Task design: Task-based language teaching

The week8’s seminar was a good opportunity to rethink designing tasks/activities/exercises on my worksheet that I have created. In this post, I would like to share with you about the definition of a task and theoretical implication of Task-based language teaching (TBLT) in the teaching of English in Japan.

The Definition of a Task

According to Richards et al (1985: 289);

“A task is… an activity or action which is carried out as a result of processing or understanding language… Tasks may or may not involve the production of language. A task usually requires the teacher to specify what will be regarded as successful completion of the task.”

In terms of features of the task: An activity of some kind; Specified outcomes; Language comprehension or production or both (Ellis, 1998); Learners focus their attention principally on meaning rather than form (Nunan, 1993).

The Theoretical Implication of Task-based language teaching (TBLT) in Japan

Through my teaching experience in Japan, I have not tried TBLT before, and I had not experienced it, as I was a student. I personally think that TBLT is difficult to incorporate an English classroom in a Japanese secondary school. There are three reasons why I think so. The first is that TBLT is seen as a part of strong form of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) that is not common in Japanese context. Most secondary students need to learn English for the university or senior high school entrance examinations as a matter of priority. As a result, almost all of tasks/ activities/exercises on materials tend to focus on mainly grammar form, not meaning.

The second is Japanese English teachers’ deficiency in spoken English and a lack of training in TBLT. To become an English teacher in a Japanese secondary school, we are not strictly required a certain level of English, but we need a teaching practice and graduation certificate from a university. Also, when I was a trainee, there was no training in either TBL or CLT. However, it was a common understanding regarding how we, as teachers teach English grammar in a fun way so that students can understand and remember the target grammar easily.

The last one is a monolingual classroom situation. If a teacher tells her/his students to talk in English while working on a task, they may not follow what their teacher told. It might come from the lack of English proficiency, confidence or their shyness in speaking in English with their peers. Therefore, it seems that implementing TBLT into Japanese secondary English classroom, may fail. However, it could probably function at a university level. Japanese students graduate from ‘learning English for the entrance exams’, and realise the importance of learning English for communication. They may enjoy learning the language based on TBLT.

Taking into the three reasons above, implementing TBLT into a Japanese secondary classroom is likely to be unrealistic. However, since many Japanese students want to learn English through communicative-oriented teaching, we might integrate Task-supported language teaching (TSLT). It “utilises a structural syllabus and typically involves ‘PPP’ (presentation-practice-production), with the final stage… constitutes a situational grammar exercise” (Ellis 2011: 213). Furthermore, tasks can be ‘focused’ that “have been designed to provide opportunities for communicating using some specific linguistic feature (typically a grammatical structure)” (2011: 213). I personally believe that ‘focused’ tasks can be beneficial in teaching grammar communicatively in my context.

Bibliography

Ellis, R. (2011) Macro- and micro-evaluation of task-based teaching. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching. (2nd ed) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.212-235.

Ellis, R. (1998) The evaluation of communicative tasks. In: Tomlinson, B. (ed). Materials Development in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp.217-238.

Richards, J. C., et al. (1985) Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics. London: Longman.