Exploring TBLT in
‘optimal’ conditions
Nick Andon
KING’S COLLEGE LONDON
Nick.andon@kcl.ac.uk
Colloquium – Teacher’s use of tasks
in the classroom
Optimal Conditions
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2
Private language schools in London
Purposeful, motivated and well-educated learners
Up to 15 hours a week of classes
Exposure to English outside of lessons
Small group sizes, multilingual groups
Highly trained teachers, well-resourced classrooms
BANA as opposed to TESEP context (Holliday 1994),
where teachers have relative freedom to develop
methodology to suit the needs of learners
The teachers
Qual’s
School
Other
Graham* 7 years in
UK, Spain,
Colombia
CELTA,
DELTA,
doing
MA
Medium-sized
school incl.
business
English
Attends conferences, reads
the professional literature,
learned Spanish since starting
teaching.
David*
11 years in
UK, Japan,
Indonesia
CELTA,
DELTA,
doing
MA
Large
prestigious
school
Does initial teacher training
(CELTA), INSET and is a
senior teacher.
William*
7 years in
UK, China,
Japan
CELTA,
MA
Medium-sized
school
Studied Mandarin at
university.
Helen*
7 years in UK CELTA,
& Spain
DELTA,
MA
Medium-sized
school
Studied languages at
university & after. ADOS at
her school. Runs workshops
and initial teacher training.
Experience
*(not their
real
names)
3
TBLT in “normal” classes
• Wealth of research data on effects of task use
• Far fewer studies on implementation of TBLT, mostly
focus on deliberate innovations (eg Edwards & Willis
2005; van den Branden 2006, Carless 2002, 2004)
• What conceptions of task-based L2 pedagogy are
held by teachers who are not participants in
curriculum innovation projects involving TBLT.
• To what extent has TBLT, “the current orthodoxy”
(Littlewood 2004) filtered down to the normal lives of
teachers?
• How is TBLT perceived and practiced by teachers in
this type of context?.
4
Data collected
• An initial semi-structured interview to gather
background data on the teacher-participant.
• Non-participant observation of one of the teacher’s
lessons. Lessons ranged from 1 to 3 hours in length.
• A second semi-structured interview including a
stimulated recall protocol consisting of verbally
walking the teacher through a description of the
lesson to elicit comments on key issues that had
been identified.
• A second classroom observation, but with focus on
issues identified earlier.
• A third interview including stimulated recall with focus
on issues identified earlier.
5
Aspects of TBLT focused on
• Tasks as meaning-focused and goal-oriented
communication
• Authenticity – situational, interactional, personal
• Tasks as knowledge creating, or as a focus for
language work vs. tasks as practice/consolidation
• TBLT combined with other approaches
• Other aspects of TBLT reflected in teachers stated
principles and their observed practices
6
Communication & meaning
• All four teachers plan learner-centred lessons where
students are very active communicators in the
classroom, interacting in pairs and groups,
communicating personal meanings and exchanging
opinions, and where most of the lesson time is spent
on language-using activities rather than teacher
explanation and form-focused practice
• Communication, interaction and negotiation of
meaning in the lessons observed provide ample
opportunities for input, output and negotiated
interaction.
7
Goal-orientation
• “[A] task has a clearly defined communicative
outcome”. Ellis (2003: 10; see also Skehan 1998, and
Willis 1996 on public presentation of outcome).
• The informal chat which took up a considerable
proportion of lesson time, was sometimes
manipulated to build in goals or outcomes:
On a Monday morning, the first thing I tend to do (…)
is to get them to stand up and walk around and find
out who had the best and who had the worst
weekend. (David)
• Graham creates impromptu tasks based on what has
come up in the chat at the beginning of the lesson
8
Graham is aware that tasks need an outcome
• [the main rationale or purpose for doing tasks is]
to focus on the task and not so much the language, so
students are … focussing on the goal, focussing on
something, and the language is something that comes
up, in fact, the fact that the goal … can relate to real life
.. business side of things you know, and it’s quite real in
the sense life is full of real tasks. (Graham)
He specifically excludes roleplays
well a task has to have an outcome, doesn’t it or
something so whether there’s an outcome at the end of
the role-play I don’t know not really, no ... there’s no
outcome so it can’t be a task really can it, but it’s a very
useful tool to use the language you’ve got (Graham)
9
His activity of choice however is a kind of roleplay
that does incorporate an outcome
the role-play things where you have to find out who’s
the best, an interview for a job or something, I do this
far too much, when you have three candidates and
three different interviewers, and the candidate’s got
five minutes here five minutes here five minutes,
language feedback every change, who’s the best
candidate, and then in candidates who’s the best
interviewer, and adapting that for hundreds of
different things, doctors, holidays, whose got the best,
hundreds, loads of different. (Graham)
10
Outcomes in one of Helen’s lessons
1. Pairs think up and list ways to become a millionaire
2. Pairs present suggestions to class .
3. From combined list on whiteboard, pairs to decide
which would be the easiest/most difficult/most likely
4. Report back to class for discussion
5. Pairs fill in a questionnaire on attitudes to money and
decide which of them is most likely to get rich.
6. Pairs report back to class – some say not realistic
7. Accuracy based gapfill
8. Game
Although Helen saw this a grammar focused lesson,
the outcomes were presented, discussed, evaluated
11
• In a similar way to Helen, all the teachers use personal
information exchange activities which provide at least
potential opportunities for outcomes to be presented
and evaluated in this way
• Often the teacher stopped the pair work activities (in
which students were actively and enthusiastically
engaged) after a few minutes and the lesson moved on,
with no presentation of what had been discussed,
• More often than not, the teachers omitted opportunities
for feedback or spent very little time on them, and
almost all of their post-task feedback to the students
focused on the language used and not the content of
discussions and decisions made during task
performance.
12
Authenticity in tasks
• Skehan’s original task criteria include ‘some sort of
relationship to comparative real-world activities’
(1998:95).
• All four teachers take steps, in a variety of ways, to
establish connections between language use in the
classroom and authentic communication in the world
outside the classroom.
• It’s got to be as real or they’ve got to see it as
relevant as possible they’ve got to see it as ... they
see it as relevant, yeah, to their job. (Graham).
13
David characterises the transferability of language
skills from the classroom to the world outside the
classroom not just as the end product, but as the
conceptual and motivational point of departure of a
task-based approach:
I would actually say that in a kind of more task-based
approach, the whole driving force is actually, I want
you to be able to walk out of the classroom and feel
that you can talk about this or make a phone call or
something like that, yeah, that’s the real motivation.
Would it then be right to say that the aim of the lesson
is that you would be able to do tasks like this in real
life?
Yes. (David) (Interviewer)
14
Tasks as knowledge creating
• A central concern of SLA research into TBLT
• An area focused on by critics of TBLT (e.g. Sheen
1994, Bruton 2002, Swan 2005)
• A problem for language teachers also: Ellis, for
instance notes a “general perception among
language teachers and educators that task-based
instruction is mainly directed at improving students’
abilities to use the target language rather than at
enabling them to acquire new linguistic skills” (Ellis
2000: 212)
15
• How do language teachers see & implement the
relationship between tasks and particular forms
• Do they choose tasks to focus on particular L2 forms
or functions? Or base the selection of a language
focus for the lesson on the requirements of the task,
perhaps pre-teaching necessary language which
would later be used in the task?
• Does language emerge from task performance, with
the teacher basing language focus activities on the
language that learners attempted or omitted to use
while participating in the task?
• How do the teachers deal with errors and handle
reactive focus on form?
16
Contradictory data from teachers
• I’m of the belief that language that is most effective
for students is the one that comes up in the process
of the class, rather than the one that you, the
language that you’ve taken in there, that this is what
you’re going to learn, because it might not be on their
developmental process or acquisition whatever it’s
called. (Graham)
• Graham does, though, pre-plan at least some of the
language he intends to focus on within the context of
a particular task and chooses particular tasks in order
to target a language point that has recently been
covered in the students’ textbook.
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• Talking about a task I had observed him teaching
and we did conditionals so then I thought that, they all
knew conditionals, and they knew the third conditional
but I thought I’d show them a little bit of, you know
just comparing a little bit the different types. (Graham)
• Graham devises tasks based around texts in order to
provide practice in L2 structures that he has noticed
students are having problems with. This is a clear
example of what Loschky & Bley-Vroman (1993) term
the ‘utility criterion’
I think that the very nature of the task means that it’s
hard to do it without using conditionals to an extent.
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Taken to extremes, this method of using tasks to
consolidate language recently presented resembles
PPP (presentation-practice-production) or at least
task-supported learning rather than TBLT, but
Graham does not expect immediate mastery of the
structure:
I had all this language on the board, it’s possible, it’s
possible this this this, and then of course the actual
thing was they might have [...] they could have been,
they can’t have been, you know, … and then left it
there … and not taking it any (further) (Graham)
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• Graham is also aware that learners do not always
learn what teachers teach (Allwright 1984b), and that
not every student in the class is going to learn the
same things from a task:
Each person can take from it what they, what they, I
mean I might hammer home one thing but a lot of
things, they can take from it what they, want, you
know. (Graham)
• The relationship between tasks and specific language
points works in two directions. Graham makes use of
tasks and communicative activities diagnostically, so
that he can respond to errors and problems and build
on the language students are using, for example by
suggesting alternative lexis. He also plans tasks to
target specific language points.
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• David tends task to use tasks as the starting point for
deciding what language should be focused on in order
to support students in carrying out the task. David
described the purpose of the task which formed the core
of one observed lesson as follows:
Well, it was principally to actually, give them some
language to be able to do that, it’s a sort of natural thing
that people do, people want to complain about things so
I view that as, a very useful task in the sense that it’s
something we always do, so I wanted to basically help
the students to be better at doing that and to do that by
giving them some language. (David)
• Generally the data show teachers’ uncertainty about
this aspect of tasks.
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Eclectic use of TBLT
• Graham combines TBLT with the lexical approach,
dogma in ELT and a number of other principles, choosing
aspects of different approaches that fit together.
• He also uses tasks as both preparation for and follow-up
to direct intervention form-focused lessons, and although
he expressed a preference for task-based teaching, he
feels that he has to sometimes fit in with learners’
expectations related to more traditional teaching of
grammar.
• David similarly combines tasks with the lexical approach
and lessons that follow the PPP framework.
• Helen fits tasks into the ESA framework (Harmer 1998)
and switches between direct and indirect approaches
22 within lessons.
• Tasks used as only part of each teacher’s approach,
alongside other approaches, techniques and activities.
• Teachers not at all convinced by the concept of tasks as
knowledge creating
• Differences in the way tasks are implemented:
outcomes ignored or played down
Complex findings, e.g. the effects of different
kinds of planning on task performance are reduced
by simple principle: planning is a good thing.
• TBLT is not treated by these teachers as an approach,
rather as a technique or one of the tools in their toolbox.
Task Supported Language Teaching.
• While these teachers had a good understanding of what a
task is, they were less clear about TBLT as an approach.
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• Teachers’ insecure about their own knowledge of TBLT
• Showed no awareness of some aspects of task-based
research such as the effects of different task types
• Complex research findings reduced to simple maxims –
“planning time is good”
• Teachers know what a task is but are less certain on the
rationales for TBLT as an approach
• Unwillingness to devote too much time to tasks and their
inclusion of more traditional grammar input activities
indicates teachers not convinced that TBLT is sufficient
or efficient way to achieve language development
• Besides time pressure, learners’ expectations of more
traditional approaches also caused teachers to limit the
proportion of the curriculum used for TBLT
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Research vs. teaching
Researchers
Teachers
Cross-sectional
Focus on longer term
development? Building on
previous lessons
Removed from normal classroom
contexts
Complexities include group
dynamics, time, reacting to
interests of learners
Single tasks in isolation
Series or chains of linked tasks
Interest in knowledge creation
Focus on learning over time
Strategies for providing FoF seen
as part of the task
Knowledge creation from outside
of task
Data gathered on task
performance
No evidence of systematic data
collection
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• This is not a ‘how to’ book ... A practitioner looking for clear
guidance about how to construct task based research or
teaching may be disappointed. (Ellis 2003: ix)
• Continuing research into task-design and implementation should
help task-based teaching develop in ways that have a sound
and convincing psycholinguistic basis. The final challenge will
then be to persuade teachers of the merit in adopting a taskbased approach in their classrooms (Foster 1999: 69)
•
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This chapter ... tries to clarify how the research findings
reviewed in previous chapters can be related to instruction. The
findings are incomplete, maybe partial, and may need to be
supplemented part of the time by decisions which are not
research-based. But at least they are a basis for action.
(Skehan 1998: 121).
Provisional specifications
The goal of theory and research in SLA is not to direct
teachers how to teach, but rather to advance a number
of ‘provisional specifications’ that teachers can then try
out, adapting them to their own particular teaching
contexts. (Ellis 2003: x)
• In our view, it is entirely appropriate that teachers
should treat ideas and proposals for TBLT as
provisional specifications in this way. ... With this in
mind it seems to us that the status of TBLT as a set of
provisional specifications could be emphasised more in
the teacher development literature, and that the role of
teachers in experimenting with aspects of task use
could be made more explicit. (Andon & Eckerth 2009)
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• Adapting TBLT requires a good understanding of its principles
and a clearer idea of underlying mechanisms. Principled
eclecticism (Mellow 2002)
• Better models of TBLT in practice
• If pedagogy is to be informed by more data on the use of TBLT
in real classrooms over extended periods of time, it is clear that
teachers will have to be involved.
• A clearer understanding of essential and optional features of
TBLT might encourage teachers to experiment with different
ways of using tasks.
• Dealing with learners’ expectations and raising learners’
awareness.
• Lynch’s (2001) proposals as one way to gather data efficiently
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Johannes Eckerth
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