Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 1

INVESTIGATING THE TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING

CURRICULUM - EXECUTION GAP

Sharon Stranahan

San Jose State University

December 14, 2010

Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 2

Introduction

Over the past 20-years Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) has been popularized

within the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and the discipline of Communicative

Language Teaching as a tool to improve oral communicative competence. There continues to be

a great deal of interest from researchers and teachers how TBLT philosophy has been executed in

the classroom. The pedagogical problem raised is the gap between an ideal TBLT curriculum and

its actual classroom execution. This paper broadens the issue to propose that TBLT can be seen

as a harbinger for education’s ability to solve pedagogical deficiencies. The larger pedagogical

issue is the failure of the audio-lingual and communicative approaches to produce L2 speakers

who can converse comfortably. To address this need, task-based instruction has accumulated

over 20 years of research and classroom experience and has produced positive results. This

paper proposes that after understanding the reasons for the gap, teachers and researchers could

shift their focus to ways to more quickly deliver workable ideas. The possible reasons for this

gap analyzed in this paper are teacher cognition, teacher skills, and contextual factors; however, it

was found that even when these issues are addressed, the prescribed TBLT curriculum is not fully

executed. It concludes that it is not only the gap that should be understood, but also the cultural

norms and the research divisiveness that inhibits the introduction, modification and spread of

such innovative solutions.

Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 3

Teacher Cognition in TBLT Execution

To better understand the gap between task-based curriculum design and teacher

execution, it is helpful to understand why teachers do what they do in the classroom. The

topic of teacher cognition can be divided into two interrelated parts: what teachers

believe and what they execute. Van den Branden (2006) combined these two parts in

saying teacher cognition and their actions are interactive, each influencing the other. He

asserts that teachers’ classroom behavior is driven by what they know, believe, and think.

Teachers’ beliefs favor a conservative skepticism regarding new teaching theories

and approaches. They are encouraged to reflectively examine their teaching styles and

make changes in a thoughtful, independent way. In 2000 a three-year TBLT teacher

education study in primary schools in Brussels, Belgium, consisted of 20 coaching

sessions a year per school between trained TBLT counselors and teachers. During the

program, researchers interviewed a head teacher. He stated that whenever a new idea

was presented, like task-based instruction, teachers were expected to have their own

opinion and not believe everything without question (Devlieger, Goossens, Labth, &

Denolf, 2003). The study found that the teachers had a need to experiment and then

reflect. Therefore, the TBLT coaches stressed ways for the teacher to be more self-

reflective versus trying to “sell” task-based instruction. The results of the research

showed that at the end of the coaching year, the teachers reflected more on their actions

in the classroom, even if they didn’t integrate TBLT very much (Devlieger, Goossens,

Labth, & Denolf, 2003). Levine (1993 cited in Kinginger 2002) felt that when teachers

are introduced to a new theory, they do not integrate it in to their classroom curriculum in

total, but rather piecemeal. He stated, “they enter into a dialectical relationship” (p.204)
Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 4

with the new theory and only implement the parts that are consistent with their teaching

methodology. Johnston (2003) further supports teacher independence by saying “the

thinking teacher is no longer perceived as someone who applied theories, but as someone

who theorizes practice” (p.6). Current educational thought leaders encourage teachers to

break from a methods approach, to take charge of finding their own teaching style and

philosophy, and to become more self-directed. (Kumaravadivelu, 2006a; Nunan, 2004).

In fact, given the variety of teacher beliefs, backgrounds, and experience, it would

be surprising if there were no alteration between curriculum design and actual execution.

It has been found that the degree that teachers change and interpret task design increases

with experience. (Samuda & Bygate, 2008). Van den Branden (2009) concurred with this

conclusion when he found that experienced teachers rewrote, simplified, and deleted task

elements to fit the teacher’s own preferred teaching style and beliefs, to accommodate

perceived student capabilities, to manage classroom noise, and to avoid task management

problems. However, even if teachers were convinced of the pedagogical effectiveness of

task-based instruction and wanted to execute it in their classrooms, they may lack the

necessary skills. To understand why teachers may fail to implement TBLT perfectly, it is

important to appreciate the extent that task-based instruction requires different skills than

the traditional audio-lingual approach.

Teacher Skills Needed for TBLT Execution

Begun in the late 1980’s, the introduction of a task-based teaching was thought to

be the cure-all for the limitations of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT).

However, after more than two decades, its proponents have still not established a place
Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 5

for TBLT in mainstream SLA execution. Part of the reason for this slow uptake is that

prior to the advent of TBLT and CLT, the global, traditional approach, Presentation,

Practice, Production (PPP), required a radically different set of skills. Van den Branden

(2006) noted that a lack of skills helped to cause the gap between what teachers think

should be done and what they actually did in the national task-based initiative in

Flanders. While PPP has some similarities with TBLT, there are distinct differences

between the two approaches that required a different skill set and role for the

teacher.

The similarities between PPP and TBLT for teachers include a familiarity

with executing task-like projects, giving individual feedback, and the importance of

motivating students. Teachers are accustomed to assigning activities in the PPP

classroom during the Practice and Production phases to give learners additional

experience in using the language. While the definition of “task” has been

differentiated from “activity” by TBLT advocates, the general concept of having

learners work on projects is well understood and accepted as a bona fide SLA

process. Giving effective feedback to individual learners as proposed by TBLT is

well understood by most teachers--- asking leading questions, letting the student

discover the answer themselves, giving lots of positives and encouragement. Also,

the need to motivate students is a commonality accepted by teachers in all

disciplines, not just SLA. In addition, learners need to be engaged in the learning

process to absorb knowledge and “own” knowledge in both PPP and TBLT.

Despite these similarities, there are enough differences between TBLT and

PPP that pose challenges to teachers’ belief systems, roles, and skills. These
Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 6

differences may explain why teachers modify or resist implementing task-based

instruction. The most intractable critique of task-based instruction is a disbelief

that it works. An example of this resistance was with student teachers in a study in

Canada in 2010. They were favorably inclined to use task-based instruction in their

practicum, but ended up not implementing it much. The reason given was that they

were not convinced that communication within tasks promoted language fluency.

(Ogilvie & Dunn, 2010). This reaction was counter to French Canadian immersion

students who said that they learned more from doing the tasks than from explicit

lessons on form. Teacher’s beliefs that learning is a structured, predictable process

is a strong one and difficult to change, even in the face of the facts that the PPP

approach has not worked to improve oral competency. Another major critique of

task-based instruction is the difficulty to assess students in class and on

standardized tests. In class it is more difficult to assess oral competency via tasks

than with the PPP approach that assesses knowledge via written tests. In addition,

the majority of school systems’ standardized tests measure grammar, vocabulary,

and writing skills, not reading, writing, speaking and listening, which favors PPP

over TBLT. To address the difficulty of classroom assessment, self and peer review

is integrated into task-based instruction. Another major difference is the change in

the role of the teacher from PPP to TBLT. In PPP, the teacher’s role is defined as

“controller, organizer, assessor, prompter, and tutor. “ In TBLT, the teacher’s role is

“advisor, chairperson, monitor, language guide, facilitator” Harmer (1991, cited in

Samuda 2001 p. 120). As a result, in task-based instruction, the teacher’s role has

less control and more ambiguity. This change in role is needed because the student-
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centered task can produce unpredictable learning experiences and the teacher must

remain flexible to address the learning opportunities as they come up. In TBLT the

teacher’s role is to motivate the group process toward its goal, stressing fluency

over accuracy of form. With noisier classrooms due to the increased small-group

work and the learners encouraged to become more self-motivated, it is no surprise

that a PPP-oriented teacher would see a TBLT classroom as chaotic. All of these

differences taken together make the successful execution of a task-based curriculum

a challenge.

Despite the differences between PPP and TBLT, teacher cognition can be

changed and the skills mastered. There are many examples of successful executions

of task-based instruction. Ellis (2009) cited Chiang Mai University in Thailand that

successfully implement TBLT and saw increased learner independence. He

attempted to “sort out the misunderstandings” (p.234) regarding criticism of task-

based instruction by stating that the critics don’t understand the versatility of tasks

nor their pedagogical foundation. He positioned tasks as a complement to form-

focused instruction, not a replacement for it. He reminded critics that teachers

needed to know what a task is, how to manage the process, and be involved in the

developing of task materials. Another example of a successful task-assisted

execution is the first TBLT course to be offered in a Slavic language. It was a 47-

week intensive (30 hours per week) Basic Czech Course that was influenced by task-

based instruction. The results were high student satisfaction, greater risk-taking,

increased knowledge of how to learn, an opportunity for non-boring repetition, and

natural error correction. Students liked the tasks and the results showed that they
Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 8

learned from them. And, the tasks were fun for the teachers, too (Leaver & Kaplan

2004).

To assure consistent execution, teacher-training programs need to

incorporate not only teacher education, but also collaborative sessions and

classroom observations. The Junior Faculty Development Program (JFDP) at the

American Language Center in Chisinau, Moldova successfully used this strategy.

Junior faculty members from universities in Eurasia were selected for one year of

academic study in the United States. Prior to their departure, they attended an EFL

task-based course to improve their fluency in English. The EFL teachers were

trained at a 5-day seminar, conducted by Betty Lou Leaver, an establish TBLT

expert. They created classroom activities, designed syllabi, and altered existing

lessons to include task-based instruction. The collaborative activity of having the

teachers create their own syllabi was seen as invaluable for motivation and support.

Then, the teachers were observed by a supervisor in the classroom and received

feedback on their adherence to program goals. This three legged stool approach of

education, collaboration, and observation resulted in the JFDT EFL program

graduates performing better than their peers who did not take the EFL program.

They achieved higher TOEFL scores and demonstrated better fluency when studying

in their specialties at the American university. (Cozonac, 2004). Even though the

author found variances in execution of task-based instruction between the teachers,

the combined impact on overall student performance was positive.

Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 9

Contextual Factors Impact on TBLT Execution

In addition to the cognitive changes and new skills that task-based instruction

requires, certain contextual factors may also contribute to the curriculum-execution gap.

Teachers might not execute on their beliefs because of external factors like class size,

student capabilities, assessment, and time constraints (Van den Branden, 2006). While

some contextual factors may be outside the teacher’s control, there are examples where

schools, teachers, and students are joined in a common purpose and overcome the

obstacles. For a private school for English language education in Brazil, this common

purpose was a business reason---the survival of the school. The school needed to attract

more students and the teachers decided that offering PPP was no competitive advantage,

so they adopted TBLT. This move was seen as risky since PPP and audio-lingual were

the norm. Ramping up and learning how to teach TBLT was difficult and the school lost

50 of their 80 students the first year. However, the teachers decided to stick with their

plan and were ultimately able to successfully address student concerns through

innovative solutions. Building trust with the students that tasks really work necessitated

explaining the objectives of each task stage repeatedly. When students complained that

they couldn’t tell if they were making any progress, the school had a English native-

speaking teacher visit the class and talk with the students about topics that they had

covered in their tasks. The regular teacher observed. The goals of this approach was to

allow the students to have additional oral practice and to prove to them that they had

absorbed vocabulary during task execution. It also helped to identify weak learners and

those with specific pronunciation problems. In addition, when students complained that
Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 10

they didn’t have enough grammar input, their answer was to repeat the tasks, practice

grammar post-task, and have a 3-hour Grammar Marathon every two weeks with a

Portuguese native speaker. As a result of all of their innovative solutions, they found that

students were much more fluent who learned by task-based instruction, but unfortunately

they did not speak accurately enough to pass the international exams. So, the school

changed from the UCLES First Certificate in English where accuracy is more important

to the Certificate in Communicative Skills in English (CCSE) that tested oral skills. By

matching the test to the goals of TBLT, their students earned an 85% success rate on the

CCSE exam (Lopez 2004). And, happily for the school, they saw a record level of

student enrollment. This example demonstrates ingenuity borne from crisis. Because this

school in Brazil faced a critical problem, its teachers were able to reach consensus to try a

new approach. Plus, they persevered long enough to adjust the execution to respond to

the needs of their constituents and changed the assessment test to better match the output

of TBLT. So contextual problems can be overcome with the consistent determination to

make it work.

Beyond Cognition, Skills, and Context

The Brazilian school gave a small-scale example how it addressed the three

proposed reasons for the TBLT curriculum- execution gap---teacher cognition, teacher

skill training, and contextual issues. But the difficulty of introducing a new pedagogical

idea on a large scale was evident in the Flanders TBLT initiative where these issues were

also addressed, teachers still modified TBLT curriculum, but the results were more

mixed. The results were reported in several research studies following the 1990
Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 11

implementation of task-based SLA instruction of basic Dutch in the Flemish-speaking

section of Belgium. This lengthy educational initiative, financed by the Centre for

Language and Education (CLE) at the University of Leuven, Belgium, was mainstream,

large-scale, and comprehensive. In 2006, the program impacted 1,200 state schools and

other educational settings, and spanned across college-level, adult vocational, immigrant

children, and primary/secondary mainstream education. The concern was the influx of

migrants, from children to adults, who did not speak Dutch and the future social problems

this may cause due to a lack of effective integration into Dutch-speaking society. The

problem was well understood and the need recognized. CLE financed the program,

giving strong incentives to the Educational Priority Policy (EPP) schools to implement

TBLT. CLE saw teacher education and support as vital, so each school was assigned

trained TBLT counselors. Other contextual support included funding for extra “class-

free” hours for collaborative work, in-service training, and prepared syllabuses. The

TBLT syllabuses were offered, but not enforced, which resulted in a majority of schools

not replacing their older materials with task-based. Counselors gave teachers a wide

degree of freedom to reconcile the old system with the new, and advised them that there

was no “right way” to execute the tasks from the syllabus, but rather task design was the

structure that afforded the opportunity to learn. Another training method the counselors

used was classroom observation and feedback in order to increase teacher self-awareness

on why they taught the way they did. This self-awareness approach offered indirect

opportunities to promote TBLT, which was seen as more effective since teachers liked

the chance to experiment and reflect. After the support program had been implemented

for three years, research confirmed the teacher’s selective uptake of TBLT philosophy
Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 12

(Devlieger, Goossens, Labth, & Denolf ,2003). Syllabi worked only with guided

coaching, group work was not adopted, and the need for classroom control was still

important to teachers. These results demonstrated that, even when an educational

initiative has broad mandate, resources, and longevity, there are still strong forces that

prompted the teacher to decide how to adopt, revise, or reject elements of a program.

Cultural Norms and TBLT Execution

Even when teacher cognition, teacher skills, and contextual factors are addressed,

such as in the Flanders project, it is evident that these reasons do not give the total

explanation for the TBLT curriculum-execution gap. Strong cultural norms have also

slowed down its acceptance. It has taken twenty years for TBLT to mature as a

methodology and “educational innovations of any sort are notoriously difficult to

accomplish” stated Michael H. Long and Jack C. Richards, the Cambridge Applied

Linguistics Series editors (Van den Branden, 2006, p.xi). The cultural norms within

education are notoriously slow to change. Supporting this point were the results of a

research study at the University of Alberta, Canada (Ogilvie & Dunn, 2010). The study’s

goal was to investigate the effects of a constructivist-based curriculum course on student

teachers’ attitude toward TBLT and the subsequent usage of the technique during their

student teaching practicum. The constructivist approach uses the student’s knowledge

and experiences as the starting point. It focuses on developing the student teacher’s

capabilities to make good instructional decisions, not to train on a particular

methodology. It was felt that the course would benefit the acceptance of TBLT, albeit

not radically because of its shortness. At the beginning of this 10-week course, the

survey results showed that the students had more favorable views, based on their own
Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 13

experience and beliefs, of the PPP example lesson than the TBLT one. By the end of the

course, the TBLT disposition score had an overall increase, but with wide variance

between students. The researcher’s conclusions were that the students had begun to

question their previous views of second language teaching as a result of the course.

However, even though they were modestly more inclined toward TBLT starting their

five-week practicum, they didn’t utilize TBLT much during the practicum. Reasons

given were a lack of confidence in the pedagogical basis for TBLT, cultural norms, and

lack of mentor support. The first reason might be answered with more classroom

experience or training. The last two raise new issues. During their practicum, the student

teachers felt that the cultural norm of the teacher-centered classroom was still dominant

(Britzman, 2003) They also felt that they were expected to show their expertise through

grammar presentations and to conform to the mentor teacher’s teaching style so as not to

disrupt the pattern established in the class. It was evident that the practicum culture

molded conformity. The third problem encountered was a lack of support from the

mentor teacher since they were not familiar with TBLT. When the student teachers had

difficulty executing a task, the mentor could not help with the problem, so they converted

back to familiar PPP teaching practices. The researcher’s conclusions were that while

pre-service education could be effective to expand future teacher’s mindsets to accept

new innovations, a better translation of theory into practice was needed. If newly minted

teachers are seen as optimum candidates to introduce new teaching methods, certainly

finding an answer to the theory to practice divide is important. But even more

importantly, if such a bridge were found, experienced teachers could be more effectively

influenced to change their cognitive mindsets.

Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 14

Research Divisiveness Impact on TBLT Execution

The problem of the divide between teacher research and academic research affects

how fast teachers change their belief systems and contributes to the TBLT curriculum-

execution gap. This problem can be traced to fundamental differences in how researchers

and teachers view each other’s discourses (Bartels, 2003). The goal of academic

research is to add to the generalized knowledge within the field, while the purpose of

teacher research is to expand their own personal, context-specific base of knowledge.

The field of applied linguistics expects language teachers to understand the findings of

academic research, but not vice versa. The perspective differences between researchers

and teachers regarding task-based second language instruction are most strikingly noticed

by the types of research topics each chooses. TBLT academic researchers tended to

focus on the task as the unit for research whereas the TBLT teacher researchers focused

on the task as a pedagogical tool. Academic research topics included such definite task

elements like planning time, task familiarity, task repetition, and task complexity. In

contrast, teacher research included such topics as matching tasks to skill level, using the

task to introduce new language, and motivating students to engage in tasks. The

narrowness of the academic research topics made it difficult for teachers to see the

relevance to the classroom. And, academic researchers show little interest in researching

the tenets proposed by influential teacher task-based researchers like Jane Willis (Sumada

& Bygate ,2008). Breaking down the barrier between these two discourses, both for

teacher education programs as well as for in-service education for practicing teachers,

would provide a richer exchange of ideas and the potential acceleration of the adoption of

new, innovative techniques like TBLT.

Running head: INVESTIGATING THE TBLT CURRICULUM-EXECUTION GAP 15

Conclusion

This paper examined possible reasons why teachers executed task-based instruction

differently than the “classic” curriculum. This examination indicated that even when teacher

cognition, teacher skills, and contextual factors were addressed, the prescribed TBLT curriculum

was not fully executed. To modify what teachers know, believe and execute takes more than an

understanding of the theory. It takes making that theory tangible through participating in syllabi

design, peer collaboration, classroom observation, feedback, and ongoing education. To

overcome the strong inertia of cultural norms, academic and teacher researchers need to bridge

their different perspectives so that a more rapid uptake of innovative solutions like TBLT is

possible.

In early coal mines canaries were used to detect dangerous levels of methane and

carbon monoxide. A dead canary signaled immediate evacuation from the mine. One

meaning of the phrase “canary in a coalmine” is to describe an indicator of future events.

The future of task-based instruction may well be the canary in the coalmine for the field

of second language acquisition. Education Secretary Arne Duncan claims that the U.S.

Department of Education is trying to become an “engine of innovation” (Blumenstein,

2010) by funding educational institutions and non-profits that are doing things

differently. “Educational innovation” cannot afford to be seen as an oxymoron by constituents

who are demanding that innovative solutions be developed and successfully launched to quickly

improve results. If one agrees that TBLT is one of the major trends in second language

acquisition over the past 25 years (Kumaravadivelu,2006b), then its future success

signals an ability to find new ways to address educational challenges.