Aspects of task-based syllabus design

Task-based syllabus design

Syllabus design is concerned with the selection, sequencing and justification of the content of the curriculum.

When he or she embraces a task-based approach to creating syllabuses and pedagogical materials, a syllabus designer needs to take into consideration three elements: language data, information, and opportunities for practice.

Language data

By language data, Nunan means samples of spoken and written language. Without access to data, it is impossible to learn a language.

A contrast between “authentic” and “non-authentic” data is drawn. Authentic data are samples of spoken or written language that have not been specifically written for the purposes of language teaching. Non-authentic data are dialogues and reading passages that have been specifically written for the purposes of language teaching. In ELS learners need both authentic and non-authentic data. Both provide learners with different aspects of the language.

Information

Learners need experiential information about the target culture, they need linguistic information about target language systems, and they need process information about how to go about learning the language.

They can get this information either deductively, when someone (usually the teacher) or a textbook provides an explicit explanation, or they can get it inductively, learners study examples of language and then formulate the rule.

Practice

It is highly unlikely that a learner will get very far without extensive practice. In designing practice Nunan distinguishes between exercises, activities, and tasks.

A task is a communicative act that does not usually have a restrictive focus on a single language item. It has also a non-restrictive outcome.

An exercise has usually a restrictive focus on a single language item and has a linguistic outcome.

An activity also has a restrictive focus on one or two language items, but also a communicative outcome. In that sense, activities have something in common with tasks and something in common with exercises.

Nunan distinguishes between real-world or target tasks, which are communicative acts that we achieve through language in the world outside the classroom, and pedagogical tasks, which are carried out in the classroom. Pedagogical tasks are subdivided into those with a rehearsal rationale and those with a pedagogical rationale.

Real-world world target task: a communicative act we achieve through language in the world outside the classroom.

Pedagogical task: a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form. They have non-linguistic outcome, and can be divided into rehearsal tasks or activation tasks.

Rehearsal task: a piece of classroom work in which learners rehearse in class, a communicative act will carry out outside the class.

Activation task: A piece of classroom work involving communicative interaction, but not one in which learners will be rehearsing for some out-of-class communication. Rather they are designed to activate the acquisition process.

Enabling skills: mastery of language systems grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, etc. which learners to take part in communicative tasks.

Language exercise: A piece of classroom work focusing learners on, and involving learners in manipulating some aspect of the linguistic system.

Communication activity: a piece of classroom work involving a focus on a particular linguistic feature but also involving the genuine exchange of meaning.

Steps in designing a task-based programme

1-Select and sequence real-world tasks

2-Create pedagogical tasks (rehearsal/activation)

3-Identify enabling skills: create communicative activities and language exercises

4- Sequence and integrate pedagogical tasks, communicative activities and language exercises.

Seven principles for task-based principles

Scaffolding: lessons and materials should provide supporting frameworks within which the learning takes place.

Task dependency: within the lesson, one task should grow out of, and build upon the ones that have gone before.

Recycling: recycling language maximizes opportunities for learning and activates the “organic” learning principle.

Active learning: learners learn best by actively using the language they are learning.

Integration: learners should be taught in ways that make clear the relationship between grammatical from, communicative function and semantic meaning.

Activities

Exercise ActivitiesTasks

Real-world

PedagogicalRehearsal Activation

Principles for TBL teaching

Reproduction to creation: In reproductive tasks, learners reproduce language models provided by the teacher, the textbook or the tape. These tasks give learners mastery of form, meaning and function, and provide a basis for creative tasks. In creative tasks, learners are recombining familiar elements in novel ways.

Reflection: learners should be given opportunities to reflect on what they have learned and how they are doing.

Task components

Identifying task components

In Nunan´s point of view, the framework which combines simplicity with the power to analyze the majority of learning tasks has three components: goals, input and activities. These three in turn imply certain roles.

Goals

Goals are the general intentions behind any given learning task. They provide a point of contact between the task and the broader curriculum. They may relate to a range of general outcomes (communicative, affective or cognitive) or may directly describe teacher or learners behaviour.

Goals were classified as Communicative, Socio-cultural and learning how to learn in an Australian project.

Input

Input refers to the data that form the point of departure for the task. Input for communicative tasks can be derived from a wide range of sources: letters, postcards, street map, bus timetables, etc.

Non-authentic material is any material which has not been specifically produced for the purposes of language teaching.

Using authentic material offers students the opportunity to make use of non-linguistic clues (pictures, layouts, symbols, etc.) and to deal with small amount of print which at the same time contains complete and meaningful messages. In addition, language is natural, by altering it for teaching purposes we risk making the reading task more difficult. We may be removing clues to meaning.

Activities

Activities specify what learners will actually do with the input which forms the point of departure for the learning task.

There are three general ways of characterizing activities: rehearsal for real world, skills used and fluency/accuracy.

Authenticity

Tasks

Goals

Input

ActivitiesTeacher´s role

Learner´s role

Settings

There are arguments for and against both real-world and pedagogic tasks. Some say classroom activities should parallel the real world as closely as possible as language is a tool of communication, the purposes of the tasks should be the same in class as they are in real life. Others say that students should be engaged in problem-solving tasks as purposeful but without the rehearsal requirement that they should be realistic or authentic as natural social behaviour.

Skill getting and skill using

A second way of characterizing activities is according to whether they are basically concerned with skill getting or skill using. These relate to the traditional distinction between controlled practice activities, in which learners manipulate phonological and grammatical forms, and transfer activities, in which learners are meant to apply their newly acquired mastery of linguistic forms to the comprehension and production of communicative language.

Accuracy and fluency

A third way of analyzing learning activities is into those which focus the learner on developing accuracy, and those which focus on the development of fluency.

Language display for evaluation tends to lead to concern for accuracy, monitoring, reference rules, possibly explicit knowledge, problem solving and evidence of skill-getting.

In contrast, language use requires fluency, expression rules, a reliance on implicit knowledge and automatic performance. It will on occasion also require monitoring and problem solving strategies, but these will not be the most prominent features.

Teacher and learner roles

“Role” refers to the part that learners and teachers are expected to play in carrying out learning tasks as well as the social and interpersonal relationships between the participants.

Teacher roles and learner roles are two sides of a coin. Giving learners a more active role in the classroom requires the teacher to adopt a different role.

Settings

Skill getting

Cognitionknowledge

Perceptionof units, categories, and functions

Abstractioninternalizing rules relating categories and functions

Productionor pseudo-communication

Articulationpractice of sequences of sounds

Constructionpractice in formulating communications

Skill using

Interactionfor real communication

Receptioncomprehension of a message

Expressionconveying personal meaning

Motivationto communicate

“Settings” refers to the classroom arrangements specified or implied in the task. It also requires consideration of whether the task is to be carried out wholly or partly outside the classroom. A wide range of configurations is possible in the communicative classroom, although practical considerations such as class size can constrain what is possible in practice.

It is useful to distinguish between “mode” and “environment”. Learning “mode” refers to whether the learner is operating on an individual or a group basis. Operating “Environment” refers to where the learning actually takes place.

A Task-Based Approach to Language Teaching and Learning

What is a task?

Task is meaning focused. It requires learners to use the same type of communicative processes are those they would use in real life situations. A task contains pragmatic meaning, that is to say, the learner is a language user as he performs the task.

In contrast, activities are form-focused, the learner used language to practice language, not to communicate.

A task is an activity which requires learners to use language, with an emphasis on meaning, to attain an objective.

According to Jane Willis, a task is a goal-oriented activity in which learners use language to achieve a real outcome. The important thing is that while doing the tasks, learners are meaning what they say, and focusing on meaning. They are free to use whatever language form they want.

Task types

There are two main ways of classifying tasks:

1- From a cognitive perspective:

This classification is base on the cognitive operations that different tasks require on the part of learners. (Prabhu)

Information Gap: They involve “a transfer of given information form one person to another-or from one form to another, or from one place to another-generally calling for the encoding or decoding of information from or into language”. E.g. sharing information with a partner.

Reasoning Gap: They involve “deriving some new information from a given information through processes of inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or a perception of relationships or patterns” e.g. solving puzzles

Opinion Gap: They involve “identifying and articulating a personal preference, feeling, or attitude in response to a given situation”. E.g. giving your opinion.

2. From a pedagogic perspective:

This classification is based on the tasks that may be designed or found in teaching materials. (Willis)

Listing (involving the generation of a list of items) Ordering and sorting (involving the classification, ranking or sequencing of items) Comparing (finding similarities and differences) Problem-solving (demanding intellectual activity such as solving puzzles or using logic to find the answer) Sharing personal experiences Creative

Task in projects

Ribe and Vidal distinguish three generations of tasks to explain how a project is developed.

First generation tasks are those which are commonly found in communicative classrooms and which are used to develop communicative ability

Second generation tasks present more challenge since they require learners to both manipulate language and to use cognitive abilities at the same time. They focus primarily on content, procedure and language.

Third generation tasks are characterized by an educational purpose as well as a cognitive and linguistic one. They aim at developing the personality of the student though the foreign language.

Teaching languages to young learners . Lynne Cameron

Demands and support

Cameron analyses the environment created by an activity in terms of demands on learners and support for learning.

Learning opportunities can be deliberately constructed by adjusting the balance between demands and support, and how, if teachers have clear language learning goals, this can be done more effectively.

Task demands

The analysis of the demands that a task places on pupils is a key way to assess its suitability and its learning potential.

Type of task demands

Cognitive demands vary with the degree of contextualization of language, difficulty of concepts that are needed to do the task.

Language demands vary whether the language is spoken or written, understanding or production, extended talk or conversation, with vocabulary and grammar needed, with the genre, with the amount of L1 and L2

Interactional demands vary with the type of interaction required. e.g. pair work, with the participants in the talk, adults or peers, and with the nature of the interaction, e.g. questions and answers

Metalinguistic demands may include the use of technical terms about language in production or comprehension e.g. in instructions, in feedback.

Involvement demands vary with the ease or difficulty the learner has in engaging with the task. E.g. length of task stages, links to child´s interests and concerns.

Physical demands vary with how long the child must sit still for, with actions needed, with fine motor skills needed e.g. to write

Task support

When we think on terms of support, we try to use what the children already do to help them master new skills and knowledge, or we try to match tasks to children´s natural abilities and inclinations.

Types of task support

Cognitive support can come from the contextualization of language, from the use of concepts already developed, from familiar formats of graphics or activities, from familiar topics and content.

Language support can come from re-use of language already mastered, from moving from easier domain to more difficult, e.g. spoken to written

Interactional support can come from the type of interaction, e.g. pair work

Metalinguistic support can come from the content and activity that is easy for learners to engage with e.g. links to child ´s interests and concerns.

Physical support can come from variation in sitting and moving, use of familiar actions.

Balancing demands and support

Whether learners can d the task and whether they learn anything by doing it, depends not just on the demands or on the support, but on the dynamic relationship between demands and support.

Defining task for young learners

Tasks can be defined as classroom activities which focus is on how the goals and actions can create a unified whole. They will have a clear beginning and end. They may be quite short or may last over several lessons. They should have a clear purpose and meaning for the student. They should have clear language learning goals.

Staging a classroom task

Cameron adopts the three stage format: Preparation – Core Activity – Follow up

The core activity is central to the task. It is set up through its language learning goals.

Preparation activities prepare the learners to be able to complete the core activity successfully, and might include pre-teaching of language items or activation of topic vocabulary.

The follow up stage builds on successful completion of the core, perhaps with a public performance of work done in the core or with written work based on oral language used in the core.

Formulating Goals and Objectives. Graves

Goals

Goals are a way of putting into words the main purposes and intended outcomes of the course.

Stating goals helps to bring into focus the teacher´s visions and priorities for the course.

They are general statements but they are not vague.

A goal states an aim that the course will explicitly address in some way.

Goals should address what can be realistically achieved within the constraints and resources of your course.

Goals are future oriented.

Brown proposes that goals are “what students should be able to do when they leave the programme.”

Objectives

Objectives are statements about how the goals will be achieved

Through objectives, a goal is broken down into learnable and teachable units.

By achieving the objectives, the goal will be reached,

The objective must relate to the goal.

Another aspect of the relationship between goals and objectives is that of cause and effect.

Objectives are in a hierarchical relationship to goals.

Goals are more general and objectives are more specific.

Brown points out that one of the main differences between goals and objectives is their level of specificity

Goals are more long term and objectives are more short term

Objectives. Nunam

Objectives can be useful to guide the selection of structures, functions, notions, tasks, and so on; to provide a sharper focus for the teachers, to give learners a clear idea of what they can expect from a language programme, to help in developing means of assessment and evaluation.

As goal statements are relatively imprecise, they can act as general signposts but we need thr objectives in order to provide information for course and programme planner.

Performance objectives in language teaching

Objectives which specify what learners should do as a result of instruction are called “performance objectives”

Performance objectives should contain three components: the performance component, the conditions component and the standards component.

The performance component describes what the learner is to be able to do The conditions component specifies the conditions under which the learner will perform The standards component describes how well the learner is to perform

The specification of conditions and standards leads to greater precision in objective setting, and also facilitates the grading of objectives.

Process and product objectives

A real-world objective describes a task which learners might wish to carry out outside the classroom, while a pedagogic objective is one which describes a task which the learner might be required to carry out inside the classroom.

A distinction which needs to be observed is between objectives which describe what learners will be able to do as a result of instruction (product objectives) and those which describe activities designed to develop the skills needed to carry out the product objectives (process objectives).

Process objectives differ from product objectives in that they describe, not what learners will do as a result of instruction but the experiences that the learner will undergo in the classroom.