Exploring TBLT in ‘optimal’ conditions

1. 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

2. Optimal Conditions • 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

3. The teachers

4. 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 (egEdwards & 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?.

5. 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.

6. 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

7. 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.

8. 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

9. 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)

10. 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)

11. Outcomes in one of Helen’s lessons • Pairs think up and list ways to become a millionaire • Pairs present suggestions to class . • From combined list on whiteboard, pairs to decide which would be the easiest/most difficult/most likely • Report back to class for discussion • Pairs fill in a questionnaire on attitudes to money and decide which of them is most likely to get rich. • Pairs report back to class – some say not realistic • Accuracy based gapfill • Game Although Helen saw this a grammar focused lesson, the outcomes were presented, discussed, evaluated

12. 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.

13. 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).

14. 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)

15. 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)

16. 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?

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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)

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. 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 within lessons.

23. 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.

24. 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

25. Research vs. teaching

26. 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 task-based approach in their classrooms (Foster 1999: 69) •  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).

27. 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)

28. 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

29. Johannes Eckerth

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