Anyway, one aspect of teacher methodology I’m quite
interested in is Task Based Learning (TBL), a theory that was best developed by
Jane Willis in the 90s. In her book, A
Framework for Task-Based Learning, she identified the main stages of a TBL
lesson as:
a pre task or preparation phase,
the task with time to plan and report back on it,
a post-task language analysis
This already seems to be a reversal of a traditional model
of language teaching where a teacher presents a new language point and then
gets the students to practise it through exercises and speaking activities.
Instead, the students are engaged in them or topic first. Then they are given a
communicative task to complete – the key with a ‘task’ is that it must involve
some kind of knowledge ‘gap’ (something they don’t know and can only learn by
discussing with their partners) and some kind of final ‘goal’ or aim which the
students have to discuss and work together to agree on. Examples could include
things like writing and answering questionnaires to discover who is the most
extroverted person, finding a certain number of similarities and differences
between how their two countries were different 100 years ago, planning a dinner
party or a trip out (maybe on a budget) or piecing together a story from a few
pictures/words.
The key is that the
language is not presented first so that students are given opportunity to have
truly free production – they have to
complete these quite complex tasks using their own linguistic knowledge –
rather than being forced a language point and students having to struggle to
use it. When the task is completed, the students have to report back to the
teacher – this means that if students have used limited language doing the task
they at least have to think more carefully about how to explain this in English
at this stage.
After the task, the teacher can then look at some
language. They could do this by presenting a possible example answer to the
task or by encouraging students to analyse some of the materials they used to
complete the task and try and discover the grammar rules for themselves. This way,
task-based learning can be tied in with a traditional grammar syllabus. So, for
example, if the syllabus requires you to teach ‘used to’ for past habits, you
could do the task where students have to compare their countries in the past
and discuss how they were the same and what was different. The advantage
of doing it this way round is that you could use students personal examples
(i.e. what they discussed in the task) to present the language. This means that
students should find the grammar or vocabulary points easier to understand
because they’ve already built up the idea of what they’re discussing in the
task. Also, the report can be moved to the end so, after the task, the language
is presented through a few examples that the teacher heard and then the
students have to use the target language in their report. This way it is close
to a Test-Teach-Test approach (listen to the students to see what language they
know, present language they’re not using, test to see if they can use it in
their report) which emans teachers can identify the language students need to learn rather than just choosing
for them.
So, task-based learning has quite a few advantages. It
encourages free discussion in class which, actually, then goes on to help
students understand new grammar/vocabulary, etc. It also gives real aims and
goals to learning new language, not just learning grammar for no reason,
simulating tasks that students may have to actually do outside the classroom.
Also, it’s a great method for those many students who have ‘book-learnt’ lots
of grammar at school but rarely had chance to practise the language. And most
of all, it’s fun! students get talking and interesting discussion can come up!
If you are a teacher or teacher trainer – look into it and give it a go. Have
fun!
Neil
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