4.6  Changing to TBL

4.6.1  	 Outcomes
4.6.2  	 TBL and your course
4.6.3  	 Aims, objectives, outcomes and assessment in TBL
4.6.4  	 Preparing for change and troubleshooting
4.6.5  	 Feedback and evaluation
4.6.6  	 Summary and belief check
4.6.7  	 Readings
4.6.8	 References
4.6.9	 Assessment task
4.6.10	 Commentaries

4.6.1 Outcomes
•	An outline plan for a series of task-based lessons This can be presented as evidence that you have fulfilled learning objective 11;
•	a set of documents to distribute or notes and materials for a presentation to specified stakeholders (eg your students or head of department) explaining why and how you will be using a task-based approach in your classes. These can be presented as evidence that you have fulfilled learning objective 12. 
Details of how to do these are given 4.6.10. 

4.6.2 TBL and your course 

4.6.2.1 Belief check
•	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:
a)	order activities from the perspective of the learners; and 
b)	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:

    JW22
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.

4.6.2.8 Action point
•	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:

   JW23
[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:

   JW24 
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:

   JW26
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:

   JW25 
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. 

4.6.2.16 Action point
•	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). 

4.6.3 Aims, objectives, outcomes and assessment in TBL
4.6.3.1 Action point
Go back to the syllabus that you examined at the start of this activity cycle. 

•	Does it contain, or is it related to, a specification of learning objectives and / or outcomes? 

YES

NO

•	What do you think the aims and objectives are? 
•	On what basis do you decide what should be assessed?

•	Are these  outcomes assessed? 
•	If so, how, and by whom?
•	If not, what is  assessed?

4.6.3.2 Professional duty
Syllabuses are usually linked to student assessment of some kind, and although assessment is a huge topic in its own right (see DELPHI modules 13 and 14), I include a very brief consideration here because helping students to prepare for, and do well in, their end of course assessment is a serious professional duty of every teacher. 
	Changing to a task-based approach could have serious repercussions in terms of students’ test performances unless the assessment requirements are identified and incorporated into the syllabus and lesson planning process right from the start. The suggestions I give here are a starting point only – if your students’ assessment counts towards their degree, you should seek further advice on designing valid and reliable tests for your task-based course. 

4.6.3.3 Aims and objectives for a process syllabus
With a process syllabus, course aims and objectives will be expressed rather differently to those related to traditional product syllabuses. Instead of things like ‘by the end of the course, students will have learned ...’, we will need to describe the communicative interaction types and topics in which students will have engaged: ‘By the end of the course, students will be able to participate in a group discussion with peers to solve a simple logic problem’, for example. 

4.6.3.4 Outcomes-based assessment
Of course, quality controllers and test administrators tend to like product syllabuses because students’ achievements can relatively easily be measured against them, and testing appears to be objective, but it seems perverse to continue to use such product-focused lists when by doing so, we are in danger of preventing students from developing their communicative competence as much as they could in the time available. 
	But as Breen (2001: 156) points out, in many educational settings the emphasis for assessment is changing towards ‘outcomes-based education’, meaning  ‘statements describing what the learner may be able to do with the language’.  Such outcomes must be assessable, and in language education are often expressed in terms of the four language skills, although they may also mention language functions or topics. For example, ‘A successful participant will be able to give an oral description of family relations’, where the skill = speaking, the function = describing, and the topic = family relations. Performance is assessed at different levels against sets of criterion-referenced rating scales, or band descriptors (see Module 13, section 13.1.6, and Module 14, sections 14.2.1 and 14.8). 

4.6.3.5 Approaches to task-based assessment
If your syllabus and lessons are going to be based around tasks, you will need to draw up a list of the sorts of learning outcomes that you anticipate from your students. Since for each task you devise you should have a clear idea of the task outcomes, this should not be as difficult as it sounds. 
	You will then need to think about how these outcomes can be assessed, and against what criteria. Continuous assessment in class is obviously an attractive option if it is permitted and doable. For example, once students are familiar with the task–plan–report cycle, you could tell them that you will grade them each time they make a report in class. At the end of the course you will base their course assessment on their best five (or whatever) report grades. 
	An alternative is to set up a separate exam session when students work on tasks similar to some of those done in class in pairs or small groups, and assess their performance here. Obviously for some students the idea of having performance assessed during group work will be new, so I would recommend including some writing tasks too, if appropriate to your course aims.

If you are interested in this topic, I recommend you now do Reading 4 (see 4.6.7). 

4.6.4 Preparing for change and troubleshooting
4.6.4.1 Preparing yourself
For me, there are three ways you can prepare yourself for introducing TBL into your teaching successfully and, I hope, fairly painlessly. These are:
4.6.4.2 Practical preparation
This can include: 
•	drawing up your overall course plan in terms of syllabus, order of topics and how these will be divided into the lessons available;
•	designing, recording and transcribing your tasks;
•	deciding what your language focus activities will be;
•	preparing support materials that you will need in class;
•	arranging for equipment you will need;
•	getting ready questionnaires or other instruments to gauge student reaction to TBL. 
Are there any others you would add?
Apart from the benefits you yourself will gain from being organized in this way (such as reduced stress levels), you will inspire confidence in your students if you are always well-prepared and unflustered. This is important when students may be feeling unsettled or insecure as they are becoming accustomed to a new way of learning their chosen language.

4.6.4.3 Intellectual preparation
By this I mean ‘knowing your method’. If you have a very clear idea of what task-based learning is about and the rationale on which it is based, you will be able to allay students’ and colleagues’ concerns if these arise. You will also feel more confident yourself, which will almost certainly convey itself to your students. 
	If you have worked through all or most of this module you are probably already in a good position as far as understanding your teaching approach is concerned, but if there are any areas that you are unsure about, I would urge you to revise these, or follow up with some of the recommended optional reading. 

4.6.4.4 Beliefs check
Over the course of completing this module, you may have encountered new ideas and though completing the activities, your concepts of language learning may have evolved. 
•	Go back to Activity cycle 1 and redo the belief check in 4.1.2.8. Have your responses changed since you first did this? In what ways? 

4.6.4.5 Psychological preparation
The third type of preparation is vital, as it will sustain you if things do not go as well as you had hoped. 
	Many people are not comfortable with change, not least colleagues who feel strongly that the traditional way to teach language is still the best way. If you know from the start that you may be a lone pioneer of TBL in your immediate context, and that you will almost certainly meet with reluctance or resistance to the new approach from at least some quarters, you should try to take some steps in advance to help you maintain your own motivation and conviction should this happen. 
	Tessa Woodward (1996) has some helpful suggestions for this. She advocates finding like-minded people who can give each other mutual support, perhaps colleagues in the same institution, but possibly further afield, or even people who you contact mainly by e-mail. (Of course, an added advantage of getting together a ‘TBL’ group is that you can exchange materials and ideas and may be able to help each other in practical ways too by recording tasks, checking instructions, etc.) She also suggests reading as much as you can about the topic – so finding time to look at language teaching journals for recent articles on TBL (especially for English language teaching, which seems to have quite a lot going in this area at present), can give you a sense of belonging to a community of TBL practitioners. You may be able to find internet discussion groups or email lists to join so you can exchange experiences with like-minded people. All of these measures are aimed at helping you to feel that you are not alone, and that there are others who support what you are doing even if some of your immediate colleagues do not!

This would be a good point at which to do Reading 6 (see 4.6.7).  

4.6.4.6 Action points
•	Approach as many people as you can who you think will support your introduction of TBL into your teaching. 
•	Explain that you would like to establish an informal network of TBL supporters with whom you can exchange ideas and experiences from time to time. 
•	Do an Internet search for discussion groups for teachers of your language. Join any promising looking groups and post messages to see if anyone else is using, or is interested in, TBL. 
•	Go to your library and flick through the latest few issues of any magazines and periodicals on language teaching, including English language teaching (ELT or EFL) to find which ones frequently include articles on TBL.

4.6.4.7 Attitudes, beliefs and change
Another aspect of psychological preparation relates to the concept of ‘planned behaviour’ introduced in Module 1. This suggests that there are three psychological elements that interact to determine how strongly someone’s motivation to do something will be. 
1.	Attitude: the degree to which you feel that TBL is desirable or not. If you have got this far with this module it probably means that you have a very positive attitude towards TBL per se, but on its own this may not be enough to convince you to adopt it in your classes. 
2.	Subjective norms: how you think other people (students, colleagues) will view TBL, may make you hesitant. What if the students demand a traditional approach? What if your colleagues question what you are doing? The section below on ‘preparing others’ has some ideas to help you overcome any real or perceived resistance to TBL that you may encounter. But simply being aware that this could be one of the factors holding you back can be enough in itself to make you dismiss these worries and try anyway. 
3.	Perceived behavioural control: can have similarly damping effects on your motivation but the source is different. Here you might believe there are personal or physical obstacles to prevent you introducing TBL – a very large class size that you may not be able to control, or being allocated a classroom with fixed seats, making group work very inconvenient.

4.6.4.8 Action point / belief check
•	Have a brainstorming session to think of as many pros and cons to introducing TBL in your classes as you can.
•	Classify the items from the brainstorm under the three headings ‘What I think (attitude)’, ‘What I think others will think (subjective norms)’ and ‘Practical considerations (perceived behavioural control)’. 
•	For each item, consider whether you have any justification for including it. For example, if you think students will feel safer with a familiar approach (con), do you have any evidence for this? Have you asked them? If you have no real evidence, put brackets round the item. 
•	Then for each unbracketed item, try to think of a solution (it can be helpful to do this stage with a colleague). 
Having done this exercise, you should feel more aware of why you feel positive or negative about introducing TBL, indeed, your overall intention to do so may well have changed as you ‘dismissed’ some doubts that turned out to be unsubstantiated assumptions, or thought of potential obstacles that had not occurred to you before. In addition, you may have identified some subjective norms that need to be checked up on, by asking colleagues and students what their real opinions are, or some aspects of behavioural control that you could act on to overcome.

4.6.4.9 Preparing others: ownership
Literature on managing innovation tells us that change is most likely to be successful if all participants, especially the ‘end users’ (ie the students) have a sense of ownership over the innovation. 
	You may be able to include your students in the detailed planning of their course, and in this way give them a sense of involvement and control. For example:
•	Do a needs and interests survey to help you to select appropriate topics, texts and skills work for your lessons. 
•	Try to meet, or contact students in writing, a good time before the course starts if at all possible, so you can genuinely use their responses to your queries when you plan your course. 
•	If you can’t get access to the students before the start of the course, plan the first few sessions in advance and then plan the rest on the basis of a survey done in the first week. You could do this by designing a questionnaire that asks them why they are learning the language, what their previous experiences are, and for any specific ideas about what they will need to do in the language
•	I would also advise drawing up a preliminary list of proposed topics or themes for students to rate as interesting / relevant or not, and give them the opportunity to suggest other areas of their choice. You could even ask them to give you any texts they would like to study in class. 
Check Module 12 for more ideas on encouraging students to take greater responsibility for their own learning, and to ‘own’ their programme.

4.6.4.10 Action point
•	Discuss with your Head of Department or module leader how, and in what ways, you might be able to contact students before the start of the course. 
•	From the outcomes of this discussion, decide on how and when you will consult students on their course content. 

4.6.4.11 Students’ beliefs
If you ‘spring’ TBL as a new approach on your students, it could come as a shock to them! Like you, they will have some well-formed beliefs about what should happen in a language classroom, and you could be about to challenge these beliefs in a big way. 
	Furthermore, their reactions to the proposed approach will be influenced not just by their attitude to it in principle, but by subjective norm and perceived behavioural control factors, just as you are. For example, they may believe that others will not think they are doing a serious course of study if they spend so much time ‘playing games’ and talking, or they may worry that there will not be time to complete the syllabus because completing each task cycle takes up so much class time. 
	When introducing your students to the new approach, try to help them uncover and reconsider their beliefs in the same way that you have done in this course, as a first step towards changing these, or at least retaining them for good reasons. You could even adapt some of the activities you have done in this module, translating them into your target language for higher level learners. Most adult students are actually quite interested in how the process of learning works, once they are given the opportunity to think about it! 

4.6.4.12 Colleagues’ beliefs
In addition, colleagues and even heads of department are often suspicious of new teaching approaches if they don’t really understand what they are about. For example, many people think that TBL just means doing lots of communicative tasks, and ignoring language structure. If you think it is appropriate, consider holding a short briefing session to present the main ideas and features of TBL to your colleagues, or prepare a short leaflet for them explaining your plans and what TBL is about. Consider inviting them to observe some of your classes. 
	Obviously, you don’t want to frighten them off by sounding like a TBL evangelist, but if you can assure them that this is a well thought through, comprehensive approach based on sound learning principles, you might get them interested in trying it for themselves. If you do have any fellow enthusiasts, you will find things much easier than going it alone. As with your students, try to do all this in a way which recognizes that they already hold certain beliefs about teaching and learning, and that your proposed approach might challenge.

4.6.4.13 Practicalities
•	Tell students in advance what they will need to bring. Dedicated notebooks for recording new language in language focus sessions, and ‘Walkman’-type audio cassette recorders and blank cassettes for recording their own task performance are suggestions. 
•	You may also want to recommend particular reference books and, of course, students will need to now if they have to buy a set coursebook.
•	If you are preparing a ‘rationale sheet’ to distribute to students before the course begins, all this information can be included on your sheet.

I recommend that you now do Reading 7 (see 4.6.7). 
	At this point you may also like to complete part ii) of the assessment task, although if you are doing this for your students, it may be worth waiting until you have completed the remaining sections below so you can include a note explaining your feedback policy.

4.6.4.14 Sustaining change and troubleshooting
•	Believe in what you are doing, and don’t give up!
I asked Jane Willis what advice she had for someone adopting TBL in their lessons. Here is her response:
    JW27
I think they need to be doing it because they really believe in it, because they really do believe that learners are going to learn better this way and not sort of say half-heartedly, ‘Well, I tried a task but it didn’t quite work so I’m going back to the old way, because it isn’t easy to start with, because if learners aren’t used to doing that kind of thing, if they’re not used to trying to activate what they’ve got already and risk-taking and putting things to use I think they need to be told, maybe in their mother tongue at the beginning of the course, that this is going to be different. Now it doesn’t always work first time and other tasks I’ve done haven’t always worked first time, and that’s probably because I haven’t tried the instructions out on someone or, and you need to think, ‘Well why didn’t that work so well? Maybe I gave them too long, or maybe I didn’t set it up properly, maybe I haven’t activated enough relevant vocabulary, but always, if it doesn’t work so well, always think why and try again.

•	What if the students tell you that they need to do more grammar, because that is what they always find difficult in the exam?
Adopting a task-based approach does not mean that you will be neglecting grammar. Make sure students know this. Explain that they will be meeting and revising familiar structures but through a much more communicative and meaningful way. Make sure that when ‘problem’ structures do occur in your texts or transcripts, you highlight them and spend a few minutes discussing their usage in that particular context. But don’t let this take over! 

Jane Willis reminds us of the importance of explaining to students the basics of rationale of the approach, but above all, letting students get on with the business of using the language themselves:
    JW28
If they’ve already had some teaching of that language before, like for example with French or German, it’s quite likely they’ve done some at school already, and they’ve failed, and that’s why they’re now back in the class with you, then you could make the point that the way you’re going to do it is called task-based learning and it’s very different from what they did before, and it relies on, it stimulates natural acquisition processes: ‘We’re not going to worry too much about accuracy to start with, just first of all to aim at getting you to say as much as you can, and activate as much of what you already know as possible, and then we’ll build on what you know.’ So it’s a building on what you know, so not thinking of your learners as empty vessels to be filled up with facts about the language or grammar structures or words, but getting the learners to actually do as much as they can. And I think that is difficult for a teacher to start with because you’ve got to stand back and let them do it.

•	Build in opportunities for positive encouragement
Every three of four weeks (depending on how many hours a week you have each class), spend some class time on a progress checking session. For example, if you or the students have been recording the tasks and / or the spoken reports, get them to play through the recordings of themselves.  Try redoing an earlier task (they should find it much easier). Get students to look at their notebooks that they keep for language focus work and see how much you have covered since the beginning of the course or the last progress check. Get them to compare first drafts of written work with final drafts. Jane Willis reiterates these points. Looking for positive signs of progress like this can be very motivating for you as well as the students.

•	Build confidence for the exam
If there is an end of course exam, get hold of some past papers. Every time your language focus work brings up an item tested on the exam paper, try to build the exam question into your language focus work. When you finish the language focus stage (assuming the students were successful) reveal to the students that ‘question 3’ or whatever was from the exam paper, and they have done it successfully. During the progress review, remind them of all the exam questions they can already do.

•	Respond and adapt
If students seem to be reacting negatively to your approach, take steps to find out what their concerns are, and be prepared to address these (see the sections that follow on feedback). This does not mean, however, that you should immediately jump to do whatever the students ask. If they are worried about whether TBL is preparing them sufficiently for a structural exam, for example, or if they feel that all the time they spend in class talking would be better spent studying grammar rules, this is quite possibly a reflection of their previous experience of language learning that has shaped their beliefs about what should happen in a language classroom (see Module 1).  If they remain unconvinced, you may be able to compromise, perhaps by allocating a proportion of course time to exam preparation or taking greater efforts to highlight structural points when they arise in the language focus stage. The precise action will depend on your judgement of the situation and your knowledge of your students, but whatever you do, don’t ignore signs of boredom or discontent as these will only get worse as time goes on. 

I recommend that you now do Reading 8 (see 4.6.7). 

4.6.5  Feedback and evaluation
4.6.5.1 Formative feedback
If you gather feedback on an ongoing basis you can continually adapt your course to suit your particular class. This is true whatever approach or method you adopt, but it is especially important when you adopt a new approach. This type of ongoing feedback, aimed at continual improvement and ‘fine-tuning’, is often referred to as formative evaluation.
	Formative evaluation can be carried out formally, with questionnaires or designated feedback sessions in class time, or via an elected class representative, but there is a danger with some of these methods (especially questionnaires) of the students getting ‘feedback fatigue’ if they are done too often. I favour much quicker, less ‘scientific’ but also less obtrusive techniques, like giving each student a small-size sticky note during class and asking them write down their impressions of that class, or a particular activity, for collection at the end of class. These little notes are great because students don’t sign them, so they are more likely to be frank, and the small size means they feel free to write anything from a single word (or sometimes just a smiley face) to several sentences in very tiny writing on both sides. 
	You can ask for very focused feedback, eg ‘For the game we have just done, please give the game three scores by writing 3 numbers on your sticky note: the first score is for how much you enjoyed it, 0 = not at all, 3 = a lot (and 1 and 2 are somewhere in between); the second score is for how useful it was for your learning, 0 = not at all, 3 = very useful, the third score is for how much you want to do this sort of game again in class, 0 = never again, 3 = a lot’; or ‘Please write down one suggestion to help me make your classes better’ (Once when I did this several students said ‘Please speak more slowly’ – a very clear message!). 
	Sometimes I take a quick class vote after an activity or set of activities, especially if they are new, on whether the activity was useful and if we should do this sort of activity again. I also chat to students during and outside class about which sorts of activity they enjoy, or find helpful, like least, and why, etc. If I have done a sticky-note feedback I usually write a letter to the class (in the target language, with a copy for each student), summarizing the things they said, and telling them what I will try to do in response, or explaining why I feel I can’t do anything. This is a wonderful authentic reading text for the students, and they are usually highly motivated to read it. It also does wonders for teacher-student rapport, as students can see that their opinions and ideas are being taken seriously. 

4.6.5.2 Action point
•	Have a brainstorming session on how you could elicit formative feedback from your students. 
•	From your ideas, select the ones that you would like to use in your course, and think about when they will take place. Try to leave spaces, and have ideas for spontaneous feedback activities when suitable occasions arise in class. 

4.6.5.3 Feedback and action research
The first module of the DELPHI programme, on teacher beliefs, introduces the idea of action research. In fact, if you are treating your regular, or continuous feedback efforts as a way of gathering information that can help you to think about your teaching in terms of what works or doesn’t work, and why, and identifying specific issues or problems to address, you are already half way to doing action research. Responding to feedback is the ‘action’ bit of action research, and following up your action by observing its effects, reflecting on these, and then taking further action takes you into the next action research cycle. This would be a good time to go back to Module 1 to revisit the section on action research, and to think about how introducing TBL would be a good opportunity to do some action research.

4.6.5.4 Summative feedback 
It is now commonplace in further and higher education institutions in the UK to conduct end of course evaluations, ie to gather summative feedback, for each of the subjects the students have taken. 
	These are nearly always done by a questionnaire, often in a standard format designed for use across the institution. These evaluations are normally conducted for purposes of accountability, to measure overall ‘customer satisfaction’ and to be presented to auditors conducting teaching quality assessments. 
	However, they can be seen as part of a longer term process of formative evaluation from one course to the next, assuming the teacher involved is allowed to see them or is at least given a copy of the collated results (this doesn’t always happen automatically – you may have to ask!), and that the types of questions asked give sufficiently informative responses on which to form the basis of future action. For example, an average ‘satisfaction’ score of 3.2, calculated from 12 responses to a rating scale of 1 (low) to 5 (high), tells you only that on average the class was reasonably satisfied with the course. It does not tell you which aspects were very satisfactory and which were less so, or why, or even whether most students were very satisfied but that the two who never actually came to class gave very low scores, dragging the average down. 
	For these kinds of reason I tend to treat end of course evaluations that were designed and conducted more for administrative purposes than for real feedback on teaching with some degree of scepticism. However, they are at their best a serious attempt to monitor and improve teaching standards across an institution, so they should not be dismissed as irrelevant. If you want to maximize your chances of getting good end-of-course evaluations from your students, the unobtrusive collection of regular formative feedback and action on this is an excellent idea! 

4.6.5.5 Action point 
•	Find out whether there will be any end of course evaluation conducted on your course, and if so, what form it takes, who designs and administers it, who processes the results, for what purposes, who sees the results, etc. 
•	If there is no plan on the part of the institution or department to do this, or if you feel the results will not be very informative for your purposes or if you won’t be allowed to see the results, consider how you could collect your own summative feedback. You could use any of the techniques suggested for formative feedback, but the questions may be more numerous and will differ in scope. 

4.6.6  Summary and belief check
In this activity cycle we have distinguished between process and product syllabuses, and seen how a syllabus does not have to be based on a single organizing principle. In particular, we have rejected the idea that grammar or structure is the best starting point for specifying and organizing a syllabus and have proposed how topics and tasks can function as the major units of organization instead. We have also considered how an existing, perhaps traditional product syllabus, can in fact be largely covered even if a task-based approach is adopted.
	We have also considered ways in which you can maximize the prospects of your changing to TBL taking place successfully and smoothly, by appropriate preparation, and by working with your students to iron out glitches and take advantage of successes as they arise.
•	Would you like to learn another language using a task-based approach? Why (not)?
•	Do you believe that it would be worth adopting a task-based approach in your course? Why (not)?
•	Do you think that you have the necessary knowledge and skills to start using a task-based approach with your learners?
•	Try to list, or note down, the ways in which you think your beliefs about language teaching and learning have changed as a result of doing this module.

4.6.7  Recommended reading
Note: there seems be a lot of reading here – but some extracts are only two or three pages long. It’s not as bad as it looks! You could wait until the end and do all the readings from Willis (1996) together if you prefer (readings 2, 3, 7 and 8)

Reading 1
Dave Willis and Jane Willis, Task-based language learning, in Carter and Nunan (2001), pp 173–75, to the end of the section entitled ‘Background’.

Reading 2
If you teach low-level students or beginners, and you have a copy of Willis (1996), I recommend that you now read pages 123–27.

Reading 3
If you have a copy of Willis (1996), I recommend that you now read pages 144–48.

Reading 4
M Breen, ‘Syllabus design’ in Carter and Nunan (2001), pp 151–59. 

Reading 5
Finish reading ‘Task-based language learning’ by Dave Willis and Jane Willis in Carter and Nunan (2001), pp 175–79. 
or 
Read ‘Task-based instruction’ by Peter Skehan (2003). (See the notes in the Introduction, section 4.0.6 about this reading.)

Reading 6
Tessa Woodward’s excellent chapter on paradigm shift is well worth reading if you can get it: Chapter 1 of Willis and Willis (1996). 

Reading 7
If you have a copy of Willis (1996),  I recommend that you now read pages 137–40.

Reading 8
If you have a copy of Willis (1996), I recommend that you now read pages 140–42.

4.6.8  References
Beglar, D and Hunt, A (2002) Implementing task-based learning, in Methodology in Language Teaching: An anthology of current practice, ed J C Richards and W A Renandya, pp 96–106, Cambridge Universty Press, Cambridge
Breen, M (2001) Syllabus design, in The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, ed R Carter and D Nunan, pp 151–59, Cambridge Universty Press, Cambridge
Carter, R and Nunan, D (eds) (2001) The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, Cambridge Universty Press, Cambridge
Ellis, R (1999) The place of grammar instruction in the second/foreign language curriculum, in Bilkent 4th International Conference Proceedings, ed M Harvey and S Kanboroglu, pp 79–97,
Skehan, P  (2003) Task-based instruction, Language Teaching 36, 1–14 
Swan, M and Walter, C (1984) The Cambridge English Course 1. Teacher's Book,  Cambridge Universty Press, Cambridge
Willis, D and J Willis, J (2001) Task-based language learning,  in The Cambridge Guide to Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages, ed R Carter and D Nunan, Cambridge Universty Press, Cambridge, pp 173–79
Willis, J (1996) A Framework for Task-based Learning, Longman, London
Willis, J and Willis, D (eds) (1996) Challenge and Change in Language Teaching, Macmillan Heinemann, Oxford
Woodward, T (1996) Paradigm shift and the language teaching profession, in Challenge and Change in Language Teaching, ed J Willis and D Willis, pp 4–9, Macmillan Heinemann, Oxford

4.6.9  Assessment task 
i)	Draw up an outline plan for a series of at least six task-based lessons that could be implemented within the requirements of your syllabus, or, if you are permitted to do so, draw up an outline plan for a series of task-based lessons that would replace (part of) the existing syllabus. Remember to check whether there are any required learning objectives and outcomes and what assessment activities should take place. You are not expected to produce detailed lesson plans or an entire syllabus, but you should be able to state the task-type and topic for each lesson for a series of at least six lessons. 
ii)	Make a plan for a short presentation (15–20 minutes) to give to colleagues and other stakeholders, or to your students, about the way you intend to use task-based learning in your course. Prepare any additional material (handout, OHP transparencies, etc) that you will need. 
OR design a leaflet (two sides of A4 maximum) that you could use to make your case for TBL instead of the talk described above.
Points you might cover in your talk / leaflet include a brief explanation of what TBL tries to achieve that other methods do not; what a task is, what a task-based lesson is like, how language focus work will be included (and, if applicable, how this will ensure coverage of the set syllabus), how the roles of the teacher and learners may differ from those currently found, how you will get regular feedback from participants on their reactions to the new approach

These will form the seventh and eighth entries for your materials file. If you are using the materials file template provided, the outline plan for a series of lessons (2.3) and the copy of your existing syllabus, module description, etc (2.4) and your talk notes or leaflet (2.5) should all be placed in part II of the file. 

4.6.10  Commentaries
Commentary 1
A common topic for lower level students is ‘family’. Tasks could include:
i)	LISTING: Can you list the names of 10 people in your family? (maybe work from family photos brought in by students?). Write the family relationship to you next to each name. If you have a large family, add more names.
ii)	ORDERING / SORTING: Draw a family tree for your partner’s family from the list they give you. Help your partner to fill in any gaps.
iii)	MATCHING: Who do you look like in your family? Tell your partner which family members you look like. Show them your photographs and see if they agree. (Useful link into ‘describing people’ topic).
iv)	problem solving: Choose a family member from the tree for your partner (but NOT you!). Can your partner work out the relationship to all the other people on the tree in one minute? (Or one of those ‘If X is married to Y and Y’s mother is called Z’, etc, logic brain teasers as a reading text).
v)	LISTING / RANKING class survey: which person in the class has the most brothers and sisters / uncles and aunts / cousins ? Who has the least? 
vi)	MEMORY / MATCHING: How well do you know your classmates? Look at the family trees (from earlier in the lesson, or previous lesson as a fun revision task, but with student’s names blanked out, maybe on OHP). Who do you think they belong to?
vii)	SHARING PERSONAL EXPERIENCE  (ANECDOTES): Choose one or two people from your family tree who have done something interesting or unusual, or who are especially important to you in some way. Tell your partner about them. Ask your partner about people on his / her family tree. 

Commentary 2
Here is my ‘think aloud’ account of my choice and order of tasks:
To do all seven of the suggested tasks above would be overkill for a relatively well-defined and straightforward topic like ‘family’. I think I would pick i) as a simple and quick introductory task and a way of revising / introducing key vocabulary and building confidence. The transcript below of my trial run of this task suggests that it would be ideal for this. I would like to finish on either iii) or vii) as either of these would also serve as an introduction to the topic ‘describing people’ which I think I would position next on my syllabus. (Do any of your sequences of tasks end with a ‘topic bridging’ task like this?) Task vii) seems quite a bit more challenging than iii) as it involves not just physical descriptions but possibly some quite complex story telling – and if my students are only at the stage of learning terms for family relationships I think this will be beyond them. So I’ll keep vii) in reserve for later in the course when it’ll provide useful revision of ‘family’ lexis, and use iii) in this sequence. 
	I think v), the class survey, would be a fairly quick and fun follow on from the initial listing task i), but there is also a natural series that seems to emerge from the family trees which I think would be more fruitful. So after i) (listing of names)  I’d do ii) (partners draw each other’s trees – not necessarily as easy as it sounds as I anticipate some negotiation as they’ll get some details wrong for each other – look at the transcript to see what happened when I tried this), then the problem solving iv). Problem solving is by its nature more cognitively challenging than listing, and although task ii) is also a sort of problem for the person drawing the tree, they will have constant input from the person who knows how it should look, making it easier through this partner support. I wouldn’t simply ask students to do their own trees as this would not give them any reason to interact! I am therefore quite happy that the sequence i), ii), iv) gives a progression in terms of cognitive challenge and linguistic challenge (see the transcript of selected extracts from a task recording below). 
	Note that in the recording of these tasks with fluent / native speakers, tasks ii) and iv) ended up merging, so there was no point in doing task iv) separately for recording purposes. But I think I would still ask students to do both. That way, they could do task iv) after they had listened to the tape and done some language focus work. If tasks i) and ii) (plus related planning, reports and language focus work) could be completed in one lesson, the problem solving task iv) would make a good starting point for the next lesson. 
	By the time we had done these three tasks (with planning and reports, etc) I think we’d have had enough of family trees, (in fact I might even drop task iv) if the topic was dragging), but just in case it went faster than expected, and if there was time I’d then do the class survey, but this would very much be a standby activity, or an alternative to iv) that would get students on their feet and ‘stir them up’ a bit. I’d then finish with iii), the ‘who do you look like?’ task. Although not too challenging from a cognitive perspective, the increased linguistic demands make this the appropriate stage for this matching task (see transcript). Altogether I would anticipate this topic taking two class periods 
In selecting my sequence of tasks I hope you can see that I was considering how I could offer a logical progression (eg production of the family trees had to precede their use in activity iv), and also provide a gradual, progressive increase in terms of cognitive and / or linguistic challenge. eg task ii) would be much harder if i) had not already been completed, and I think iv) would be much harder if done ‘cold’ with a family tree provided by the teacher rather than one already worked on.
Note: the concept of ‘family’ varies greatly from culture to culture. Here in Britain it generally means close blood relations and in-laws. In some parts of the world, terms like ‘uncle’, ‘aunt’, ‘cousin’, ‘sister’ are used much more loosely to indicate community members or simply trusted or respected visitors (for example, in Malaysia, the children of ex-students that I visited were expected to refer to me as ‘Auntie’). A discussion of the meaning and use of different terms for family members in the students’ mother tongue culture and the target culture would be a good way of introducing the topic and task series. 

Transcripts of extracts from ‘family relations’ task 
Task i): Partner A lists names of family members and say who they are. (We did this as a pair, with A writing names and relationships while B (me!) watched – the ‘writing’ partner spontaneously began to talk through what he was doing as I watched / listened – something I hadn’t predicted! Another interesting feature was that because the speaker is writing at the same time, he speaks very slowly with long pauses between utterances as he takes time to write. Ideal easy listening for building the confidence of beginners!

A: Fatima is my mother. Ahmad is my father. And then I’ll come to brothers and sisters. Kamal – brother. Awatif – sister. Hayat – sister. ... Zeinab – aunt, my mother’s cousin. Mohamed, a maternal uncle. Ismail, another maternal uncle. So, yes, one more maybe ... yes, all right ... a niece, or a nephew ... Mohamed. As a matter of fact, named after me!

Task ii) / iv): Partner B uses A’s list to draw family tree. A and B give relationships between different family members.
My surprise here was that in the process of drawing the tree, we spent quite a bit of time referring to relationships between members of the family other than my partner. So we seemed to be conflating tasks ii) and iv). On the basis of this, I did not then feel it necessary to make a separate recording of task iv).
B: So. We’ve got. Fatima
A: And Ahmad. Father and mother.
B: Uh. And Ahmad. So Fatima’s your mother, Ahmad’s your father.
A: Yeah. 
B: And then ... Lots
A: Brothers and sisters.
B: Brothers and sisters.
A: Mmm.
B: Kamal. Awatif. Hayat. Afaf. Mahmoud. What’s, what does this one say?
A: Azhari.
B: Azhari, yes. Azhari, Samya and Khalid. OK, so they’re all your brothers and sisters.
A: Yeah. 
This is a good point to break the recording. I would use the tape up to here for post-task ii) listening and language focus, and the rest before and after task iv)
B: Umm. OK. So then there are some aunts and uncles.
A: Yeah.
B: And you said ...
A: So Halima is my mother’s sister. 
B: Right. So, let me just do this. So your grandmother and grandfather, your mother’s mother and father ... I’ll just put GM and GF for grandmother and grandfather.
A: Oh, that’s fine. 
B: And then they had Fatima, and also,
A: Mohamed and Halima.
B: And Halima. What about Zeinab? 
A: Now, Zeinab is actually, umm, a cousin of my mother’s. 
B: A cousin of your mother’s?
A: Yeah.
B: So, your ...
A: So for me she’s an aunt, you know, but then she’s my mother’s cousin. 
B: She’s your mother’s cousin. So, Umm, her mother was your grandmother’s sister?
A: Umm
B: Or your grandfather’s ...
A: No, grandmother’s. Err, not her sister. Her cousin in fact.
B: Oh – so she’s a distant cousin. 
A: Yeah. yeah. 
B: Right.
A: Mmm.
B: Well, I’ll ...
A: Yeah, distant cousin, but they were sort of, I mean, close, you know. In the sense that, you know, they lived with us you know, and er, so that’s it. 
B: Yes. yes. OK. 
A: She’s very much part of the, the family you know. 
B: And then, what about Ismail.
A: Ismail is, err, my, another, I mean, my mother’s cousin as well. So Ismail’s mother is my mother’s aunt. She’s her aunt. 
B: Your mother’s aunt. 
etc.

Task iii): Family resemblances
B: Who in your family do you look like?
A: Hmm. Good question. I think I err ... maybe my maternal uncle, Mohamed.
B: So when you say maternal uncle ...
A: That’s my mother’s brother.
B: And in what way do you look like him?
A: Physically ... I think in the sort of the. err,  shape of my face. And height as well. Colour is slightly different. Err, he’s slightly lighter. Umm. And also, the hair. Our hair is sort of similar.
B: In what way?
A: And umm, it’s the same kind of you know, curly hair, you know, the same colour. And err, what else, umm, I think also the bone structure. 
B: Right. And who do you look like most, your mother or your father?
A: Mother, maybe. Mother.
B: In what way?
A: Mother but I think I would ... I think in a way umm, what a difficult question, I think physically, err, my face might be closer to my mother but then, it’s well, it’s difficult to say, because in a way one is, sort of umm, is somewhere in between, because I’m taller than my mother, and err, that in fact, it’s that which in fact makes me resemble my uncle more, because he’s taller. 
B: Mmm. But what about your face?
A: My face I think is sort of like, maybe, somewhere in the middle. Maybe somewhere in the middle. But I think it’s umm, might be closer to my mother’s face.
B: Any particular features? Eyes, nose? Mouth?
A: Maybe, yes, maybe the eyes, and the nose. This area. yeah, round the nose. Yeah.
B: Are like your mother’s?
A: Yeah.