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The Task-based Approach: Some Questions And Suggestions

William LittlewoodELT Journal 2004

By: Amirhamid Forough Ameri

ahfameri@gmail.com

April 2016

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Outline

What does task mean?Two dimensions of tasks?

Focus on forms and focus on meaningTask involvement

TB learning and the communicative approachIs the term TB approach really useful?

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IntroductionCambridge Dictionary (1995): a task is ‘a piece of work to be done, esp. one

done regularly, unwillingly or with difficulty.’ Oxford Dictionary (1989): ‘a piece of work imposed, exacted, or undertaken

as a duty or the like.’However, the task-based approach has achieved something of the status of a

new orthodoxy.A task-based approach really means …?TB learning OR the communicative approach? What’s the difference?

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What does task mean?

Definitions of ‘task' range along a continuum according to the extent to which they insist on communicative purpose as an essential criterion.

• Not essential at all• Williams and Burden

(1997); Breen (1987), …

• a task is any activity that learners engage in to further the process of leaming a language.

• Tasks primarily involve communication.

• Stern (1992) associates tasks with ‘realistic language use'

• Tasks comprise only activities that involve communication.

• Willis (1996): 'tasks are always activities where the target language is used by the learner for a communicative purpose.

• Ellis (2000): this communicative definition now represents 'a broad consensus among researchers and educators’.

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Two dimensions of tasks?

Focus on forms Focus on meaning

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Task InvolvementPrabhu’s (1987) mind engagement: the learners' active personal involvement with the task,

whatever the nature of that task may be. Several educational and psychological factors are involved in task involvement.

factors influencing task involvement: motivation to learn, affective climate, teacher response, task characteristics and group dynamics

Task involvement is a major challenge in the heterogeneous classroom situations.

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The Two Dimensions Combined

• Although these dimensions are presented as if they were properties of the tasks themselves, it would be more exact to say that they are properties of the learners as they engage in the tasks.

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TB Learning and the Communicative Approach

The continuum from focus on form to focus on meaning could equally be taken as representing “task types” in TBA or “activities types” in CA.

TBA can be seen as a development within CA.The essential feature of this development: structured and authentic

communication activities or ‘tasks’ take on a more central role.In TBA, tasks not only serve as major components of the methodology, but

also as units around which a course may be organized.

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Is the term TB approach really useful?

IF the task-based approach can be conceived as a development within the’

communicative approach, the definition of a task is fraught with problems, and the term itself is unlikely to arouse enthusiasm outside language-teaching

circles, WHY TO USE THE TERM AT ALL?

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Is the term TB approach really useful?

So far as the usefulness of the term is concerned, the situation of TB approach is similar to the situation of CA.

In the days of fixed methods such as “audiolinguialism” and “direct method”, it was easy to describe methods using labels without any problem.

Now the search for the right fixed method has given way to the search for a more flexible framework of principles and procedures.

The use of fixed labels for TB approach is as much misleading as it was for CA.

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What is a logical solution?To dispense with labels altogether? This would not satisfy our need to describe our world. So, amongst all the variability and flexibility, we must seek a common

denominator and base our label on that.Since the main common denominator of communicative and task-based

approaches is that, even when they use form-focused procedures, they are always oriented towards communication, my own preferred working label (to cover both communicative and task-based language teaching) is ‘communication-oriented language teaching’.

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