TASKS

TASKS

1. "anything that learners are given to do (or choose to do) in the language classroom to further the process of the language learning". Burder and Williams (1997).

2. "any structured language learning endeavor which has a particular objective, appropriate context, a specific working procedure, and range of outcomes for those who undertake the task". Breen (1987).

3. "the communicative task is a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulation producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on the meaning rather than the form". Nunan (1989).

4. The task is that of language activity in which there is a focus on meaning over form. Referred to as a communicative task.

   • ´Good Tasks intail: Candlin (1987), in Batstone (1994)
     • they encourage learners to attend to the meaning
     • they give learners flexibility in solving problems in their own way, calling on their own choice of strategies and skills.
     • they involve learners, with their own personalities and attitudes being central.
     • they are challenging, yet not excessively demanding.
     • the raise learners´awareness of the process of language use, and encourage them to reflect on their own language use.
   • Tasks are not: Skehan (1998), Willis (1996).
     • do not give learners other people´s meaning to regurgitate.
     • are not concerned with the language display
     • are not conformity oriented.
     • are not practice oriented
     • do not embed language into materials so that specific structures can be focus upon.
       • Subject: Task-based project MI11311 ACTIVITY 1. MIND MAP GROUP: MEI9H PROFESSOR: MAGDALENA DEL CARMEN MARTÍNEZ NÚÑEZ. STUDENT: ALICIA RODRÍGUEZ QUEZADA
         • Bibliography: IEXPRO Task-based project. Anthology Chapter 1 & 2

5. Communicative tasks

   • focus on meaning. They are usually equated with oral fluency activities, but in fact a communicative task could easily involve writing.

6. Learning asks

   • focus on a formal feature (or feature) of L2 and tend to have very specific outcomes

7. The Historical Framework

   • Communicative Language Teaching CLT
     • Competitive competence led to fundamental changes in the way of language teaching and caused an abundance of new methods. Meaning-based type of task.
       • Classroom activities devise to encourage students to develop communicative competence.
   • Humanism in Language Teachiong
     • Schools were denounced as dehumanizing, or alienating, and there were calls for a more ´holistic approach to education and developed intrapersonal awareness and interpersonal skills. Thomas (1991), Mozkowitz (1978), Legutke (1991).
   • Proposals for process approaches to syllabus design
     • Breen calls the process syllabus (1984), any syllabus is always interpreted by teachers, learners, and teaching context and is thus ´created´.
       • For Breen and Candlin ´process competence´, includes inter- and intra-personal knowledge, the ability to reflect on the language learning process itself through doing tasks with the language.
   • Prabhu´s procedural syllabus
     • The procedural syllabus is concerned with "what is to be done in the classroom rather than what is to be learned" Prabhu (1980). "Form is the best learnt when the learner´s attention is on meaning", (Prabhu, 1982).
       • Bangalore Project (1984) material used (the use of the meaning-focused task as the basic unit of syllabus design)
       • Types of problem-solving tasks. Distinction between: information-gap tasks, Reasoning-gap tasks and Opinion-gap tasks
         • Information-gap tasks. A transfer of given information from one person to another or from one place to another - generally calling for the decoding of the information from or into language.
         • Reasoning-gap tasks.Deriving some new information from given information through processes of inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or perception of relationships or patterns.
         • Opinion-gap tasks. Identification and articulating a personal preference, feeling, or attitude in response to a given situation.

8. PPP (Presentation - Practice - Production)

   • Presentation: The TL is presented in some way to the students.
   • Production: Students are encouraged to use the TL in ´free practice´.
   • Practice: Students are then asked to practice the TL in controlled contexts.
   • Criticisms of PPP - Language is broken down into small chunks, which are fed to the learner in the Presentation stage, digested by the learner in the practice stage, and regurgitated in the production stage.
   • A Dual system for Language Learning. "lexicalized sentence stems". A unit of clause length or longer whose grammatical form and lexical contents is wholly or largely fixed.
     • The idiosyncratic use of language chunks is known as "idiolects".
     • Pawley and Syder calls "holophrases" the store language in our mind in a single chunks.
     • The language learning consists of both item learning (memorizing semi-fixed chunks as holophrases) and system learning (discovering underlying grammatical rules).
   • Tasks and Negotiation of Meaning - a task needs to include negotiation of meaning in order to effectively proper language acquisition forward.
   • Limited Capacity Processing. Learners are simply falling on their exemplar-based systems under the pressures of the need to communicate in real-time.
     • They cannot attend to meaning as well as form at the same time.

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