The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of Task-Based Teaching (TBT) on elementary school students' listening and speaking comprehension. For the improvement of communicative competence of elementary school students, the study makes an attempt to develop learning tasks which are related with the textbooks and apply the learning tasks to the experimental classes. Theoretical backgrounds are investigated to find out the various definitions of task, task types, and frameworks of task-based teaching, which are composed of pre-task phase, task phase, and post-task phase. The purpose of each phase is also presented. The definition of task, task types, and overview of lesson plan for this study are specifically presented.
The hypotheses of the study are formulated as follows: 1) The experimental group will show a significant improvement in English communicative competence and linguistic knowledge after the experiment. 2) The experimental group will show the positive change of attitude after the experiment.
To accomplish the experiment, two classes are chosen from an elementary school in Yecheon. One class is designated as the control group with the other as the experimental group. For 3 months, the experimental group is given an English instruction based on TBT. Meanwhile the control group is given a general listening/speaking-based instruction as outlined by The Revised 7th Educational Curriculum of English for the Elementary School.
The findings of this study verify the hypotheses. Communicative competence is achieved through effective interaction. They show that TBT is helpful in improving learners' English communicative competence, linguistic knowledge and in changing students' attitude positively toward English learning. To achieve communicative competence, learners should be involved in meaningful communication during the learning process. We therefore conclude that TBT is effective on the listening and speaking comprehension of elementary school students.
The study offers some suggestions for a further study. First, to provide stronger evidence of the effect on English competence based on TBT and teaching methods, additional studies including wider range of subjects and a long-term experiment need to be established. Second, the worksheets with a wide variety of tasks and activities should be provided.