任务型教学法在初中英语听力教学中的应用
【摘要】在日常交际中，听占有十分重要的地位。Rost认为，语言习得主要通过获得大量的可理解输入来实现，而听是获得可理解语言输入的最重要的渠道。但是，目前我国的初中英语听力教学仍不尽人意，还存在着许多问题。任务型教学是以具体的任务为学习动机或动力，以完成任务的过程为学习的过程，以展示任务成果的方式来体现教学成就的一种教学方法。
本研究通过课堂观察和教学进一步探讨了任务型教学应用于初中听力教学。基于Willis的任务型教学模式和Underwood的听力教学模式理论，笔者将两者结合并应用于初中听力教学中，建立了任务型听力教学模式，将任务型教学法应用于听力教学中。试图解决现阶段初中英语听力教学中存在的两个主要问题：第一，听力教材中的问题；第二，教学模式单一的问题。针对第一个问题，本研究按照任务型教学法中任务设计的原则，重新整合教材并设计多种真适实可行的学习任务，从而解决教材中部分内容过难学生不易完成、不感兴趣等问题。第二个问题的解决也就是任务型教学法的应用。本研究将任务划分为听前，听中，以及听后三个部分。每一部分按照任务设计的原则安排了多项任务，从而解决了传统听力教学模式单一的问题。
通过任务型教学法在听力教学中的应用，作者希望为初中英语听力教师提供些许参考，最终对英语听力教学产生帮助，从而提高听力课堂的有效性。
【关键词】任务；任务型教学法；英语听力教学
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CONTENTS
Abstract .....................................................................................................................................i
摘要 ..............................................................................................................................................ii
I.Introduction.......................................................................................................................1 II.Literature review ........................................................................................................1
2.1 The studies of listening comprehension .......................................................1 2.2 The studies of the application of Task-Based Approach to listening ...............................................................................................................2
III.The current problems in English listening teaching ......................3
3.1 The problems of teaching materials ...............................................................4 3.2 The problems of claroom teaching models .................................4
IV.The Application of the Task-Based Approach to the English Listening Cla ...........................................................................................................5
4.1The Principles for designing tasks in listening ...........................................5 4.2 The steps for designing task-based teaching model in listening cla .................................................................................................6
V.Conclusion .......................................................................................................................10 References ..............................................................................................................................11 Acknowledgments ..............................................................................................13
The Application of “Task-Based Approach” to the Listening
Cla in Junior High School
Ⅰ.Introduction There are four abilities in the acquisition of language, which are listening, speaking, reading and writing, but listening is the most difficult one among them.Most students are not interested in it, and at the same time, most students always lose confidence in dealing with the listening comprehension questions, because they think that their English is very poor.Therefore, it’s neceary to review the current situation and existing problems of listening comprehension and combine the Task-Based Approach with the English Listening teaching.The Task-Based Approach as a new teaching approach of language appeared in the western world in the 1980s, and it emphasizes \"learning by doing\".Compared with traditional teaching methods, the Task-Based Approach can not only motivate the students \'interest, but can also help students to improve their English listening ability in the proce of learning English.And then by this approach the students’ learning efficiency and English application ability can be improved through cooperative learning and self-learning.II.Literature review 2.1The studies of listening comprehension Listening is a cognitive activity and language skills, and plays an important role in our daily life and language learning, and at the same time, listening comprehension has increasingly become an important criterion to measure the level of learners’ language study (Long, 1993).But according to our longtime observation and study on the teaching practice, the traditional English listening teaching methods used in china inhibit the students’ listening ability to improve.
Listening comprehension research includes five aspects, they are listening materials, speakers, tasks, learners and listening procees (Richards and Platt, 1992).The degree of difficulty about the listening material and listeners’ familiarity; the rate of speech, voice, expreion of speakers ; the type of listening task; the internal and
1External factors of learners; the procees of listening comprehension also can affect learners to understand the listening materials.Among them, there are some important aspects to affect listening, such as the level of language, memory, emotional factors, and background knowledge of learners.The most important thing is the study of the proce of listening comprehension, which is an internal mental proce, and the way learners to deal with language inputting and understanding it.The researchers of domestic and abroad reached a consensus in this area and hold that the proce of language understanding is a proce of language producing, and this proce includes three stages, which are perception, resolution and application.At the perception stage, the input language is analysised and synthesised preliminary by the brain.At the resolving stage, the brain produces a series of proposition which is the foundation of listening comprehension.At the application stage, the new semantics proposition activates the existing propositions and knowledge in the brain which can form the updated discourse meaning and knowledge systems.
The psychological factors are very important for students to understand the listening materials, and these factors are showed through the attitude of learners, such as their interest, self-confidence, the level of effort and anxiety.Learners’ mental states will affect their learning behavior and learning result directly.Negative mental states, such as anxiety, tension, slack, disgust, fear, and so on, will hinder their learning potential to perform normally.In order to help students overcome the negative sentiment in the listening proce, cultivating their learning interest and making them in a good mental state is a good way.Therefore, teachers should analyze the reasons why students have so many negative emotions in their teaching practice, and also teacher should create a relaxed and positive atmosphere for students to learn and activate students\' learning interests so that they always put them in a state of excitement.2.2 The studies of the application of Task-Based Approach to listening cla The Task-Based Approach appeared in the 1980s.It aims to language teaching
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real and claroom socialization.The Task-Based Approach is a task or an activity for a particular purpose (Crookes, 1989).In educational curricula, it is mainly used to collect data for research.In the proce of language learning, task is a communication activity, and also a kind of language practice which emphasizes “learning by doing\".The core of the Task-Based Approach is the \"learner-centered\" and \"people-oriented\", and the theoretical basis is the \"constructivist\".The task is composed of five parts, which are the teaching aims, inputs, forms of activities, the role of teachers and students, and the environment (Nunan, 1989).The Task-Based Approach emphasizes that learners not only focus on the language, but also focus on the proce of language learning, and it emphasizes the interaction and cooperation in the proce of learning, and also emphasizes the proce and results.Task-Based Approach use the relatively realistic tasks to make students complete the task in group discuion or role-playing and other activities, and then strengthen the interaction between teachers and students, motivate students’ learning interest, mobilize the students\' positive emotional factors, and cultivate students’ awarene and cognitive abilities.At the same time, Task-Based approach also inspires the students to share their individual experience since they have to complete their task in groups, and then train them to understand, operate and use language.Extensive, in-depth, and complex language using has been fully reflected through the proce of completing a task.Therefore, the Task-Based Approach has its own unique merits from its teaching aims or from its teaching model, because the Task-Based Approach not only has the advantages of traditional teaching methods but also has the advantages of the communicative teaching approach.
There are three stages of the Task-Based Approach, which are pre-task, task-cycle and post-task (Willis, 1996).The pre-task is the preparation stage; the task-cycle is the implementation stage, and post-task is the acceptance and improvement stage.And these three stages influence with each other.
Ⅲ.The current problems in English listening teaching For the current application of Task-Based Approach, the first task is to find the
problems of the listening teaching, which are two major problems in the teaching of learning comprehension.One is in the materials, the other is in the teaching models.
3.1 The problems in teaching materials In the listening teaching of English in junior high school, the most important problem that troubles teachers lies in the listening materials.And there are two main problems in the listening materials.Firstly, the listening materials usually used by teachers are written language rather than spoken English, so it is difficult for English learners to understand.Certainly, one can not deny that there is a lot of spontaneous teacher-talk during cla, but it is not enough to improve learners’ English listening ability.Secondly, the contents of the materials often do not match the real life.Many listening comprehension books usually include many long paages rather than dialogue and most of them beyond the learners’ ability.After listening, they have to do some comprehension exercises, usually multiple-choice.This teaching approach provides a certain type of practice, but it is not related to our real life.So the course of the listening comprehension is so boring to students.There is no doubt that the English leaner can not improve their listening ability.
3.2 The Problems of Claroom Teaching Model In junior high school, most teachers usually prepare listening materials before starting listening cla.They usually use a similar way to teach, they often play the tape several times, if students can not understand or memory the main idea of the listening materials, teachers often repeat the materials again and again.And teachers help students by explaining the difficult sentences.Finally, teachers usually check and correct the answers students have done, this is not a cla of listening but a cla of testing students’ memory, so most of the students are very tired after cla.These methods of teaching not only fail to improve students’ listening ability but also make them lose confidence and interest of listening.This kind of cla ignores students’ motivation to learn, and never be able to arouse students’ interest, also deprees the atmosphere and the fillings of students.The most important problem is that students do not have any chance to communicate in natural languages, let alone knowing about
the characteristics about real-life communication.From the method of teaching their teacher using, students don’t get any comments from their teacher, as a result this teaching method is not satisfied by many English learners.Ⅳ.The Application of the Task-Based Approach to the English Listening Cla There are many problems about English listening teaching, especially in rural areas.To solve these problems the Task-Based Approach should be applied to the English listening cla.This teaching approach is very important and useful to arouse English teachers’ awarene in order to change these old methods and improve the level of teaching.Task-Based Approach claims that effective learning is not in instruction, but experiential.Task-Based Language Teaching is characterized as collaboration, authenticity, focusing on proce and students’ participation, and learning by using it, which is just a sign of modern education (Wang Yanghong, 2004:33-50).4.1 The principles for designing tasks in listening If the teachers want to use the Task-Based Approach in English teaching, they must solve the problem about the teaching materials, and this thesis will introduce three principles for designing of listening tasks.4.1.1 The task should be fun One of the advantages of Task-Based Approach is using the interesting communicative activities to stimulate students’ learning enthusiasm.Therefore, in order to improve the students’ English listening ability, teachers usually design a lot of fun tasks for them, which can arouse students’ motivation of learning.Usually, these interesting games are easy to design.For example, many teacher use pictures and let students describe them before listening, also some teacher permit students to communicate freely in cla.These activities are very useful for teacher to help students improve their English learning ability.4.1.2 The difficulty level of tasks should be appropriate The difficulty level of tasks should be appropriate.If the difficulty level of the
task is beyond the students’ ability, it will lead to the entire claroom teaching fail, and then dampen the learners’ enthusiasm.Therefore, when teachers design the listening tasks, the difficulty level is very important.There is a lot of factors that can affect the listening difficulty level, but they often fall into three types:（1）The type of language used.The contents of the listening materials should match the real life.Therefore teacher should use the spoken language rather than written language in cla.(2) The purpose for listening.Teachers should prepare some questions for students before listening, and ask students to finish them after listening.(3) The context of listening.Many students can’t understand the listening material because of without background knowledge.So teachers should provide enough background information to students. 4.1.3 Learning by Doing
Actually, learning by doing is gaining knowledge from practice, which emphasizes to take students as a center.Teachers should guide the students to learn the language by performing a specific task.What’s more, student can achieve and enrich the learning experiences and strategies through designing some special-purpose language activities and completing some specific communicative tasks.Therefore, they can enjoy the joy of succe.Students have to master the language used in the claroom communication, although they still have to learn grammar and memorizing vocabulary.If one wants to master the knowledge of the language, he/she should depend on himself, rather than teachers.Long(1933) believe that “ a Task-Based Approach sees the language proce as one of learning through doing—it is primarily engaging in meaning that the students’ system is encouraged to develop”.
4.2 The steps for designing task-based teaching model in listening cla
The traditional model of teaching has affected the validity of the listening cla.The nature of the Task-Based Learning is the proce of learning by doing, and the students are engaged in natural language learning through experience and expectation.In the proce of listening, what teacher needs to do first is to provide opportunities
and designing proce.And teachers have to make the proce of leaning more effective, in different stages, students can master certain skills of learning by with a specific purpose and working in different sub-tasks.According to the listening teaching model of Underwood’s and Willis’ model of the task-based instruction, the author tries to establish a task-based listening teaching model.Taking “Unit 8, anything else?” as an example (Chinese Ministry of Education, 2002) 4.2.1 Pre-listening stage The principal function of tasks and exercises at this stage is to provide orientation to the input topic and to activate learners’ own knowledge and frames of reference ( Keith and Helen, 2002:321-328).This target can be achieved through a variety of ways: using pictures, open discuion, reading a text on the same subject, prediction of the content, or doing some language practice, such as identifying related words or a group of pre-listening problems.In addition, teachers may also need to introduce a number of important topics related words and phrases which the leaner don’t know before.The first and foremost, teacher have to come up with an interesting topic which is related to the task.The teachers should know that all the students understand what the task involves and what its goal is.At this stage, Wang (2002) provides students with the following activities to finish.(1) Prediction
Studies show that good learners usually have good prediction.In order to help students become good listeners, the teachers try to help the learners become better predictors.This teaching method can help the students to improve their ability of listening.In order to improve the students’ listening ability, teachers often give students some topics to discu before start listening, and teachers usually use different activities to encourage students predicting what they will listen to.Many times, the listening materials contain some pictures.Students can usually predict about what they will listen to according to them .(2) Set the Scene
Another type of pre-reading activities for students is to set the scene.It is more
difficult to leaner to listen to in cla than in real life.Because in our daily life, we know clearly what we talk and why we talk when we communicate with each other.However, in the claroom, we just paively listen to a lot of listening material and it does not match to real life, so it is difficult for us to understand.Therefore, teacher should provide enough background information to the English learners to activate the schema of the learners, so the students will prepare to understand what they will listen to.For example, teacher provides a picture to students, and asks them to look at it.By doing so, the schema of related scene can be activated, and thus will make the listening task easier.4.2.2 while-listening stage Crookes argues that the while-listening stage is the most difficult for the teacher to control.Because at this stage students can came acro many difficulties, for example, they don’t understand what they have listened to, so some student may give up going on listening.However, if the teacher provides students with some background information, students will not lose confidence while listening.Another important thing is that if the teacher provides students with a goal or task it can help the learners to focus on the listening materials.Teacher should design different kinds of tasks for students while they are listening to a paage.A few examples are as follows.(1) Listening for the gist. At this stage, firstly, teachers should make students understand what they should know from the listening material while listening.In our daily life, we have no chance to listen to something several times.Many times, although we can’t catch every single word the speakers said, we can understand them from the gist of what they said.Therefore it is importance for teachers to prepare some questions for students before start listening, and these questions must be related to the listening materials, and then make students understand the gist of the listening materials by these questions.If teacher use this way in listening cla, students will cultivate a good habit of how to practice listening, and they will know that they only focus on the gist of listening materials rather than every single word.This not only can arouse their interesting but
also can help them improve their ability of communication in our real life. (2) Taking notes while listening.Because students can’t remember all the information they have heard after listening, teacher should ask them make notes whiling listening, which can help them understand the materials clearly.Certainly, teachers should make students understand how to make notes.For example, if the listening material is about some one, teachers will ask students to focus on some important information as follows: What does he/she do? How old is he/she? What does he/she like? So students can complete some tasks through taking notes.Using this approach can improve the students’ listening ability, so teacher should make students cultivate a good habit of taking notes.
(3) Listening and filling When we do listening practice, we always do some questions about blank filling.We are very familiar with it.And this question is very difficult for students to finish.So teacher give students some tips about it.For example, teachers ask students to read the uncompleted paage before listening, and then finish the blank while listening.Also teachers should let students know how to focus on the details.For example, function words are almost unstreed and therefore some times difficult for students to hear, so teachers always help students infer them according to the whole paage.Using this ways can help students improve their ability of listening comprehension.Here is an example.Tom has _____________________.Lily has____________________.Her father is a_________________.He is a _____________________.4.2.3 Post-listening stage Post learning activities comprise a range of follow-up poibilities, including lexical and grammatical development, role play, writing practice various tasks and so on(Keith and Helen, 2001:321-328)
(1) gap-filling At this sage, firstly, teachers give students an incomplete summary of the text that students will listen to.This kind of practice is also very difficult for students.
Firstly, the students have to make notes while listening.And then teachers give students some minutes to tidy up their taking notes.Finally, students have to complete the summary according to their own notes.However, they can use their own words, rather than original words from the listening materials to complete the summary.This is good activity for students to practice their listening.(2) Picking up the discuions on the pre-listening.At this stage, instead of other kinds of questions, open-ended questions can be discued.Teachers always divide the students into small groups.These questions are prepared by teacher before start listening.Certainly, the answers of some questions have been discued before listening.For example, why do you like Beijing? Do you want to study abroad? Why? Many times, some views of students are similar to the author, so they can complete the questions easily.Another type of questions students can’t discu before listening but only be inferred from the text.So teachers give students some minutes to prepare and divide them into small groups to share their individual views.This way can improve their study efficiency.
V.Conclusion Task-Based approach shows that the teaching aims and teaching functions have been transformed.The Task-Based Approach has become a respectable new teaching approach through the 20 years of exploration and practice.It gives teachers and students a new challenge and innovation.Moreover, it stimulates students\' interest and motivation, and gives students a new feeling and sense of accomplishment.At the same time, the Task-Based Approach also continue to be improved and perfected in practice.Each teaching approach has its merits and demerits, however, it is extremely important for teachers to mobilize the students’ interest in learning and to design proper tasks for students to participate in the act of listening.
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Acknowledgements
My deep gratitude first goes to my tutor, Mr.Liu, who has given me a lot of enlightening instructions in my paper and guides me through the proce of writing this eay.He always takes pains to read my papers and gives me valuable advice.Without his guidance and valuable suggestions, the completion of this eay would not have been poible.I really appreciate his unreserved help and will keep it in mind forever.
Sincere thanks also go to the others teachers who taught me during my four years of college life.They have greatly benefited my intellectual growth through their inspiring lectures.
I am also grateful to my dear roommates and friends who have offered me a lot of helpful suggestions and valuable reference books.Finally, I want to expre my sincere thanks to my family for their support, encouragement and understanding they have given me for these years.
