A Comparative Study On The Effects Of Strong And Weak Version Of Task-based Approach To Oral English Teaching In The Secondary Vocational School

As the society’s increasing emphasis on vocational education,there are more kinds of education models being introduced into vocational schools.The society requires higher qualities in knowledge as well as in professional techniques from the graduates of secondary vocational school.The proficiency of oral English is emphasized not only by the higher-level schools but also the potential employers.However,the real English proficiency level of students in secondary vocational school cannot meet the need,and oral English teaching is meeting a number of difficulties.Therefore,the teaching quality of vocational oral English class needs to be improved by implementing effective language teaching methods.Task-based language teaching(TBLT)has been more and more widely applied to English teaching in China since the 1980s.It requires a communicative way to learn the language by accomplishing real tasks.While there are different definitions of task,there are divergences of views toward TBLT—the strong version and the weak version.The strong version emphasizes the communicative aim of language teaching,while the weak version insists the importance of obtaining the knowledge of language form.The comparative researches about the application of these two versions in oral English class of vocational school are rare,therefore the author made an attempt to apply both in vocational oral English class and find out the answer to the following questions:1.Can the strong version or the weak version of task-based language teaching make a positive effect on oral English teaching in secondary vocational school?2.Which version is more effective in oral English teaching in secondary vocational school?The author selected two classes,75 students in total in Tianjin First Commercial School,as the participants of this research.Class A had 38 students and was the experimental class for the strong version;Class B had 37 students and was the one for the weak version.The same English teacher taught these two classes during the four-month semester.The instruments used in the research include oral tests,questionnaires and interview.The author adopted Willis’ framework as the teaching model of the strong version,and the 5-step framework developed by Yin Shiyin and Li Peng as the one for the weak version.Through the analysis of data,the author yielded the following findings:1.Both the strong version and the weak version of task-based language teaching can make a positive effect on oral English teaching in secondary vocational school.2.The strong version is more effective in improving students’ motivation and developing learning habits.3.The weak version is more effective in improving the accuracy of oral English.According to the above findings,the author suggests furthering the researches about to what extent can teachers integrate these two versions together in oral English teaching in secondary vocational schools.