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2.1 A new approach
It is possible to learn to speak a language quite fluently without any teaching at all. We all have learnt our mother-tongues by having been exposed to natural language which we then imitated and analysed in order to understand how it works. Some learners aquired a foreign language in that way. They may not always be totally accurate, but their level of language ability is entirely adequate for their needs. Learners having managed to learn a second language in the way most people learn their first, are usually very motivated, have received a lot of exposure to authentic language and have had many opportunities to speak and experiment with the language, as Willis states (Willis, 4).
Task-based learning tries to set up classroom and learning conditions that language learning can take place in the most natural way possible. The situations with which the learners are confronted are not designed to practise a specific part of the language but to give learners the opportunity for using language not in terms of form, but rather in terms of meaning.
Tasks are always activities where the target language is used by the learners for a communicative purpose in order to achieve an outcome. The emphasis is on understanding and conveying meaning in order to complete the task successfully. To achieve the demanded outcome, learners would be focusing first on meaning and then on the best ways to express that meaning linguistically. So, learners are free to choose whatever language forms they want to use in order to fulfil the task goals. When the need for communication is strongly felt, they will find a way of getting round words or forms they do not yet know or cannot remember.
Skehan gives a number of examples for task-based activities:
- completing one another's family trees;
- agreeing on advice to give to the writer of a letter to an agony aunt;
- discovering whether one's paths will cross [...] in the next week;
- solving a riddle;
- leaving a message on someone's answering machine.
(Skehan, 95 f.)
In contrast, a number of classroom activities would not count as tasks:
- completing a transformation excercise;
- (most) question and answer activities with the teacher;
- inductive learning activities where pre-selected material is conducive to the generation of language rules.
(Skehan, 96)
The teacher can monitor the activities in class from a distance and should encourage all attempts to communicate in the target language. He should, however, not correct learners' mistakes or give advice. Fluency in communication is what counts. The emphasis is on meaning and not on practising language forms correctly.
According to Nunan, communication tasks have been defined as tasks that "involve learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form" (Nunan, 1989, quoted in: Ellis, 79). The pedagogic rationale for the use of communcation tasks rests partly on the claim that they will help to develop learners' communicative skills and partly on the claim that they will contribute incidentally to their linguistic development. Hence, communication tasks are important for both fluency and accuracy.
It is, obviously, necessary to adapt the task dimension and task difficulty to the learners concerned. Skehan proposes a three-way distinction for the analysis of tasks which distinguishes "code complexity", "cognitive complexity" and the category of "communcative stress" which includes factors such as time limits and time pressure, speed of presentation or the length of texts used (Skehan, 99).
2.2 Conditions for language learning
As Willis writes, for anyone to learn a language with reasonable efficiency, three essential conditions must be met (Willis, 11).
Firstly, there has to be much exposure to the target language, a rich but comprehensible input of real spoken and written language in use. Modification of the target language in spoken discourse by the teacher in order to help the learners understand is done quite unconsciously and is beneficial as long as it is not carried too far. Simplifying texts, however, can deprive learners of the opportunity to become familiar with original forms, which may occur frequently in the target language. Besides, it does not necessarily make the task of comprehension easier.
As well as input, also output is generally considered essential for language learning. Learners need opportunities to communicate what they want to say and express what they feel or think. They need the experience of communication in a variety of situations, e.g. in different size groups or for different audiences. In a positive, supportive and low stress atmosphere created by the teacher, creativity is most encouraged.
The third essential condition learners need is motivation to learn; motivation to process the exposure they receive and motivation to use the target language as often as possible. Learners' motivation may be intergrative, that is to identify with the target language and culture, or mere instrumental, that is to see the target language as a means to achieve a specific aim. Success and satisfaction are, however, the key factors in sustaining motivation. The more learners can be motivated efficiently to seek out opportunities for exposure and use of the target language inside and outside the classroom, the better.
The role instruction plays in the language learning process is somewhat unclear amongst scholars. It is generally accepted that instruction focused on language form can speed up the rate of language development and raise the level of the learners' attainment. What instruction does not seem to do, still, is to change the learners' developmental sequence. Learners will not necessarily learn what is taught to them. A syllabus reflecting the natural acquisition order is not the ultimate solution to this problem. Firstly, studies about the natural aquisition order are restricted to certain morphemes like -ing, -ed and -s endings. But language involves much more than this and we have little idea of the order in which other features may be acquired. Secondly, we cannot certainly know which learners are at which stage. Even within a class there may be major differences amongst learners. Instruction can certainly help learners notice specific features of the target language. It can give them the opportunity to process grammatical and lexical patterns and to form hypotheses about their use and meaning. Instruction should, however, not become more important than the exposure and use of the language.
2.3 Task-based learning and traditional methods of language teaching
As Skehan writes, the most influential traditional method of organising laguage teaching is referred to as PPP - presentation, practice and production (Skehan, 93). This traditional method is used all over the world by a lot of teachers. The aim of a PPP lesson is to teach a specific language form, e.g. a grammatical structure or the realisation of a particular function. The language is tightly controlled and the emphasis is on getting the new form correct.
In the presentation stage, the teacher begins by presenting an item of language in a context or situation to clarify its meaning. In the practice stage, the learners repeat target items and practice sentences until they can say or write them correctly. In the production stage, finally, learners are expected to produce the items they have just learnt, in a "free" situation.
Although this way of teaching new items seems logical and efficient, there are nevertheless several problems with this paradigm. Sometimes learners manage to pass the production stage without using the target form at all. Sometimes they tend to overuse the target form and produce very unnatural pieces of conversation. Besides, PPP gives an illusion of mastery since learners can often produce the required forms confidently in the classroom, but once outside, they either do not produce them at all or use them incorrectly.
According to Willis, the PPP cycle derives from the "behaviourist view of learning, which rests on the principle that repitition helps to 'automate' responses, and that practice makes perfect" (Willis, 135). Yet, language learning rarely happens in an additive way, with bits of language being learnt one after the other. Language learners rather take advantage of their exposure to the target language in use and grapple with meaning, try to understand underlying structures and observe how others express the meanings they want to be able to convey at the same time. We cannot predict what learners are going to learn at any given stage. Instruction, as stated above, does help but it cannot guarantee when something is learnt. Rich and well-chosen exposure to the target language helps language develop gradually and organically, out of the learner's own experience. The PPP cycle, still, restricts the learner's experience of language by focusing on a single item. Therefore, the goal of the last stage, the production phase, namely free production, is often not achieved.
The task-based learning framework offers far more opportunities for free language use. All components of the learning cycle are free of language control. Learners rely upon the linguistic resources they have already acquired and always use language for a genuine purpose. The task supplies a genuine need to use language to communicate, and the other components follow naturally from the task. The process of consciousness raising used in language focus activities encourages learners to think and to analyse, not simply to repeat, manipulate and apply.
The framework solves another language-teaching problem; that of providing a context for grammar teaching and form-focused activities. In a PPP cycle, where the presentation of the target language comes first, this context has to be invented. In task-based learning, the context is already established by the task itself.
Here, the concept of focused and unfocused communication tasks has to be considered. Ellis makes a distinction between these two. In the case of unfocused communication tasks,
no effort is made in the design of execution of a task to give prominence to any particular linguistic feature. The language used to perform the task is natural and only very broadly determined by the content of the task.
(Ellis, 82)
A focused communication task, in contrast,
does result in some linguistic feature being made prominent, although not in a way that causes the learner to pay more attention to form than meaning.
(Ellis, 83)
The teacher's roles and approach to lesson planning also differ. In a PPP lesson, teachers are in the centre of the class, having everything under control. In task-based learning, however, teachers have to learn to set things up and then hold back, intervening only when needed and reviewing each phase at the end.
So far, we have mainly been concerned with oral communication in the task cycle. Of course, also the skill of writing should be trained within this framework. Yet, the approach towards this also differs from the traditional PPP approach. In real life, only a small proportion of people do more than writing personal letters or filling out forms, even in their first language. Language learners, of course, need to write for other reasons. It is well known that writing is in itself a learning process. It helps people clarifying ideas and creating new ones.
In real life, we only write in order to communicate something to someone. Foreign language writing is traditionally often done for display, so it can be graded rather than for any real communication purpose. To make a change, to give learners a real sense of purpose and to raise motivation, task-based learning promotes the idea of thinking of audiences that might benefit by reading something learners have written. Guide books to the village or town where the school is set or brochures about local activities could be useful for tourists and visitors, a brief school history might be interesting for parents and a class magazine or a diary of a holiday course could be read by other classes or learners.
Summing up, a PPP cycle, according to Willis, "leads from accuracy to fluency; a task-based learning cycle leads from fluency to accuracy" (Willis, 137). It begins by providing learners with a holistic experience in language and then helps them to analyse this language in order to learn more efficiently. PPP, on the other hand, provides specific language items in a vacuum and then looks for some activity to practise them.
2.4 Micro-evaluation: Does a task work?
To say that a task "works" can mean a number of rather different things.
Teachers reflecting on a task might feel that it has worked if they have evidence that the learners found it enjoyable and useful. Yet, it is perfectly possible that learners enjoy doing a task and give it positive ratings in a questionnaire and yet fail to perform it successfully or learn nothing from it.
Whereas the criteria for the evaluation of a closed task are embedded within the task itself, the criteria required for evaluating an open task are not. They are, as Ellis states, "external to the task, and because they are usually not specified by the person who devised the task, they place a considerable burden on the teacher" (Ellis, 102).
A full evaluation of a task calls for an "external evaluation". This could be carried out theoretically by determining to what extend it meets explicitly defined criteria. Such an evalution is predictive in nature. Alternatively, a retrospective evaluation could be carried out. Ellis proposes three different kinds of retrospective evaluations:
A student-based evaluation provides information about how interesting and useful learners perceive a task to be. A response-based evaluation is internal in nature because it simply addresses the question "Was the students' response the one intended by the designer of the task?" A learning-based evaluation is external in nature because it goes beyond the task itself by trying to determine whether the task actually contributed to the learners' second language proficiency.
(Ellis, 103 f.)
To carry out a micro-evaluation, which does not have to follow any formal conventions and rules but can consist of easy and straight-forward questions to find out if the intended goal has been achieved, can contribute effectively to the teacher's own development. He can easily realise which parts of the task went well and which were too difficult. This can help him a lot in finding ways of helping the learners to fully appreciate the task and to cope with predictable problems.
Task evaluations engage teachers as insider researchers and reflective practitioners, thus helping them to examine and reconstruct their own pedagogical values and develop their own personal theories of language teaching. The task-based learning framework is flexible enough to account for all findings and possible necessary changes and adaptations.
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