TBL and your course
4.6.2.1
Belief check
4.6.2.2 Action point
4.6.2.3 SLA implications for syllabus design
4.6.2.4 Alternative approaches to syllabus
4.6.2.5 Product and process syllabuses
4.6.2.6 Tasks as part of a multi-strand syllabus
4.6.2.7 Task types, language skills and topics as major syllabus
strands
4.6.2.8 Action point
4.6.2.9 Language items as minor syllabus strands
4.6.2.10 Advanced level task-based syllabuses and real-world
tasks
4.6.2.11 Planning for language focus in the course programme
4.6.2.12 Cognitive challenge
4.6.2.13 Action point
4.6.2.14 Fitting tasks into an existing syllabus
4.6.2.15 Fitting tasks in with a set coursebook
4.6.2.16 Action point
- What sort of things do you think should be specified in a second language syllabus?
- Who do you think should design the syllabus or course, or choose the coursebook, for your learners?
- Do you think you could incorporate TBL into your course?
4.6.2.2
Action point
Get hold of a copy of the syllabus and / or module description for the
course that you teach, and your coursebook or examples of other teaching
materials. The syllabus may in fact be the contents of the coursebook
you use, if there is no formally specified syllabus.
If it is up to you to design your own syllabus jot down the major items that you have covered so far / plan to cover.
- Do tasks feature anywhere in the syllabus or teaching materials?
- If not, or if there are few tasks, can you spot any obvious places where you could included them? (For example, is project work required? Are speaking skills, or 'conversation' specified?)
4.6.2.3
SLA implications for syllabus design
From our discussion of task-based learning so far (see especially 4.4),
you will recall that knowledge about language and knowing how
to communicate in a language are two different things. Furthermore,
you will remember that 'instruction' taken in the traditional sense of
teaching students particular structures in a sequence determined by the
units in a coursebook, or some other external syllabus, does not, according
to research into second language acquisition, help learners to acquire
these structures for spontaneous communicative use.
Diligent learners may indeed learn the rules presented to them, and in test situations be able to reproduce examples of these, but they will revert to using their subconsciously acquired system once they stop focusing on form. This observation has some quite profound implications for the traditional structurally organized syllabus, since to try to teach items from such a syllabus appears to be futile if the aims of the course are to help learners gain communicative competence.
4.6.2.4
Alternative approaches to syllabus
You will probably be familiar with some alternative syllabuses: eg based
on the four skills - listening, speaking, reading and writing - or 'multi-syllabuses'
like Swan and Walter's (1984 onwards)
series of coursebooks based on an eight strand syllabus: lexical, structural,
phonological, thematic, functional, notional, situational and skills.
4.6.2.5
Product and process syllabuses
But even Swan and Walter's sophisticated and comprehensive syllabus is
missing something vital! Swan and Walter (1984:
vii) describe this multiple syllabus as capturing 'the complete range
of language items and language uses which our students will need to master'.
It may be true that this is what they need to 'master', but this
product view of syllabus omits any consideration of how
these things are to be acquired. Indeed, by providing only a checklist
of learning products, the syllabus designer is almost inviting the teacher
to adopt an approach in which each successive lesson is seen as an opportunity
to transmit to the students a few more increments from the final list.
A more pedagogically sound approach to syllabus design is to start not by thinking 'what should students learn?' (since we cannot predict this anyway) but 'what classroom activities will help students develop communicative competence?' The main organizing unit for a syllabus based on this approach would be concerned with the how of language learning, or in other words, the process.
4.6.2.6
Tasks as part of a multi-strand syllabus
If a multi-strand syllabus is adopted with processes (activities or tasks)
as the main organizing factor, there is no reason why functions, notions,
lexis and even structure should not be listed too. This approach is likely
to satisfy administrators and even students who expect a structural syllabus,
as long as we keep remembering that we are only listing product-type items
as those that learners will be exposed to, not what they necessarily learn.
Conversely, if you are obliged to follow a more traditional product syllabus, you could add your own task strand, representing the processes by which the various products are 'delivered' (or rather, by which the learners will be exposed to specified target language items).
Now would be a good time to complete the first part of the recommended reading for this activity cycle (see 4.6.7).
4.6.2.7
Task types, language skills and topics as major syllabus strands
We have already seen that we can identify a range of distinct task
types (Willis identifies six broad types, with numerous sub-types). It
would certainly be possible to use this task classification to plan a
syllabus that contained an appropriate range of task types and language
functions.
We have also seen that tasks can be designed to focus mainly on developing a particular language skill, so a three-strand syllabus specifying task types, functions and language skills would also be possible.
Topic (or theme) specification, based on students interests and needs, could form another syllabus strand to ensure that an appropriate range of vocabulary is covered, and in fact offers a logical starting point from which to begin planning series of tasks.
The ordering of tasks within a task-based syllabus cannot at present claim to be an exact science (although relative task difficulty is currently the subject of much research), but it does at least attempt to:
- order activities from the perspective of the learners; and
- base this order on a logical criterion.
In one of the interview extracts you saw earlier, Jane Willis gave a hint as to how task sequencing might be achieved. Here is the extract again:
Video JW22 Transcript
One way of designing a totally task-based
syllabus if you're not worried about language coverage would be to identify
the topics they needed and then for each topic think, 'Well, they need
an easy task to start with while they're learning the vocabulary, so you
might do a listing task, then you might do a classifying task, where they
work with the list that they've built up, then you might go into a problem-solving
task, but all based on the same topic, so they're using the same topic
lexis, the same topic vocabulary, to do lots of different things, and
there are different cognitive challenges, and different types of signalling
would be needed for the different kinds of tasks so you might want three
or four different kinds of tasks on each topic.
- Note down two or three themes or topics that would be of interest and relevance to your students. These may already be included in your existing syllabus or coursebook.
- For each topic, think of between three and six different tasks, covering reading, writing, speaking and / or listening (as appropriate to your students).
To save yourself doing unnecessary work, check to see if there is anything in your coursebook that could be adapted, or that is already a good task. If you are including reading tasks, do you have suitable texts available? (Maybe there is one in the coursebook, but is it authentic?) If not, can you find some? See Commentary 1 for some suggestions.
4.6.2.9
Language items as minor syllabus strands
Of course, further syllabus strands to topic, task type, functions and
skills could also be included depending on the programme requirements,
but I suggest that syllabus strands based on linguistic specifications
(ie structure and phonology) should take a low priority, and if included
at all, should be seen not as 'items that must be taught' but 'items that
can be checked off if they happen to arise'. As Jane Willis points out,
most key structures will be covered incidentally in a well-designed task-based
syllabus without the need for deliberate inclusion, although if a traditional
exam is set, you may need to set aside some time for exam practice:
Video JW23 Transcript
[CE: Do you think a task-based approach could be used to fulfil the requirements of a traditional structural syllabus?] JW: It depends how long you've got. If there's enough exposure to language, so if they're reading a lot, and if the teacher is talking to them a lot and if they're using, if they're listening to tapes and listening as much as possible, so if they have a good experience of language then after a couple of hundred hours they should have at least experienced in use most of the common structures of the language, so it's a question of then, how do you focus on these. How do you make them slightly more conscious and if they're going to have an exam where they're going to be tested in structure then they're definitely going to need exam techniques, but not to start with teaching the structures for the exams 'cos otherwise you're back to the old teach it and they don't learn it and they need to revise it again. You're back to they focus on form and then a little bit of meaning. But if they can understand a lot so much will be familiar that if they get to an exam and it's a 'fill the gap' exam or a 'pick the right structure' type of question then they may just have an intuitive feel for it by then. But they do definitely need exam practice.
This does not mean that language coverage is considered unimportant. The importance of the language focus stage of the task-based lesson has already been emphasized. The most common words and patterns in the language will crop up repeatedly in tasks and texts without your having to consciously select and teach them, especially if your syllabus contains a good range of task types. Your job is to recognize what these frequent words and patterns are, and then to draw learners' attention to them in the consciousness-raising work that you do.
4.6.2.10
Advanced level task-based syllabuses and real-world tasks
For more advanced level learners, the target language needs may be quite
specific and clearly defined, and the students are likely to want to practise
the sort of real-world language tasks they will required to perform outside
the classroom.
This can be challenging for the person designing the syllabus and the tasks that realize the syllabus. Real world tasks often take much longer than the time available during lessons (imagine practising participating in a business meeting, for example); they may involve a lot of redundant language use, pedagogically speaking, and it is all too easy to resort to role plays that do not require the sort of genuine communication that occurs in true tasks. Designing a series of tasks as a longer-term project based on a target situation topic is one solution, and tasks based on target situation texts will expose students to specialist language, even if the tasks themselves are pedagogic rather than 'real-world' in nature.
4.6.2.11
Planning for language focus in the course programme
Remember the difficulty of predicting what language will arise in a task:
until you study your task transcripts you will not know what this will
be! This is why it is a good idea to plan a series of tasks well ahead,
to get fluent speakers to do them (they only take a few minutes each so
it is actually much more efficient to record a whole series as a batch
anyway), and then to see from the recordings and transcripts which you
will use for what specific language focus.
By planning a series of language foci in advance, you can be much more systematic about what is to featured in successive language analyses, and ensure a varied and comprehensive language syllabus grows out of your tasks. This is not the same, please note, as deciding on a series of structures to be covered and then trying to devise tasks that will guarantee their occurrence!
4.6.2.12
Cognitive challenge
Different tasks will present different levels of cognitive challenge to
different learners. Cognitive challenge is not an absolute quality of
a task, since this depends on what students have already done, and how
much preparation and support they get while doing the task, but this is
useful. It means we can adjust the cognitive challenge level of a given
task so it still fits logically into a series of activities or lessons
but in such a way that it is neither too easy nor too difficult for that
stage of the lesson at that particular stage of the course.
We can even do this 'on the fly' in class if it turns out that we have misjudged in our planning and need to intervene to render a tough task a bit easier. This kind of 'tweaking' of cognitive challenge is a part of lesson planning that all teachers will recognize, and that they will become more sensitive towards with experience and familiarity with their students.
4.6.2.13
Action point
Earlier in this activity cycle you were invited to decide on some topics
that would be suitable for your students, and then for each of these to
think of a number of tasks for each topic.
- Review the list of possible tasks and decide which you will actually use and what order you should use them in. To do this, consider for each task the likely cognitive challenge and the likely linguistic complexity.
See Commentary 2 for my account of my choices.
This would be a good time to look at Reading 2 (see 4.6.7).
4.6.2.14
Fitting tasks into an existing syllabus
Up to this point I have assumed that you are pretty much free to design
your own syllabus, or freely adapt or replace one you have been given.
I suggested to Jane Willis that if a teacher knew that they had to follow
a structural syllabus, and that students would be tested on the items
in that syllabus at the end of the course, they would be taking a risk
if they went for a task-based approach. Surely it would be better just
to include the occasional task-based lesson at the end of the week as
a reward for working on boring grammar? Here is her response:
Video JW24 Transcript
But then are they going to learn the boring grammar if they're bored by it? They're not and the exposure is likely to be quite limited in those cases unless they've got lots of reading comprehension and the motivation might then just dip down; you were talking about 'immediate motivation' earlier, there may not be any immediate motivation at all to learn anything. So I would say, go for your task-based syllabus but have in mind the structures that are normally tested in the exam, that are taught in the book, and find opportunities to focus on those as they arise.
In terms of individual lessons, Jane offers this advice:
Video JW26 Transcript
So actually, if you've got to cover that, if they're going to be tested on that, instead of spending a 40 minute lesson spending 30 minutes on the structure, you have a 40 minute lesson you spend 30 minutes doing tasky things and on building up their vocabulary, and helping them to feel confident about the language they're using, and then at the end saying, 'OK, well these patterns and things came up in this task, and they revise structures that we did in lesson sort of two, three or four weeks ago, and here's a new structure of the day that you just look out for, and you may have found it already, you may be aware that it's been used already, or you may look out for it later', and spend just ten minutes on that.
This seems like sound advice, especially if it results in increased student motivation (remember the 'most important factor for success' identified in activity cycle 4.1!).
4.6.2.15
Fitting tasks in with a set coursebook
I also asked Jane how a teacher could adopt a task-based approach if they
had been given a set coursebook to use:
Video JW25 Transcript
Even taking the book unit by unit by unit, rather than presenting the structure at the beginning, look to see what the theme of the unit is, 'cos most units are now thematically based, aren't they? Or there's something, there's a story or there's a text about something. Try and set a few tasks around the topic of the unit, and if that grammar structure just doesn't come up, then it's obviously not a very good unit. But then you may need just to say, 'Well, look, let's have ten minutes on this structure and have a look in the dictionary, have a look for other examples of this, can you remember any more examples, OK, now go away and for homework do the exercises.
So Jane sees the coursebook as a source of topic ideas, and indeed, many books also contain activities and texts that can be adapted to turn them into tasks with specific outcomes, or 'communication activities' that are in fact tasks by another name, as we saw in the examples in activity cycle 4.2. In addition, the order of activities does not necessarily have to be the same as that in the book. If there are sections presenting or explaining grammar rules, and exercises to practise these, it is highly likely that these mirror the exam question types and content. If so, you have the perfect 'exam practice' homework to set students after they have done the tasks and consciousness-raising work in class. The coursebook is not redundant - it just needs some imaginative adaptation and manipulation in order to fit in with your approach.
- If you have a coursebook that you are expected to use, comb through it for suitable topics / texts / communication activities / exam practice exercises, etc.
- Look at each unit and activity for its potential to fit into a task-based lesson.
- When you have decided which topics / units you want to use, and in what order, proceed with planning your task-based syllabus.The finished product should not be substantially different to that you would draw up if you were free of the coursebook, except that wherever you can, you have included coursebook material.
This would be a good point to do Reading 3 (see 4.6.7).
