirical studies on TBLT. So it is very important for us to learn from other countries’ successful experience.This thesis takes an UHM intermediate Chinese course as an example for observation in order to research the TBLT of the teacher. The analysis of this teaching mode is based on the framework of Jane Willis and it is from three aspects:the pre-task cycle, the task cycle and language focus. We found that the TBLT was divided into two categories:the macro tasks and the micro tasks. Macro tasks mean the general learning goals for each lesson while micro tasks mean specific tasks through the entire process of teaching. Meanwhile, this thesis also summarizes the main task forms of this course based on Willis mode and classroom observations. There are six main task forms:listing, ordering and sorting, comparing, problem solving, sharing personal experiences and creative tasks. We introduced each task form on the perspectives of goals, suitable topics, operating procedures, applying examples and following tasks. By analyzing the basic teaching procedures and main task forms of this course, we found that the teacher recognized "Task" as the core element in her teaching and all her teaching methods were based on the needs of learners and she aimed to improve students’communicative skills. By arranging a variety of tasks, the teacher contributed a lot to developing students’language skills.Besides the analysis of the teaching mode, this thesis also evaluates the mode form the aspects of inner evaluation and outer evaluation. The inner evaluation is from the following perspectives:task goals, input, student roles, teacher roles and settings while the outer evaluation is from the angle of students’ feedbacks and teacher’s self-assessment. This evaluation can help us to get a more comprehensive and objective opinion about this teaching mode. Judging from the feedbacks of students, TBLT is quite popular among them and they loved the lively style and admitted that their language skills were improved by the mode. However, there was some opposition about this mode as well, for example, the inadequacy of grammar teaching and writing tasks, etc. So this thesis also offers some suggestions in order to modify the teaching mode. From the teacher’s teaching opinions and classroom design strategies, we can tell that the teacher pays great attention to the idea of comprehensible input in language learning and teaching and proposes that only when given enough comprehensible input, can students be able to understand the target language. She also emphasizes the importance of communicative skills among the other language skills. On grammatical teaching, she agrees that the teacher should not force students to learn grammar. Instead, students should try to find the grammar rules by themselves with the help of teachers. On writing tasks, the teacher gave less proportion of writing tasks because writing is less communicative in her opinions.Combining the feedbacks of students and teachers, this thesis comes up with some solutions to these problems. We suggest the teacher provide a checklist of grammar items for students when they are doing output tasks. So that students can use some grammar points consciously. And also it should be good to add some periodical writing tasks in this course in order to increase students’motivations for writing as well as their writing skills. In the end, the author shares her opinions about the possibility to promote TBLT to China’s TCFL as a way to amplify the future TCFL. If we want to apply TBLT to our classroom teaching, a consideration from textbooks, teachers’conceptions, learners’characteristics should be taken seriously in order to achieve this goal.