A Survey On Classroom Implementation Of Tasks In The English Textbook Go For It Of Junior High School

Textbooks play a significant role in English teaching and learning.Go For It is a series of textbooks published by People’s Education Press,which was implicated according to the theory of Task-based Language Teaching.The textbook designs a great deal of tasks in order to make students participate and communicate in the English classes.However,through investigation,it is found that there exist some problems in the implementation of the tasks in the textbook,including the problems of textbook itself and teachers’ arrangement of the tasks.Therefore,this study aimed to take the first volume of Go For It for grade eight as an example to give research on the tasks in the textbook from the perspective of classroom implementation,with the following questions:Question 1: What is the situation of classroom implementation for tasks of listening,speaking,reading and writing in the textbook Go For It?Question 2: What is the degree of acceptance among teachers and students for the task setting in the textbook? Will the situation of classroom implementation for the tasks be affected by the acceptance degree for the tasks?For the first question,24 classroom observations,with three aspects of observation points including the degree of task completion,whether the teachers adjust the sequence and content of tasks in the textbook,and the degree of participation among students,were conducted in three classes from grate eight of a junior high school in Benxi.In order to answer the second research question,questionnaires were distributed for 8teachers and 240 students from grade eight in the sample school,and 6 teachers were interviewed to get further information.After that,two teachers of the three sample classes,which were conducted classroom observations were given an additional interview.Finally,the valid data collected were analyzed and found out the conclusions as follows:Firstly,the result of situation of classroom implementation for the tasks: as for the degree of task completion,it showed that listening tasks and reading tasks in the textbook had a high degree of completion.Writing tasks in Section A had a relatively high degree of completion,but writing tasks in Section B had a low degree of completion.Speaking tasks in the textbook had the lowest degree of completion among the tasks about the four skills.In terms of whether the teachers adjust the sequence and content of tasks in the textbook,the results of classroom observations indicated that,tasks in the textbook were in suitable sequence,but failed to pay enough attention of students’ grasp of the grammar.As regard to the degree of participation among students,listening tasks and reading tasks had a high degree of participation among students,while speaking tasks and writing tasks had a relatively low degree of participation.Secondly,the result of the acceptance degree of tasks: generally speaking,teachers and students had a relatively high degree of acceptance for the tasks in the textbook.They agreed that the tasks in the textbook had a suitable proportion among the four skills,were diverse in form and were closely related to the topic of each unit.The tasks could encourage students to think independently,promoted students to express their own views,and developed students’ team spirit as well as the ability of using language.Some disadvantages of the tasks were also found during data analysis of questionnaires and the first interview.Finally,combining the situation of classroom implementation and the results of the second interview,the preliminary conclusion was that the situation of classroom implementation of the tasks in the textbook is affected by the degree of acceptance for the tasks,but it needed further quantitative basis.It is hoped that the results of this study could provide some reference for teachers to make an effective implement of the tasks in the textbook and for the compilers of the textbook to improve the task in the textbook.