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Focus On Form in Task Based Teaching

Task-Based Teaching

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186 views4 pages

Focus On Form in Task Based Teaching

Task-Based Teaching

Uploaded by

SharonQuek-Tay
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Abstract

Focus on form in Task-Based


Language Teaching

Focus on form in TaskBased Language


Teaching

Option 1: Focus on forms

Option 2: Focus on
meaning

Option 3: Focus on form

Some useful sources on


focus on form

References

Michael H. Long
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Task-Based Language Teaching
Some examples would probably be useful at this point, so let
us see how this would work in a particular kind of
communicative classroom, one implementing Task- Based
Language Teaching (TBLT). There are several lines of
"task-based" work in the applied linguistics literature, and a
flurry of commercially published textbook materials. Most
really involve little more than the use of 'tasks' in place of
'exercises' as carriers of either an overt or a covert
grammatical syllabus; they should not be designated 'taskbased' at all, therefore, since they are grammatically based,
not task-based. The task- based approach referred to here
deals with grammar, but without recourse to a fixed
grammatical syllabus, through focus on form.
As described more fully elsewhere (see, e.g., Long, 1985,
1997, to appear; Long and Crookes, 1992), recognizing the
psycholinguistic problems with synthetic linguistic
syllabuses, the syllabus and methodology for TBLT are
analytic, and employ a non- linguistic unit of analysis, the
task, at each of seven steps in designing and implementing a
TBLT program (see Figure 2). It is steps 1 to 5 which
concern us here with respect to the treatment of grammar in
a communicative classroom.

Figure 2
Stages in TBLT
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Task-based needs analysis to identify target tasks.


Classify into target task types.
Derive pedagogic tasks.
Sequence to form a task-based syllabus.
Implement with appropriate methodology and
pedagogy.
6. Assess with task-based, criterion-referenced,
performance tests.
7. Evaluate program.

1. Conduct a task-based needs analysis to identify the


learners' current or future target tasks. These are the
real world things people do in everyday life: buying
a bus pass, asking for street directions, attending a
lecture, reading a menu, writing a laboratory report,
and so on. Four of many target tasks for a tourist, for
example, might be to make or change a hotel, plane,
restaurant or theater reservation.
2. Classify the target tasks into target task types, e.g.,
making/changing reservations. This temporary shift
to a more abstract, superordinate category during
syllabus design is made for several reasons,
including the frequent lack of sufficient time to
cover all the target tasks identified in the needs
analysis separately in a course, and as one way of
coping with heterogeneous groups of students with
diverse needs (for an example and details, see Long,
1985).
3. From the target task types, derive pedagogic tasks.
Adjusted to such factors as the learners' age and
proficiency level, these are series of initially simple,
progressively more complex approximations to the
target tasks. Pedagogic tasks are the materials and
activities teachers and students actually work on in
the classroom. A false beginners class of young adult
prospective tourists, for instance, might start with the
following sequence: (i) intensive listening practice,
during which the task is to identify which of 40
telephone requests for reservations can be met, and
which not, by looking at four charts showing the
availability, dates and cost of hotel rooms, theater
and plane seats, and tables at a restaurant; (ii) roleplaying the parts of customers and airline reservation
clerks in situations in which the airline seats required
are available; and (iii) role-playing situations in
which, due to unavailability, learners must choose
among progressively more complicated alternatives
(seats in different sections of the plane, at different
prices, on different flights or dates, via different
routes, etc.).
4. Sequence the pedagogic tasks to form a task-based
syllabus. As is the case with units in all synthetic and
analytic syllabus types, sequencing pedagogic tasks
is largely done intuitively at present. The search is

on, however, for objective, user-friendly criteria and


parameters of task complexity and difficulty, and
some progress has been made (see, e.g., Robinson, to
appear; Robinson, Ting and Erwin, 1995).
5. Implement the syllabus with appropriate
methodology and pedagogy. The way I conceive
TBLT (and LT in general), there is a meaningful
distinction to be drawn between potentially universal
methodological principles, preferably well motivated
by research findings in SLA and cognitive science,
and desirably particular pedagogical procedures that
realize the principles at the local level, choice among
the latter being determined by such factors as teacher
philosophy and preference, and learner age and
literacy level. 'Provide negative feedback' is an
example of a methodological principle in TBLT (and
most other approaches and "methods" in language
teaching); whether it is delivered in a particular
classroom through use of an explicit rule statement,
in oral, manual, or written mode, explicitly via some
form of overt "error correction" or implicitly, e.g.,
via unobtrusive recasts of learner utterances (see,
e.g. Doughty and Varela, in press; Ortega and Long,
in press), and so on, are local pedagogical decisions
best left to the teacher. 'Focus on form' is another
methodological principle in TBLT. As an illustration
of how it might occur, let us imagine that while
working in pairs on the third pedagogic task outlined
above, a number of learners are repeatedly heard to
use a form considered insufficiently polite, e.g., 'I
want X seats' for 'I'd like X seats', to ignore key
words like 'window' and 'aisle', and 'coach' and
'business', or to employ singular 'seat' when plural
'seats' is required. One way focus on form might be
achieved is through corrective feedback built into the
materials themselves, e.g., through the output of task
(iii) being rejected as input for task (iv) in a travel
simulation, thereby alerting students to the existence
and/or identity of error. Alternatively, the teacher
might briefly interrupt the group work to draw
students' attention to the problems, perhaps by
modeling one member of a pair of forms and asking
the class if it is good or bad, perhaps by explaining
the difference between the pairs of target forms, or
perhaps simply by pointing to the words on the
board. As always in TBLT, the methodological
principle is the important thing; the optimal

pedagogy for implementing that principle will vary


according to local conditions, as assessed by the
classroom teacher. He or she is the expert on the
local classroom situation, after all, not someone
writing about language teaching thousands of miles
away in an office in Honolulu or a commercial
materials writer sipping martinis on a beach in the
Bahamas.

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