Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) puts students at the center. It requires training in language knowledge and utterance skills. At the same time, it lays stress on the cultivation of language using. TBLT approach has prominent status in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teaching. It is challenging the current college English teaching reality in China, which is still language-centered, teacher-centered, and text-centered. This paper explores the theoretical background and the application of task-based language teaching approaches in EFL. It tries to appraise the feasibility of TBLT approaches in teaching college intensive reading. It reflects on the change of teaching goals from language structural goals to language functional goals in EFL teaching. Its emphasis converts from teaching methods to learning methods. It embodies the shift from what to learn to how to learn. It mainly focuses on communicative function and social use and teacher-centered to learner-centered. The communicative task itself is central to this approach. A task-based syllabus is a kind of process syllabuses. The organizing principle involved is not the presentation and practice of the language to be learned, but rather all kinds of tasks and activities which apply a target language to communicate. This research looks at using TBLT approaches in an intensive reading class, with expectations to complete cognitive tasks, linguistic tasks, cultural tasks, and affective tasks - and cultivate learners’ communicative competence.