Investigation On High School English Teachers’ Stated Beliefs About Task-Based Language Teaching And Their Classroom Practices

Language teachers’ beliefs about language teaching and learning play an important role in their classroom practices. Teachers make decisions about classroom instruction in light of their theoretical beliefs about teaching and learning. In 2003 the new English language curriculum at senior secondary school level in the People’s Republic of China was introduced. The key element in the new curriculum is that it recommends task-based teaching methods(TBLT) be used to develop students’ overall language competence. Therefore, the extent to which teachers’ perception on TBLT has a direct impact on the improvement of teachers’ professional preparation, the successful implementation of new curriculum and teaching innovation. The motivation for this article thus stems from our interest in exploring what sense teachers make of the need to use tasks and the implications this has for the implementation of the curriculum. In the past two decades or so research on language teachers’ beliefs and practices has witnessed a rapid growth(Borg, 2006) but specific analyses of TBLT from teachers’ perspectives have been limited.In order to explore senior secondary school English teachers’ beliefs on TBLT, this research investigates and compares the stated beliefs and observed classroom practices of secondary school teachers of English with regard to TBLT. Both consistency and inconsistency between their beliefs and practices are examined and reasons especially for inconsistency are illustrated and discussed relating factors which might have influenced particular practices with respect to TBLT. The author mainly adopted questionnaire, interview and observation to research on the study. The questionnaire was designed to explore English teachers’ beliefs on TBLT in three different senior secondary schools of Tuanfeng, in Huanggang, Hubei Province, two of whom were chosen for further study. Interviews and classroom observation were conducted to get deeper insights into the development of Teachers’ beliefs and teachers’ classroom practices.Findings suggest that teachers do hold a system of beliefs which shapes their classroom practices to a very large extent. However, owing to the influence of many other factors, both internal and external, their practices in English teaching do not always reflect their beliefs. Actually, there exist some mismatches between teachers’ beliefs and their instructional practices in the following aspects: First and foremost, secondary school English teachers subject to the present disconnection situation between teaching and examinations, thus, they intend to worry about implementing TBLT in classroom practices and feel somewhat insecure to carry out TBLT for they hold the rooted belief that only when traditional teaching method is adopted can the students’ learning achievement be well enhanced. Besides, they are under the control of arrangement of in-and pre-service training courses as well as the way of teaching. As a result, they lack of enough guidance on how to transfer what they believe on TBLT to real classroom practices. Last but not least, they are limited to language incompetence which hinders their confidence in implementing TBLT. According to the findings, suggestions on teachers’ expertise and education are provided.