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Task type and teacher's role:
Two important factors in effective group learning
Zhang Yunfeng
For decades Chinese teachers have been quite used to the traditional way of teaching English, in which the teacher is regarded as the authority who dominates the whole class. He or she explains the text in a traditional grammar-translation format, trying to put everything into students' minds while paying little attention to their feelings and reactions. As a result, Chinese students may do well on the English tests that are concerned with reading skills, such as the Test of English as a Foreign Language and Graduate Record Exam. But in other tests that focus more on speaking skills - such as the Test of Spoken English, the International English Language Testing System, and the Business English Certificate - they are found to be much less proficient (Cao Ling, 1999). Meanwhile, many university graduates, who have already studied English for more than 10 years, have to attend special speaking, listening, and writing courses to improve their ability to use the language. These factors have caught the attention of those involved with English teaching in China, as they have begun to realize the weak points of the traditional way of language teaching. Nowadays, many linguists and English teachers in China are turning to the communicative approach. Articles promoting a reform of language teaching have appeared in various journals, and some textbooks based on a more communicative syllabus have been written. The student-centered approach, which aims at improving learners' communicative competence, has been adopted by some language teachers. Group work, one of the most important class activities for developing students' communicative ability, is gradually being adopted for use in English as a foreign language (EFL) classrooms.
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Task type and teacher's role