1.2 Purpose and significance of the research

TBLT has become the key point that researchers and teachers study on since 2001 for the sake of changing the reality of students’ “deaf and dumb” English. It has experienced three main stages, that is, theoretical research, experimental research, and reflective research. With the development of TBLT, different scholars have different opinions towards the implementation of TBLT. Wen Qiufang feels that TBLT is not suitable for Chinese classes while Tian Wen (2004) holds the opposite opinion. And there are also many scholars in China who show their unique perspectives of TBLT. There are lots of articles and researches about TBLT, but we can hardly see studies about the present situation of the implementation of TBLT. Zhao Zhenhua and Mo Xinyu collected 159 articles about TBLT, but surprisingly, only 7 articles are about the present situation of TBLT. Though TBLT has found its way into Chinese schools for so many years, we still are not sure whether it can bring us the good outcomes as we have expected as it is a new teaching method in second language teaching. And many of us still wonder about such questions as follows: How much teachers know about TBLT? Do they have difficulties in the process of carrying out tasks? Are students able to embrace task-based teaching? Therefore, this thesis will mainly focus on exploring the present situation of TBLT in the real teaching context.

1.3 The structure of the thesis

This thesis can be pided into four chapters. Chapter I is an introduction to the background of the research, purpose and significance of the research, and the structure of the thesis. Chapter II concerns the literature review. It includes the definition of “task” and “TBLT”, and then comes to the theoretical background of TBLT ending with the studies of TBLT abroad and home. Chapter III describes the methodology, which includes research questions, participants, instruments and data collection and analysis. Chapter IV analyzes the results and discusses the findings. Chapter V shows the conclusion and limitation of this thesis and also puts forward some constructive suggestions for middle school English teachers.