Task evaluation

As a teacher, being given a task worksheet, in a cover lesson for example, can be a quick solution to meeting the learners’ needs and monitoring their progress. But in this post I aim to look in detail as tasks, the design of them and ways of evaluating them. To come to some of my own conclusions, I completed a short study on the frequency of task types in a unit of a book I have used with a class before. But first…

What is a task?

According to the literature there doesn’t seem to be much consensus on the definition of ‘task’. In a broader sense, tasks in published materials can help teachers by making important decisions for them but this will have drawbacks as content, order of use, pace of lesson and procedures to use the content are more likely to be predetermined (Maley, 2011). However, what constitutes a task is similar to what constitutes materials evaluation: principles (Maley, 2011). Therefore, when analysing the definitions of the term ‘task’ it becomes apparent that the principles are at the heart of understanding. For example, McGrath (2006, p92) examines possible definitions of ‘task’ as “re-usable self-access workcards” – “they are designed to facilitate learning through activity”. These are two key principles of a task and then he goes on to give details of types of function, such as, awareness raising, practice, accuracy, fluency, testing, differentiation and motivation. Another investigation into understanding task definition was by Nunan (1993, p6) which stated “any structured language learning endeavour which has a particular objective, appropriate content, a specific working procedure and a range of outcomes for those who undertake the task”. In my opinion, this last definition highlights the broad potential of what a task can be and focuses on the necessary elements that it must fulfil to achieve learning aims.

One possible solution to understand what a ‘task’ is, could be to look at what it is made up of beyond principles. Nunan (1993, p11) offers a model that shows the different components that make up a task; they include goals, input, activities, the teacher’s role, the learners’ role and the setting. The model directs me back to the first definition I looked at which was about predetermined circumstances. In my opinion, this is not what a task should be considered as; because every class, learner, teacher, situation is unique (Maley, 2011), it seems impossible to generate tasks that truly cater for the masses.

Therefore, understanding what a task really is, possibly, isn’t a completely useful exercise as it depends on the principles of the person who is trying to define it. Hence, understanding the process of designing tasks might give better insight.

Timmis (2014) offers a simple example of a possible first step in task design: the selection of spoken or written text. This seems to me as if it is a content driven approach to design, and not a syllabus driven approach (McGrath, 2006). Personally, these two design starting points are not something I would necessarily use. But Maley (2011) describes a different approach that allows for much more flexibility and freedom: the process option. It enables the learner to generate his/her own content and learning activities. This is a far harder concept to pass onto a different teacher or provide instruction for a worksheet. However, for the task design project in the next post, this will be a personal aim to achieve through task design as the tasks will focus on discovery and noticing, and less on production (Timmis, 2014).

Sequencing tasks

Another area that we were directed to research was the sequencing of tasks. The literature suggests many different ways of sequencing, for example, convenience for the user (McGrath, 2006). Possibly, categorising activities into groups for certain stages, such as, “readiness”, “experiencial”, “intake response” and “development” (Timmis, 2014, p245) activities could be beneficial to the learner. Or maybe use of a psycholinguistic processing approach which means the tasks are graded by the level of cognitive performance demands (Nunan, 1993). Or perhaps, chaining the tasks so that they must be completed in a particular sequence (McGrath, 2006 & Nunan, 1993).

It seems the list of possible sequencing methods is vast but it comes down to one fact: the decision is a matter of judgement by the designer and therefore, based on their principles. It also appears that where one task might end and another begin could be harder to decipher than originally thought (Nunan, 1993, p6).

Nonetheless, there is one clear example given in the literature as to what makes a good task for a wide audience and that is a set of tasks that have clear teaching aims, includes or suggests alternatives and provides room for adaptation (Pryor, 2013). And it is by this type of scaffolding that the teacher can be better aware of the strengths and limitations to a set of tasks. Therefore, the sequences may be integral to understanding or developing learning but they could also impede the use and learner outcomes if the sequencing is too restrictive.

Evaluating tasks

In the previous two sections of this post I spent time analysing tasks away from the evaluation context. In this section I aim to look at the evaluation processes that exist to evaluate task worksheets.

Firstly, evaluating materials outside the classroom, is completely different from evaluating materials in use by students and teachers (Littlejohn, 2011). But as expressed earlier, using tasks that are flexible enough for adaptation are ideal, however, they are not as easy to evaluate whilst in use. Maley (2011) gives this as an example through “flexi-materials”.

A possible starting point to evaluate materials could be to classify them according to aim, focus and/or activity (Parrott, 1993). By looking at these variables in any given task or set of tasks it could be possible to see how effective they were as learning tools.

In spite of these options for evaluation, the best solution would be to collect data from them in use. For example, collecting information about the effectiveness, difficulty of the tasks, the speed the tasks were completed, feedback from the students and teachers (such as their overall impression), collecting the students work, peer evaluation, developing a checklist and even retrialing can be typical methods found in the literature (McGrath, 2006; Nunan, 1993; Parrott, 1993 & Pryor, 2013).

Overall, it seems that looking at the process from conceptualisation through to use and feedback would be the ideal solution to evaluating and producing tasks that are beneficial for students and flexible enough for the context in which they would be used in the future.

Realities in task evaluation as an English Teacher

In conclusion, it is evident that there are many benefits to designing and evaluating tasks even if it is just for a teacher’s personal resource. Understanding and completing the process are a useful methods for carefully looking at many aspects of teaching and learning.

However, it is a time consuming process and in a normal teaching position, personally, I wouldn’t feel that my resources would be well spent if I couldn’t develop the process into something that would benefit more people than just myself and my students.

My reasons for this are based on an experiment that my partner and I completed for the seminar related to this post. We had read the literature and devised our own taxonomy of tasks based on a list by Maley (2011). We used Language Leader Upper Intermediate, unit 6 (Cotton, Falrey & Kent, 2008) and calculated the number of different tasks there were in the unit and examined the sequence of these tasks as the unit progressed. (Click here to see the data: task evaluation)

I came to the conclusion that it was difficult to make any concrete judgement about what the book was attempting to follow and this was because they offered flexi-materials so that the tasks could be adapted to fit the context. This is a good example of what I believe materials should look like; however, I wasn’t too keen on the unit as it stood on its own and that is when we realised that we would need to evaluate all the tasks in the entire book to come to a definite conclusion. Therefore, whilst task evaluation is integral to teaching and to a certain extent we do it everyday as we plan our lessons, if the materials are flexible, then fewer issues should arise.

The following post looks at a task worksheet that I created with another colleague on the course. We used all the knowledge we had collected from the literature during this session to devise a worksheet that attempted to be quite “out of the box”. Hope you enjoy it.

References

Cotton, D., Falrey, D. & Kent, S. (2008) Language Leader Upper Intermediate. Pearson Longman.

Littlejohn, A. (2011) The analysis of language teaching materials: inside the Trojan Horse. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching. (2nd ed) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.179-211.

Maley, A. (2011) Squaring the circle – reconciling materials as constraint with materials as empowerment. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching. (2nd edn) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.379-­‐402.

McGrath, I. (2006) Materials Evaluation and Design for Language Teaching. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Nunan, D. (1993) Designing tasks for the communicative classroom (6^th ed) New York: Cambridge University Press.

Parrott, M. (1993) Tasks for language teachers: a resource book for training and development. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Pryor, S. (2013) The Developments and Trialling of Materials for Second Language Instruction: A Case Study. In: Tomlinson, B. & Masuhara, H. (ed). Research for Materials Development in Language Learning. London: Bloomsbury.

Timmis, I. (2014) Writing materials for publication: Questions raised and lessons learned. In: Harwood, N. (2014) English language teaching textbooks: content, consumption, production. Edited by N. Harwood. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.