Practice Design for Developing Junior Students’ Communicative Competence with Task-based Teaching.doc

practice design for developing junior students communicative competence with task-based teachingabstractthe present study presents a detailed report of a project implemented to solve the problem that lots of students fail to use english correctly when expressing themselves freely. it is hypothesized that if task-based language teaching methodology is used in class, then the learners communicative competence will rise accordingly. this hypothesis is verified by a four-week practice of well-organized task-based teaching and learning activities.methodologically, four methods are used, and they are analytic method, cause analysis, questionnaire survey, and brainstorming activation. main heading of the project report1.introduction12.summary of the preliminary research12.1problem identification12.2problem analysis12.3project objective42.4project hypothesis42.5possible solutions42.6project rationale:43.full-scaled implementation of the solutions73.1through a step-by-step progression73.2learning by doing. 83.3building real-world settings do activities related to students personal lives.83.4give the students positive task-based assessments.84. research design:85. data analysis126. project evaluation147. problem unsolved158.conclusion15bibliography17appendix a questionnaire one for problem analysis17appendix b a post-trial questionnaire19appendix c the timetable of the project21appendix d teaching notes22appendix e teaching diaries23process report241. introductioni have been teaching english for ten years .now im teaching the students who are in their first year of a junior middle school. in my teaching, ive found there are some problems. many students have considerable difficulty while attempting to communicate in english, although some students can get higher grade.now ill finish my study in artv university. i hope i can solve these problems that have troubled me through the research so that i can apply my knowledge and theory into practice, which i learned from artv university.2. summary of the preliminary researchthis part of my study was conducted during sept.1oct.5, 2008.2.1 problem identificationthe problem i have in my teaching is that lots of students fail to use english correctly when expressing themselves freely, which they lack second language acquisition. in other words, students communicative competence is very poor. 2.2 problem analysis in my teaching, the problem identified was really a serious problem. my preliminary research confirmed that there were 3 main reasons.firstly, traditional approach is mainly used in the teaching, although task-based language teaching methodology is promoted in the new strategies of china. in class i just pay attention to grammar and structure of english, but ignore communicative activities. secondly, the teaching is teacher-centered and like a duck-feeding process. the activities are always controlled ones. the activities are always controlled ones. the students are occupied in listening to me, taking notes, responding to my questions. they are quite passive and behave like an audience.lastly, the students lack confidence. its difficult for them to learn english. there is few real-world language environments to use english .they only regard english as knowledge which they must pass an exam instead of a mean of communication.2.2.1 analytic methodmany of my students cant express themselves freely in english and they lack communicative competence. they always make errors at meaning or form even if they know grammar points. the problem made me think of the other side of the issue: a few top students do well in listening and speaking. this made me think of these:why most dont, while a few do?who are they?moreover, “my students” are in contrast with “my colleagues students”, this prompted me to make a chain of reflections. what about some of my colleagues students? is it also the case that they cant express themselves freely in english ?on the other hand , if they are good at communicating in english ,then my problem is actually caused by me myself ,not by my students. perhaps my lesson plan is poorly designed or my teaching approach is inefficient.through the above analysis i realized that my problem is probably caused by my teaching technique.2.2.2 cause analysisi considered my problem from the teachers side, the students side, and the class size side. in this situation, i asked myself a series of questions and tried to provide some answers to them. in order to know more about this problem, i designed a cause exploration procedure like this: the teachers side - that is me myself is it because the teaching step is poorly designed?yes is it because my teaching approaches arent keeping up with the times? yes is it because that i dont have enough enthusiasm? maybe is my voice not loud enough for the students at the back to hear? maybe the students sideis it because they are not motivated? maybe is it because they do not think it important and necessary to use english communicatively? probably is it because they have some difficulties unsolved by themselves? maybe is it because they lack confidence? yes do they regard the teacher as their helper? no the class size my class has 57 students. such a big class may have some negative effects. the class is too noisy. some of them arent concerned enough.of all the causes, i believed that the teacher was mainly responsible for the failure. i wanted to know what my students thought about the problem.2.2.3 questionnaire surveyi made a pilot investigation in this respect to know more about the situation. for this purpose, i designed a research procedure like the follows.one day, i changed my teaching style, which i had a task-based teaching trial. i taught unit 2 of the textbook go for it .the title was “is this your pencil?” i guided the students to do 4 task-based activities in pairs/groups. meanwhile, i asked them to do task-based learning at the same style after class.the next day, i got the following feedback: more than 20 students performed the conversations. more than 12 pairs made their own conversations pointing at their school things. most students felt interested in the activities. a few students still felt difficult and shy. then i asked them two questions:1) why have quite a few students done well in oral communication?the students responses: they wanted to speak english all the time and they also felt interested in doing the task-based activities with partners.2) why have a few students been poor in oral communication?the students reasons: first, most of them thought the teacher had emphasized grammar all the time and oral communication was not too important. second, they thought they had got used to learning on their own and pair work / group work wasnt easy to organize well. third, they lacked confidence and language needed to speak english in class.since quite a few students had a great improvement at oral communication after i changed my teaching style, i designed a questionnaire (see appendix a) to find out why it should be so. i intended to get more detailed, more exact opinions from all the students through the questionnaire. and i tried to make it as scientific and effective as possible. at first i asked four students who were of different english levels to try out the questionnaire. then i modified some of the items. after that i gave one of my questionnaires to my students and gave them fifteen minutes to finish it. all of them, 57 students, returned their questionnaires which were left anonymous. when all these data came in, i made some statistical evaluation. the results showed that over 70% of the students thought task-based activities could improve their oral communication and that about 77% of them thought oral communication was interesting. but they needed to get high scores in the exam and had to give up. more over, the teacher didnt take it into account, either. they lacked chances to practice. therefore, i thought the problem was mainly caused by myself, not by my students. 2.2.4 brainstorming activationi discussed the problem with my students and with my colleagues. meanwhile, i consulted my thesis supervisor mr. yu lunhua. they gave me a lot of advices and help so that i pondered the problem more deeply and carefully.after a lengthy program analysis, i determined to launch a project to overcome this problem.2.3 project objectivemy research objective is to develop my students communicative competence with task-based teaching.2.4 project hypothesisit is hypothesized that if task-based language teaching methodology is used in class, then the learners communicative competence will rise accordingly.2.5 possible solutionswith these reasons in mind. i have correspondingly provided some possible solutions which are as follows.1) study the teaching material in the textbook carefully, and design clear task goals .select task types according to general level.2) learning by doing. provide more opportunities to practice using english .stress cooperative learning, paying attention to pair work and group work.3) according to the different task topics, do activities related to students lives in our class building real communicative settings.4) give students positive task-based assessments.2.6 project rationale:2.6.1 what is task-based language teaching?the theory of communicative language teaching focuses on the process of learning and problem solving, and it is always organized around a variety of different kinds of tasks which are related to the real life and composed of chains of activities psychologically selected, graded and sequenced.2.6.2 what are tasks?a task is a piece of work undertaken for oneself or for others freely or for some reward.a task is an activity or action which is carried out as the result of processing or understanding language (i.e. as a response)2.6.3 what is the communicative task?it is a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending manipulating form.2.6.4 what are not tasks?tasks do not include activities which involve language used for practice or display, such as “describe the picture using the words and phrases from the list below ”or “ask your partner if he likes the food listed here using the forms do you like ? yes, i do/no, i dont.” where there is no outcome or purpose other than practice of pre-specified language.2.6.5 the essential difference between tasks and exercisestask task has a nonlinguistic outcome.exercise an exercise has a linguistic outcome.2.6.6 types of tasks1) real-world communicative tasksit refers to the real-world things people do in everyday life or activities students use language in the real life .the real-world task based teaching emphasizes that teachers directly have students do all kinds of real-world tasks in class, thus raise students abilities which communicate in english.2) pedagogic communicative task pedagogic tasks are the materials and activities teachers and students actually work on in the classroom. adjusted to such factors as the learners age and proficiency level, these are series of initially simple, progressively more complex approximations to the target tasks.2.6.7 the components of a taskgoal input activities outcome teacher role learner role settingstaskcommunicative2.6.8 principles of task-based language teaching the overall purpose of task-based methodology is to create opportunities for language learning and skill-development through collaborative knowledge-building. the following principles can be used to guide the selection of options for designing lessons.1) ensure an appropriate level of task difficulty.2) establish clear goals for each task-based lesson.3) develop an appropriate orientation to performing the task in the students.4) ensure that students adopt an active role in task-based lessons.5) encourage students to take risks.6) ensure that students are primarily focused on meaning when they perform a task.7) provide opportunities for focusing on form.8) require students to evaluate their performance and progress.2.6.9 three principal phases in a task-based lesson.1) pre-task phase2) main task phase (task cycle)3) post-task phase the pre-task phase concerns the various activities that teachers and students can undertake before they start the task, such as whether students are given time to plan the performance of the task.the main task phase centers around the itself and affords various instructional options, including whether students are required to operate under time-pressure or not.the post-task phase involves procedures for following-up on the task performance.only the main task phase is obligatory in task-based lesson consists of the students just performing a task. options selected from the “pre-task” or “post-task” phases are non-obligatory but, as we will see, can serve a crucial role in ensuring that the task performance is maximally effective for language development.2.6.10 task-based language assessmenttask-based assessment should do three things .it should elicit performance that is directly related to the communicative objectives of the course, it should provide learners with opportunities to show what they can do with the language, and it should describe the criteria by which learners performance will be judged.performance criteria are a crucial part of an assessment procedure or item. these criteria need to be related to the important learning outcomes .in other words, they need to reflect those objectives that the task has been designed to assess. criteria should address a number of aspects of performance when assessing a group oral presentation .for example, the criteria would include:1) linguistic accuracy2) fluency 3) presentation style4) content 5) collaboration with otherscriteria can be relatively simple or quite elaborate .the simpler the criteria,the easier they are to use .however, more elaborate criteria provide more detailed and complete information on the learner. 3. full-scaled implementation of the solutionsthis part of my study was conducted during oct.6 2008nov.2 20083.1 through a step-by-step progression, design clear goals and select right task types for mixed-level classes.in order to guarantee that most of the students would be highly involved into the task-based activities, i studied david nunans concepts carefully. through the investigations, i found many students lacked confidence to speak english in class. therefore, i studied the students book and teachers book before class and designed a task plan. i tried to provide step-by-step language support and clear goals which mixed-level students could do, thus motivated them and build confidence.3.2 learning by doing. create more chances to practice through cooperative learning.to regard english as a mean of communication, it is the most effective to create chances for the students to communicate with each other in english. i also found most students like practicing english with their partners. in my teaching, i tried to organize the students to do activities in pairs or groups. pair work and group work provided benefits for both more advanced students and less advanced students. not only could they achieve the purpose of communication but also i could cultivate their spirit of cooperation.3.3 building real-world settings do activities related to students personal lives.according to my analysis and investigations, i found most students were earnest to express themselves in english, but they lacked chances to practice and language environment. i decided to take 3 steps in my teaching:1) try to increase the use of english in class. i start simple statements, ask questions, and give explanations and assessments in english.2) take full advantage of multimedia device and motivate students to use english communicatively.3) according to the topics in go for it, encourage the students to contribute their own ideas and feelings in their own real lives.3.4 give the students positive task-based assessments.most of students are willing to show their abilities before others, and hope to be praised and encouraged by others. according to the theory of task-based teaching, task circles have to get outcomes. so i decided to provide the students chances of task performance and give them positive task-based assessments on it ,which it was confirmed that the task performance was maximally effective for oral communication or not. 4. research design:my hypothesis is that if task-based language teaching methodology is used in class, then the learners communicative competence will rise accordingly. i designed four activities to be tried out in four weeks to test the hypothesis. and these activities are reported as follows:week 1 activitiy1. introducing family members.this activity is based as in junior english for china, the textbook go for it, unit3 this is my sister.purpose: to provide step-by-step language support and clear goals which mixed-level students could do, motivate them and build confidence.instruction:through 4 communicative tasks, guide the students to introduce family members.procedure:in this unit, i mainly designed 4 communicative tasks .firstly; i made the best use of multimedia device. i showed some pictures one by one, ask the students to repeat the names of family members. secondly, i showed a photo of daves family. i asked the students to work in