A Study On Task-based English Grammar Teaching In Higher Vocational College

Grammar is a foundation of listening, speaking, reading and writing, which is an important guarantee for foreign language learners to use English accurately. According to Basic Requirements of Vocational College English Teaching, on the basis of delivering the basic knowledge, teachers need to attach more importance to develop and cultivate students’ application ability in listening, speaking, reading and writing. The shift of teaching focus also puts forward a higher standard to English grammar teaching. Teachers should guide students to apply language, solve problems, and not just deal with grammar knowledge during their teaching. The aim of grammar teaching is to let students grasp the grammar rules and apply knowledge to language practice autonomously.The task-based language teaching which takes tasks as the core advocates "learning by doing". It is learner-centered, and emphasizes students’ability of using language. In the course of completing tasks, students can not only notice the language form, but also get involved in communication which is meaning-centered. With the continuous improvement of task-based language teaching, it has been applied to English teaching widely in primary and middle school. However, there are fewer empirical researches on the application of task-based language teaching to college English, especially in grammar teaching. This paper attempts to combine the task-based approach with English grammar teaching, aiming to improve students’ grammar level. Teachers provide students with opportunities to output through the task design, guiding students to autonomously use and grasp grammar knowledge.This study lasts three months, taking two parallel vocational classes of Beijing University of Agriculture as the research subjects, altogether 98 students. One class is control class while the other is experimental class. During grammar teaching, the author adopts the Willis’ framework of task-based language teaching in experimental class; meanwhile, the traditional method is used in control class. The experimental data are collected from grammar tests and writing tests. At last, the data were analyzed with SPSS software to revel the difference of task-based English grammar teaching and traditional teaching method.The teaching experimental results indicate that:(1) the task-based English grammar teaching is not superior to the traditional teaching method in improving students’ English grammar level; (2) through the task-based English grammar teaching, students’ ability of using language has improved; (3) the task-based English grammar teaching can motivate students’ interests in grammar learning and develop students’ self-study ability.Owing to the limitation of objective conditions, there are still some insufficiencies in terms of task design, experimental time and experimental subjects and some problems need a further discussion. In the end, the author puts several suggestions for further English grammar teaching in higher vocational college.