The Application Of Task-based Teaching In High School Vocabulary Teaching

With the informationization of social life and the globalization of economic activities, the English language has become an important tool for China’s open policy and international communication. In order to build up the modern basic education curriculum system, English education reform has been implemented widely in China. In the year of 2003, the New Curriculum Standards for Senior High Schools was promulgated. In terms of English teaching approach, Task-based Language Teaching(TBLT for short) is suggested widely. It is argued that by doing things, language learners can acquire language knowledge, language skills and language competence.With the further reform of the New Curriculum system, TBLT has been implemented widely in the classrooms of Senior High Schools. English teachers begin to change their old teaching thoughts and employ actively the TBLT. Moreover, they also apply this teaching approach into many aspects of English teaching such as the teaching of reading, writing, and grammar.As we all know, vocabulary teaching is an important part of language teaching, which runs through the whole process of language teaching. Within the model of the TBLT, vocabulary capability becomes the basis of doing the "task". However, in the whole process of English teaching, there are two main problems: the single stiffed vocabulary teaching approach and the low-efficient vocabulary learning. With the purpose of exploring an effective vocabulary teaching approach for senior high school students within the model of the TBLT, the author went to a senior high school, where the author did a lot of work, such as, making questionnaire for students, interviewing students, and watching classroom teaching. Finally, the author found the sources of vocabulary teaching problems.The author found that it was difficult to finish the "task" without enough vocabulary preparation within the model of TBLT. After reviewing the theories about the TBLT and vocabulary teaching approaches, the author designed a three-step vocabulary teaching.The first step is vocabulary-focus teaching. It’s prepared for finishing the task. The second step is vocabulary-affiliated teaching. It’s to solve the problem that the students find it hard to memorize the words. The third step is vocabulary-extended teaching. The purpose is to consolidate the students’ vocabulary memorization at the post-task phase,and lead the students to explore the culture meaning of the words. After practicing the three-step vocabulary teaching approach, the teaching experiment proved that this approach is more effective compared with the single vocabulary teaching approach. In addition, this thesis also aims to demonstrate that this approach can motivate student’s interest and increase the efficiency for vocabulary teaching.