Commentaries
Commentary
4.2.1
This is nice and short and feels 'workable', but unfortunately it doesn't
mention the word 'language' anywhere. So a learner could do a classroom
activity without hearing or uttering a word of the target language and
still be said to have completed a task. In the context of language
classrooms, this does not seem to be an adequate definition. Also, the
idea of the teacher 'controlling and regulating' in these learner-centred
days may be controversial. Prabhu was writing 20 years ago in the context
of primary education; maybe we need a different definition for teaching
in HE in the 21st century.
Commentary
4.2.2
Here we have learners and classrooms and activity all included, but again
there is no mention of language. So although much more up-to-date than
Prabhu's definition (number 1 above), this does not offer any real improvement.
In fact, if anything it is vaguer than Prabhu in that there is no mention
of 'outcome'. It occurs to me that taking the register or doing a weekly
spelling test could be defined as 'tasks' in Cameron's terms, although
I don't think these classroom events would be considered as tasks by most
teachers. So this definition does not seem to help us much either!
Commentary
4.2.3
For me, this is the most helpful of all the definitions. All the essential
elements are there (learners, language, activity, goal, outcome). Although
there is no explicit qualification that focus is on meaning rather than
form, this is arguably implied in the phrase 'learners use whatever language
resources they have'. In other publications, e.g. A Framework for Task-based
Learning (1996) page 36, Jane
Willis does make this qualification. You may like to consider including
such a qualification in your own definition.
| Activity / unit title and source | Comment |
|
Activity 88 'PMI', pages 97-98 Friederike Klippel (1984), Keep Talking, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Task type: Step 1 = listing, sorting (ideas are sorted as P, M or I). Steps 2 and 3 involve comparing. Variations 1 and 2 involve comparing (evaluating) and ordering (ranking).
|
Yes, this is a task, as are most of the activities in the book that it came from, although not labelled as such. There is a clear non-linguistic outcome: the production of lists of plus, minus and interesting aspects of an idea for later class discussion, or (variations 1 and 2) for evaluation or ranking. True, there are structural and functional language aims listed (conditional, comparatives, making suggestions), but there is no requirement in the task for students to actually use these. The presence of these language aims is probably more a reflection of the prevalent expectations of the period when this book was first published (original German, 1983, English translation, 1984), and it is revealing that the author makes little mention of language aims in her introduction. Instead, she stresses the need for 'message-oriented communication', or mitteilungsbezogene Kommunikation, which, she observes, occurs in 'those rare and precious moments in foreign language teaching when the target language is actually used as a means of communication.' (page 3). This statement carries strong echoes of our discussion of task definitions, and indeed this book, which is a collection of 'communicative fluency activities for language teaching', is an excellent source of ideas for tasks that could form the basis of task-based lessons. Most of the activities could be used for any language simply by translating the instructions. |
|
Activity 30 'Suggestive shapes', page xxi, Games material sheet 30, Rules sheet 30 Jill Hadfield (1990), Intermediate Communication Games Nelson, London Task type: problem solving (may include some comparing or sorting, depending on how students choose to tackle it)
|
This is another example of a task going by a different name. It has a clear outcome - for one student of a pair to arrange their pictures in the correct order by following the descriptions and instructions from their partner, in a classic 'information gap' activity. Like 'PMI' from Keep Talking, this is a task from a supplementary source book which contains 'activities with a non-linguistic goal or aim [during which] it will be necessary to use language' (page v). Hadfield claims that 'by careful construction of the task, it will be possible to specify in advance roughly what language will be required', but does not elaborate on this; I have my doubts about this possibility. Although designed to be used during 'the free stage of the traditional progression from presentation through to practice to free communication' (page v), many of the activities in this book could be used within a task-based framework and like those in Klippel's book, could be simply adapted for any language by using the existing (photocopiable) visual prompts and translating the instructions. |
|
Lesson 27 'Can I have a sandwich, please?' pages 60-61 Simon Greenall (1997), Reward Starter (Student's Book), Heinemann, Oxford Task-type (exercise 3): problem solving
|
This lesson contains several activities. On page 60, the four activities are aimed at pre-teaching essential vocabulary (this is a book for beginner students) and would be suitable for a pre-task, introductory phase (we will discuss this stage in 4.4). On page 61, activities 1 and 2 of 'Listening' and 1 and 2 of 'Functions' serve to present and practise the expressions in the cafe dialogue. In the 'Listening and Speaking' section there are 6 activities, of which only exercise 3 could be considered a task, with its non-linguistic outcome of guessing what two people choose from the menu, based on information gathering in the preceding listening exercise. The 'acting out conversations' in 4 and 6 are simply more practice of the expressions introduced earlier, with new food vocabulary inserted in activity 6. There is no outcome in either case - the students are not even acting to entertain their classmates. They are just 'going through the motions' of using language. Activity 5 resembles a task in that there is an outcome (to produce a typical menu for your country) but it is done individually and concerns listed lexical items only - so not much language use is involved. It is clearly here to serve as preparation for activity 6. The important point here is that role-play and 'acting out', while giving the appearance of communication, is not really communication at all, but practice in disguise. This sort of lesson is not untypical of even recently published language coursebooks. Many would argue that this sort of presentation - practice approach is necessary for lower level students (what do you think?). However, there are many activities in Reward (not presented here) that could be classified as tasks, suggesting that beginners can do these if given the opportunity. |
|
Unit 7 'Doing without', page 72 Liz and John Soars (1998),The New Headway English Course, Oxford University Press, Oxford Task-type: listing, comparing
|
This series of pre-reading and reading activities all have a clear message focus, although the outcomes could be made more specific (eg in pre-reading 2, asking students to list five ways in which their grandparents' lives fifty years ago contrast with life today, and in 3, instead of just writing two lists, conducting a small class survey). They all therefore merit the title 'task' according to our definition. Note how the initial presentation / checking of essential vocabulary (pre-reading 1) has been presented as a task in its own right, and how for the reading itself, students are given clear reasons to read through the setting of another series of tasks. When I discussed these tasks with Jane Willis, she suggested a more radical adaptation in that you could expand the pre-reading tasks, especially 2 and 3, to form the core of a task-based lesson of the type described in 4.4 and then set the reading tasks for homework. |
|
Unit 12 Lesson B 'They didn't drink tea' page 51 (teacher's book) and page 51 (student's book) Michael Swan and Catherine Walter (1984), The Cambridge English Course 1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge Task type: none. |
This is quite clearly and unashamedly a form-focused lesson that aims to introduce learners to the negative form of the simple past tense in a meaningful way. It is a classic 'communicative' presentation lesson, with a practice activity in exercise 3. Instead of another, 'free' practice or production activity at the end, there is a listening exercise based on an authentic recording. So there are no tasks in our sense of the word here. However, some of this sort of material could be useful for the language focus stage of a task-based lesson (see 4.5), eg if the students had done a task talking about their life when they were children ('think of five things about your life when you were a child that are different now, and tell your partner'), you could play them the tape provided for activity 4, and then let them see the transcript so they could compare this with the way they expressed their ideas. It is always worth looking at ways of adapting non-task based material like this to save you time with your own materials preparation. |
| Examples of tasks |
|
Commentary
4.2.6
Some of the example tasks are clearly not suitable for beginner students;
eg comparing newspaper articles would require a fairly high level of competence
in reading. Performing a sketch or short play, however, could be done
very simply at low levels or in a much more sophisticated way for advanced
students. Apparently simple tasks like 'spot the difference' can be made
sufficiently challenging for even advanced level students, for example
by allowing students to look at their version of the picture for a set
time to memorize it before starting the task, and then racing to see which
pair can find the most differences from memory in one minute. Others,
such as 'tell someone about the first time you travelled abroad', are
very simple in their design, but can be performed to hugely varying levels
of sophistication, from low intermediate to advanced level. For low level
students you may elaborate your instructions by giving simple prompts
such as 'Where did you go?'; 'When did you go?'; Who did you go with?';
Why did you go?'. For advanced students, you may ask for a detailed account
of their feelings the first day they arrived, their impression of the
people, how they liked the food / climate / surroundings, whether their
expectations were realized or whether they had any shocks or surprises,
etc. Note that it is in the detailed instructions or prompts that the
level of the task is adjusted.
So the suitability of a task for a particular level of student depends less on its type than on very specific aspects of its design, sometimes including language factors such as level required for input information (reading newspapers), but more often 'challenge factors' such as time limits or complexity of materials (a complex versus a simple map), or just different expectations of performance, with these expectations being made clear through detailed instructions.
