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TASK-BASED METHOD (microteaching-task-based_method-prezentacia.doc)

TASK-BASED APPROACH

Like communicative language teaching, there are some more approaches that make communication central, for example content-based, task-based and the participatory approach. These three approaches have in common teaching through communication rather than for it. They do not begin with functions or any other language content. In these approaches rather than “learning to use English”, students “use English to learn it”.

But while the communicative learning teaching lesson is designed to get students to practice making predictions, a communicative function, the task-based lesson does not focus on a particular function, or even a particular form of the language. The teacher uses a wide variety of linguistic forms, which the context made clear. The 'departure from CLT is not in the tasks themselves, but in the accompanying pedagogic focus on task completion instead of on the language used in the process.

Task-based Instruction

Task-based instruction is not a new method. It puts task at the center of one’s methodological focus. It views the learning process as a set of communicative task that are directly linked to the curricular goals they serve, the purposes of which extend beyond the practise of language for its own sake.

As with content-based instruction, a task-based approach aims to provide learners with a natural context for language use. As learners work to complete a task, they have abundant opportunity to interact. Such interaction

is thought to facilitate language acquisition as learners have to work to understand each other and to express their own meaning. By doing so, they have to check to see if they have comprehended correctly and, at times, they have to seek clarification. By interacting with others, they get to listen to language which may be beyond their present ability, but which may be assimilated into their knowledge of the target language for use at a later time. The central purpose that it is concerned with is language learning, and tasks present this in the form of a problem-solving negotiation between knowledge that the learner holds and new knowledge.

By the task-based method, the language practiced in the classroom is not predetermined, but rather derives from the nature of a particular project that students elect to do. For example, students might decide to take on a project such as publishing a school newspaper in the target language.

The key assumptions of task-based instruction are summarized as:

1. The focus is on process rather than product.
2. Basic elements are purposeful activities and tasks that emphasize communication and meaning.
3. Learners learn language by interacting communicatively and purposefully while engaged in the activities and tasks.
4. Activities and tasks can be either those that learners might need to achieve in real life or those that have a pedagogical purpose specific to the classroom.
5. Activities and tasks of a task-based syllabus are sequenced according to difficulty.
6. The difficulty of a task depends on a range of factors including the previous experience of the learner, the complexity of the task, the language required to undertake the task, and the degree of support available.

Principles

1.) The class activities have a perceived purpose and a clear outcome.

2.) A pre-task, in which students work through a similar task to one that they will later do individually, is a helpful way to have students see the logic involved in what they are being asked to do. It will also allow the language necessary to complete the task to come into play.

3.) The teacher breaks down into smaller steps the logical thinking process necessary to complete the task. The demand on thinking made by the activity should be just above the level which learners can meet without help.

4.) The teacher needs to seek ways of knowing how involved the students are in the process, so she can make adjustments in light of the learners' perceptions of relevance and their readiness to learn. Such teacher-class negotiation ensures that as many students as possible in a mixed ability class grasp the nature of the activity.

5.) The teacher does not consciously simplify her language; she uses whatever language is necessary to have students comprehend the current step in the pre-task. Here she switched from an abbreviated WH-question to a yes/no question. This switch is a natural strategy that proficient speakers use when interacting with less proficient speakers inside and outside of the classroom.

6.) The teacher supplies the correct target form by reformulating or recasting what the students have said.

7.) A jigsaw task, where students have to listen to different parts of a total set of information they need to complete a task, gives them plenty of opportunity to engage in authentic speaking and listening and provides opportunities to develop their comprehension and speaking skills.

8.) Students should receive feedback on their level of success in completing the task. The overall focus is on meaning.

9.) Students have input into the design and the way that they carry out the task. This gives them more opportunity for authentic and meaningful interaction.

Types of tasks

Research on task-based learning has attempted to identify types of tasks that enhance learning (such as open-ended, structured, teacher-fronted, small group and pair work) to define task-specific learner factors (for example roles, proficiency levels and styles).

In general we can say that there are three different types of tasks:

1. An information-gap activity, involves the exchange of information among participants in order to complete a task. For example, an information-gap activity might involve a student describing a picture for another student to draw or students drawing each others' family trees after sharing information. In this lesson, students had to exchange information within their groups in order to complete the timetable.

2. An opinion-gap activity requires that students give their personal preferences, feelings, or attitudes in order to complete a task. For instance, students might be given a social problem, such as high unemployment and be asked to come up with a series of possible solutions. Another task might be to compose a letter of advice to a friend who has sought their counsel about a dilemma. In our lesson, the students were only at the advanced-beginning level. Their opinion-gap task was a rather simple one which involved students' surveying their classmates about their favourite subjects.

3. A reasoning-gap activity requires students to derive some new information they have been given. For example, students might be given a railroad timetable and asked to work out the best route to get from one particular city to another or they might be asked to solve a riddle.

Academic tasks are defined as having four important dimensions:

1. the products students are asked to produce
2. the operations they are required to use in order to produce these products
3. the cognitive operations required and the resources available
4. the accountability system involved

Task-Based Language Teaching refers to an approach based on the use of tasks as the core unit of planning and instruction in language teaching. Some of its proponents present it as a logical development of Communicative Language Teaching since it draws on several principles that formed part of the communicative language teaching movement from the 1980s. For example:

1. Activities that involve real communication are essential for language learning.
2. Activities in which language is used for carrying out meaningful tasks promote learning.
3. Language that is meaningful to the learner supports the learning process.

Task-Based Language Teaching proposes the notion of "task" as a central unit of planning and teaching. Although definitions of task vary in TBLT, there is a commonsensical understanding that a task is an activity or goal that is carried out using language, such as finding a solution to a puzzle, reading a map and giving directions, making a telephone call, writing a letter, or reading a set of instructions and assembling a toy.

Task-based training identified several key areas of concern:

1. analysis of real-world task-use situations
2. the translation of these into teaching tasks descriptions
3. the detailed design of instructional tasks
4. the sequencing of instructional tasks in classroom training/teaching

Four major categories of team performance function are recognized:

1. Orientation functions

  (processes for generating and distributing information necessary to task accomplishment to team members)

2. Organizational functions

  (processes necessary for members to coordinate actions necessary for task performance)

3. Adaptation functions

  (processes occurring as team members adapt their performance to each other to complete the task)

4. Motivational functions

  (defining team objectives and "energizing the group" to complete the task)

Task-based language teaching is motivated primarily by a theory of learning rather than a theory of language. However, several assumptions about the nature of language and learning can be said to underline current approaches to TBLT.

Theory of language:

1. LANGUAGE IS PRIMARILY A MEANS OF MAKING MEANING
2. MULTIPLE MODELS OF LANGUAGE INFORMATION
3. LEXICAL UNITS ARE CENTRAL IN LANGUAGE USE AND LANGUAGE LEARNING
4. "CONVERSATION" IS THE CENTRAL FOCUS OF LANGUAGE AND THE KEYSTONE OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Theory of learning:

1. TASKS PROVIDE BOTH THE INPUT AND OUTPUT Processing NECESSARY FOR LANGUAGE Acquisition
2. TASK ACTIVITY AND ACHIEVEMENT ARE MOTIVATIONAL
3. LEARNING DIFFICULTY CAN BE NEGOTIATED AND FINE-TUNED FOR PARTICULAR PEDAGOGICAL PURPOSES

The syllabus:

The differences between a conventional language syllabus and a task-based one are discussed here.

A conventional syllabus typically specifies the content of a course from among these categories:

- language structures

- functions

- topics and theme s

- macro-skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking)

- competencies

- text types

- vocabulary targets

Nunan (1989) suggests that a syllabus for task-based method might specify two types of tasks:

I.  real-world tasks, which are designed to practice or rehearse those tasks that are found to be important in

   a needs analysis and turn out to be important and useful in the real world

II. pedagogical tasks, which have a psycholinguistic base and research but do not necessarily reflect real-world

   tasks

In addition to selecting tasks as the basis for a TBLT syllabus, the ordering of tasks also has to be determined. We can see that the intrinsic difficulty of tasks has been proposed as a basis for the sequencing of tasks, but task difficulty is itself a concept that is not easy to determine. Honeyfield (1993) offers the following considerations:

1. Procedures, or what the learners have to do to derive output from input

2. Input text

3. Output required

a) Language paterns: vocabulary, structures, discourse structures, processability,

b) Skills, both macro-skills and sub-skills

c) World knowledge or "topic content"

d) Text handling or conversation strategies

4. Amount and type of help given

5. Role of teachers and learners

6. Time allowed

7. Motivation

8. Confidence

9. Learning styles

Types of learning and teaching activities:

In the literature on TBLT, several attempts have been made to group tasks into categories, as a basis for task design and description. Willis (1996) proposes six task types built on more or less traditional knowledge hierarchies. She labels her task examples as follows:

1. listing

2. ordering and sorting

3. comparing

4. problem solving

5. sharing personal experiences

6. creative tasks

Pica, Kanagy, and Falodun (1993) classify tasks according to the type of interaction that occurs in task accomplishment and give the following classification:

1. Jigsaw tasks:

These involve learners combining different pieces of information to form a whole (e.g., three individuals or groups may have three different parts of a story and have to piece the story together).

2. Information-gap tasks:

One student or group of students has one set of information and another student or group has a complementary set of information. They must negotiate and find out what the other party's information is in order to complete an activity.

3. Problem-solving tasks:        

Students are given a problem and a set of information. They must arrive at a solution to the problem. There is generally a single resolution of the outcome.

4. Decision-making tasks:

Students are given a problem for which there are a number of possible outcomes and they must choose one through negotiation and discussion.

5. Opinion exchange tasks:

Learners engage in discussion and exchange of ideas. They do not need to reach agreement.

Learner roles

A number of specific roles for learners are assumed in current proposals for task-based instructions. Some of these overlap with the general roles assumed for learners in Communicative Language Teaching while others are created by the focus on task completion as a central learning activity. Primary roles that are implied by task work are:

1. GROUP PARTICIPANT
2. MONITOR
3. RISK-TAKER AND INNOVATOR

Teacher roles

Additional roles are also assumed for teachers in task-based instructions, including:

1. SELECTOR AND SEQUENCER OF TASKS
2. PREPARING LEARNERS FOR TASKS
3. CONSCIOUSNESS-RAISING

What these various understandings all emphasize, however, is the centrality of the task itself in a language course and, for task-based teaching as an overall approach, the importance of organizing a course around communicative tasks that learners need to engage in outside the classroom.

After Skehan (1993) there is a capsualization of a task as an activity in which:

• meaning is primary,

• there is some communication problem to solve,

• there is some sort of relationship to comparable real-world activities,

• task completion has some priority,

• the assessment of the task is in terms of outcome.

In task-based instruction, the priority is not the bits and pieces of language, but rather the functional purposes for which language must be used. While content-based instruction focuses on subject-matter content, task-based instruction focuses on a whole set of real-world tasks themselves. The input for tasks can come from a variety of authentic sources:

The task-based method is not linguistic in the traditional sense of just focusing on grammar or phonology; but by maintaining the centrality of functions like greeting people, expressing opinions, requesting information, etc., the course goals center on learners' pragmatic language competence.

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Richards, Jack C.; Rogers, Theodore S.: Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Larsen-Freeman, Diane: Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching.

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