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Task-based language teaching (I)
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Gong Yafu director of the Foreign Language Department of the People's Education Press
Editor's note: The pedagogy illustrated by the author here is going to be tried out in middle schools in more than 10 major cities around China in September, using new English textbooks.
1. Definition of task
a. From a non-technical and non-linguistic perspective
, a task is a piece of work undertaken for oneself or for others, freely or for some reward. It means what people do in everyday life, at work, at play, and in between, i.e. panting a fence, dressing a child, filling out a form, buying a pair of shoes, making an airline reservation, writing a check or finding a street destination.
b. In a pedagogical sense, a task is an activity or action which is carried out as the result of processing or understanding language.
c. Thirdly, from the language learning point of view, task refers to a range of work plans which have the overall purpose of facilitating language learning.
d. Lastly, it can be defined as the communicative task
, which is a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending，manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form. A task should have a sense of completeness, it’s a complete communicative act.
2. The essential difference between task and exercise
Task has a nonlinguistic outcome while an exercise has a linguistic outcome. See the following example: When listening to a weather forecast and deciding what to wear, the learner will listen to a weather forecast and identify the predicted maximum temperature for the day if task-based teaching is adopted, while the learner will listen to an aural text and answer questions afterwards on whether given statements are true or false in an excercise-oriented way.
3. Advantages
a. Knowledge of grammatical rules is no guarantee of being able to use those rules for communication. Learners who are able to identify instances of rule violation, and who can even state the rule, frequently violate the rules when using language for communication.
b. Grammar + opportunities to communicate leads to greater improvements in fluency and grammatical accuracy than grammar only.
c. Learner participation in class is related significantly to improvements in language proficiency.
d. Classrooms that are basically “communicative”for explicit grammatical instruction, are superior to both traditional classrooms that focused heavily on grammar, and to immersion programmes that eschew explicit grammatical instruction.
e. Language is acquired as learners actively engaged in attempting to communicate in the target language. Acquisition will be maximized when learners engage in tasks that “push” them to the limits of their current competence.
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