Online Instruction Based on Task-based Language Teaching

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 caused many Chinese universities to initiate online teaching. This paper aimed to develop Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) practices in online courses to enable teachers and students in China to employ TBLT appropriately and effectively. This research made a case study which was conducted as an online English class with a total of 28 undergraduate students at a university in Guangdong, China. The findings show that the transition from the traditional classroom to online education was successful. This innovative teaching mode promotes students to become the initiator of learning. Besides, the switched roles between students and teachers, advantages as well as problems of this approach have been pointed out. This case study could provide pedagogical implicatures for online English teaching and learning practically and theoretically, which helps to develop new forms that could assist teachers and students to adopt TBLT in class.