ADVANCED METHODOLOGY

FOR LANGUAGE TEACHING

Week 4 – TASK BASED

LANGUAGE TEACHING
 AGENDA

❖ What is task-based language teaching?

❖ Principles & planning of task-based
lesson
❖ Task types and task selection in task-
based language teaching
What is a task?
A task needs to meet the following four principles:

▪ The primary focus must be on meaning

(i.e. students must be trying to use language rather than to learn it)

▪ There must be some kinds of gap which helps

motivate the exchange of information or opinions.
▪ Students must mainly rely on their own linguistic and
non-linguistic resources to perform the task.
▪ There is a communicative outcome.
Task based language teaching
➢ An approach based on the use of tasks as the core
unit of planning and instruction in language
teaching (Richard &Rogers, 2001, p.223)

➢ TBLT is a perspective within a CLT framework (it

views the learning process as a set of communicative
tasks that are directly linked to the curricula goals they
serve).
Key Principles of TBLT
❖ Making errors is natural and is considered as a part of the process in
acquiring the target language.
❖ Exposure to comprehensible input is crucial.
❖ Learning tasks facilitating learners to engage in interactions are
essential.
❖ Learners need to be encouraged to produce the target language as
producing the target language facilitates learning.
❖ Although language production may be encouraged from the early
stage in the learning process, it is reasonable to allow a silent
period.
❖ Focus on form is necessary.
❖ Second language teaching and learning pace should be made
reasonable for both learners with higher and lower aptitude.
Key Principles of TBLT (cont)

❖ Language learning tasks should be varied to cater for the

needs for both extrovert and introvert learners.
❖ Learning tasks should encourage learners to attend to both
meaning and forms and be varied in order to accommodate
learners with different learning strategy preferences.
❖ The choice of teaching and learning tasks and content should
be based on learner age.
❖ Learning tasks should arouse and maintain learners-learning
motivation.
TBLT LESSON PLANNING
Design of a task-based lesson
There are three phases in a task-based lesson, each with a
different aim:

Phase Aim
Pre-task phase To help students prepare to perform the task.

Main task phase To enable students to perform the task in ways that will
assist language development.
Post-task phase To extend the task and/ or to focus on any language
problems that occurred during the main task phase.
Participatory structures

Participatory structure refers to how the activities involved in the lesson

are organized in the classroom. There are four possibilities:
❖ Teacher-class (i.e. an activity is performed by the teacher with
the whole class)
❖ Student-class (i.e. the activity is performed by a student with the
whole class)
❖ Student-student (i.e. students work in pairs or small groups
to complete the activity)
❖ Individual students (i.e. students complete the activity
working independently).
OPTIONS FOR PRE-TASK PHASE

The aim of the options is to help students be ready for the

main phase. This can be done via three ways:
▪ Arouse the students’ interest in the topic of the task.
▪ Activate content knowledge relevant to the
performance of a task
▪ Help students with the language they will need to
perform the task.
1. Motivating students
Create a competitive activity. (Ex: divide the class into teams and play
a quiz game)

2. Performing a similar task

The teacher works through a task with the whole class, scaffolding
their understanding and production, and helping them to see what
they need to do. Then the students work on a very similar task
independently.

3. Providing a model
Make a recording of a group of proficient speakers performing the
main task. The recording is then played to the class to show the
students how to perform the task.
4. Brainstorming
5. Linguistic support
If the task is cognitively demanding and the topic an unfamiliar one, it
would make sense to provide some linguistic support in the pre-task
phase of the lesson.

6. Strategy training
Some students are very good at doing something, but others are not.
Thus, it might be an idea to train them in the strategies they need. A
very useful strategy is requesting clarification.

7. Strategic planning
Planning is common for writing tasks but it also very helpful with oral
tasks. When students are given time to plan, they are likely to perform
the task more fluently, using more complex and sometimes more
accurate language.
OPTIONS FOR TASK PERFORMANCE
1. Participatory structure
Teachers should give careful thought to what participatory structures they
wish to include in the main-task phase and aim for variety.
(Ex. If the task is of the input-based type, e.g. involves students listening to descriptions
of instructions and demonstrating comprehension of the input by performing some
action.
2. Allocation of time for the main task
Consider whether to set a time limit for performing the task or allow the
students whatever time they need to complete it.
3. Access to task materials
Whether students should be allowed access to the input-data available in
the task materials while they perform a task.
4. Surprise information
Introduce a surprise-element into the task (Ex. Give students new
information when they are in the mid of the task completion)
OPTIONS FOR TASK PROCESS
Tasks give students the chance to initiate talk, to use a variety of
language functions, and to produce longer turns. Designed tasks need to
help students perform their roles as:

▪ Communicators (students engage fully in performing the task either as

listeners if the task is input-based or as speakers if the task is output-based)

▪ Listeners (students need to be prepared to participate in the negotiation for

meaning. This means that they must always work to understand the input and be
prepared to signal when they have not understood something)

▪ Learners (students need to seek assistance if they do not know a word or they
are not sure whether a grammatical structure is correct)
OPTIONS FOR POST TASK PHASE
❖ Extension activities
➢ One useful extension activity for a speaking task is to set the students a
writing activity.
➢ Another useful extension activity is task repetition. The first performance
of a task enables the learners to formulate ‘what’ they want to say while
the second performance allows for greater attention to be paid to the
choice of language.
❖ Language-focused options
➢ Delayed error correction
➢ Consciousness-raising tasks
➢ Proof listening
➢ Practice exercises
TASK SELECTION
Types of tasks
❖ Real-world vs. pedagogic tasks
▪ A real-world task is based on a situation that can be found in
everyday life.
▪ Tasks based on real-world situations have situational
authenticity.
❖ Focused vs. unfocused tasks
▪ Focused tasks are tasks that have been designed to elicit the
processing of some predetermined linguistic feature(s) – usually
a grammatical structure.
▪ When learners perform an unfocused task, there is no
expectancy that they will use specific language items that have
been pre-determined.
 ❖ A pedagogic classification of tasks
Cognitive/ linguistic Example of a task
operations
Listing Students make a list of their five favourite foods/ dishes. They
then work in pairs to find out which favourite dishes they have in
common.
Ordering Students are given a list of objects they can take with them to live
on a desert island. They are asked to rank them in order of how
useful they think each object will be for them. They work in pairs
to compare their rankings.
Comparing Students are shown two pictures of the same part of a town at
different points in their history (i.e. fifty years apart). They each
hold one of the pictures and work together to identify the
similarities and differences in their pictures.
Classifying Students are shown a range of different objects e.g. a book, a
pair of scissors, a paper cup, a needle, a scre-driver, a calendar
etc. and asked to classify the objects into two groups.
 ❖ A pedagogic classification of tasks (Cont)

Cognitive/ linguistic Example of a task

operations
Problem-solving Students work in groups. They are told a family’s total
monthly income and asked to work out a budget for the
family. They are given the items they should consider when
drawing up the budget (e.g. food; accommodation; electricity;
transport; entertainment).

Sharing personal Students are given a blank piece of paper and asked to draw
experiences a picture illustrating a memorable event in their lives. They
then work in pairs to describe their picture so that their
partner can draw it and in so doing tell them about the
memorable event.

Creative tasks Students are given a short story without its ending. They
read the story and then try to say how it ended. After
students have given their ideas for the end of the story, the
class votes on what they think is the best suggestion.
 ❖ Features of tasks
Design feature Example
+/- simple input Many tasks involve input which can be oral or written. The
input can consist of very simple language (e.g. high
frequency words; simple sentences) or complex language
(e.g. low frequency words; lots of subordination).

+/- familiar topic A task that allows students to recount their own personal
experience involves a familiar topic (e.g. their own family); an
unfamiliar topic is one that requires them to use information
outside their personal experience (e.g. a desert island).

+/ - here and now In a picture description task, the here-and-now condition

allows students to see the picture as they describe it; in a
there-and-then condition the picture is taken away before
they begin to describe it.
 ❖ Features of tasks
Design feature Example
+/- few elements A story task that involves two characters located in the same place involves
few elements; a task that that involves several characters in different locations
has many elements.

+/ - structured A map task that involves learners drawing in the route of a journey that is
information described in sequence provides structured information; the information is
unstructured if the description refers to parts of the journey out of sequence.

+/ - single demand A map task that asks a student to describe the route followed so another
student can draw the route on an identical map involves a single demand; the
task becomes a dual demand task if the maps of the two students differ in
some details so that the students need to deal with these differences as well
as handle the route.
+/- reasoning A story task that requires students to just narrate the main events has no
demands reasoning demands. A story task where students have to explain the actions
of the characters poses reasoning demands.

+/- simple outcome An opinion-gap task where students have to state or justify a single choice
(e.g. the items they would choose to have on a desert island) has a simple
outcome; where students have to state and justify why they have rejected
other choices (e.g. the reasons for the items they have not chosen to take
with them) has a more complex outcome.
Task type selection vs student level
❖ Beginner learners Simple information-gap tasks;
input-based tasks; closed outcome
tasks; content provided
❖ Intermediate learners Information-gap tasks: reasoning-gap
tasks; some simple opinion-gap tasks;
both input-based and output-based tasks;
a mixture of closed/ open outcome tasks;
some learner-generated content
❖ Advanced learners Mainly output-based tasks; open outcome
tasks; complex opinion-gap tasks
involving an input and an output part;
more learner-generated tasks.