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Chapter 14 Taskbased Language Education

This chapter discusses the principles of task-based language teaching (TBLT), emphasizing its focus on functional communication and real-world tasks to enhance language learning. It outlines key features of tasks, such as relevance to learners' needs, motivation, challenge, and the importance of interaction, while also highlighting the teacher's role in facilitating and supporting student engagement. The chapter concludes with implications for assessing language skills within a TBLT framework.

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0% found this document useful (0 votes)
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Chapter 14 Taskbased Language Education

This chapter discusses the principles of task-based language teaching (TBLT), emphasizing its focus on functional communication and real-world tasks to enhance language learning. It outlines key features of tasks, such as relevance to learners' needs, motivation, challenge, and the importance of interaction, while also highlighting the teacher's role in facilitating and supporting student engagement. The chapter concludes with implications for assessing language skills within a TBLT framework.

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CHAPTER 14

Task-Based Language Education


Kris Van den Branden

INTRODUCTION
In this chapter the main principles behind “task-based language teaching” (TBLT) will be
highlighted. First, the main reasons why task-based language teaching is believed to foster
language learning will be discussed. The chapter then moves on to a description of the
main features of tasks and of the kind of interaction that task-based language teaching is
supposed to give rise to. This part of the chapter will include a description of the role of
the teacher in task-based language teaching. The chapter will end with a discussion of the
implications of TBLT for the assessment of language skills.

BACKGROUND
TASK-BASED LANGUAGE EDUCATION: MAIN PRINCIPLES
Most scholars, curriculum developers, and language teachers will agree that the basic aim
of second/foreign language teaching is to enable students to use the target language for
functional purposes. Most students, especially adult students, will only make the effort to
follow a language course (and pay for it), study hard, and take exams because they feel
the new language can be of use for them: learning the language will, for instance, allow
them to find a new job or meet new friends, travel around, communicate with the municipal
services of the town they have moved to, help their children with their schoolwork, or
simply enjoy themselves. Already in the late 1970s, this view was duly acknowledged in
the seminal writings underpinning Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), emphasizing
the importance of teaching language for communicative purposes. Today, the urge to take
communicative purpose as a starting point for the design of curricula and programs for
language teaching underlies approaches such as outcome-based teaching (see Leung this
volume, chap. 17) and competency-based education.

132

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Task-Based Language Education 133

However, task-based language teaching takes the centrality of communicative, func-


tional language use one step further: It also places communication at the heart of teaching
procedures. So, task-based language teaching starts from the basic principle that people
learn a language not only in order to use the target language for functional purposes, but
also by doing so. In TBLT, students do not first acquire elaborate knowledge about language
then face the daunting challenge to translate all the acquired knowledge into spontaneous
and natural language use. In a task-based approach, students are confronted with approxi-
mations and simulations of the kinds of tasks that they are supposed to be able to perform
outside the classroom and learn about relevant forms of language while trying to understand
and produce the language that these communicative tasks involve. If students, for instance,
need to be able to comprehend official documents issued by the municipal board, they will
be invited to work with these kinds of documents in the language course; if students need
to develop the ability to write short reports of observations they have made, they will be
confronted with this kind of task in the classroom. In other words, task-based syllabuses do
not chop up language into small pieces, but take holistic, functional tasks as the basic unit
for the design of educational activity. This is further illustrated in the following example.

Example: Ten tips to save energy


The students are invited to exchange ideas and information on different ways to save
energy in their houses (and in this way to save a lot of money and save the planet).
In an introductory brainstorm session, the teacher and the students exchange the ideas
they already have on saving energy in their own houses and lives. The teacher writes
down the students’ ideas and questions (e.g., How much money and energy can be
saved by switching off the TV at night?) on the blackboard.
In a second phase, the students are divided in groups of four. Each of the groups is
given one part of a brochure issued by the local government called, Act Now! 100 Tips
to Save Energy. These “expert” groups are asked to read their part of the brochure on
a poster and to rank the tips they can find from most powerful and practicable to least
powerful and practicable.
In a next stage, new groups are formed: Each group now consists of one member of each
expert group (of the previous stage). The group members exchange their information
and try to reach consensus on an ultimate list of 10 tips, which they write down on
a poster and which they will have to defend in front of the other students. Before
presenting their poster two days later, the students are allowed to make a phone call
or write an e-mail to the local government service that issued the brochure to find out
more about some of the tips they have in mind. Finally, the groups prepare and deliver
their presentation together.
The teacher supports the students during the whole lesson cycle: discussing the mean-
ings of difficult words and sentences in the brochure, supporting students’ production
of output, providing feedback on their ideas for their presentation, and focusing on
form when particular grammar rules are task essential.

Performing such communicative tasks in real life calls for a complex interplay of
phonological, morphogrammatical, semantic, sociopragmatic, and other aspects of lan-
guage use. As the example shows, different skills (reading, writing, speaking, listening)
will often be integrated in the same activity. Furthermore, in real life this interplay is
intentionally driven, in the sense that people use language in order to reach (predominantly
nonlinguistic) goals. Chopping up the language and presenting / practicing these different
linguistic aspects in isolation may well lead to the development of isolated skills, but will

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134 Kris Van den Branden

put a heavy load on the students’ shoulders (and cognitive abilities) in terms of integrating
all these isolated skills into goal-oriented language behavior.

KEY ISSUES
TASKS: MAIN FEATURES
From the above, a number of key features of the tasks that constitute a task-based syllabus
can be deduced.

1. TASKS ARE RELEVANT TO LEARNERS’ NEEDS


The design of a task-based syllabus preferably starts with an analysis of the students’ needs:
What do these students need to be able to do with the target language? What are the tasks
they are supposed to perform outside the classroom? Using different sources and different
methods (such as interviews, observations, and surveys), a concrete description of the kinds
of tasks that students will face in the real world is drawn up. This description, then, serves
as the basis for the design and sequencing of tasks in the syllabus (Long, 2005). All this
implies that students with different needs (for instance students aiming to attend a master
program at a university abroad versus newcomers aiming to integrate into a new society)
follow different courses: the contents of task-based courses are adapted to the learners’
needs.

2. TASKS ARE MOTIVATING


When tasks in the syllabus are derived from an analysis of learners’ needs, students will
probably be strongly motivated to perform tasks in the language classroom and try and
comprehend the input, and produce the output that task performance involves. Students, in
other words, will build up the feeling that what they learn in class will be useful, and directly
applicable, in the outside world. For instance, adult students who aim to acquire a language
to integrate in a new society or for touristic purposes, may be strongly motivated when
they are confronted with tasks challenging them to understand or give route instructions,
interpret brochures or leaflets about public transport, or write a letter filing a complaint
about a purchase they made. In his process-oriented view on language learning motivation,
Dörnyei (2002) has emphasized that students will be more motivated to launch into activity
in the classroom if they can connect the tasks they are invited to engage in with personal
intentions they find meaningful. Furthermore, students’ motivation will be higher when
they perceive the task as a bridgeable challenge, i.e., a task that contains new elements and
so that they can learn from it, but that they will still be able to accomplish. In Dörnyei’s
view, language learning motivation is not static. Instead, it is highly dynamic, showing wide
variance across situations (involving different interlocutors). Motivation can, therefore, be
influenced and enhanced by the students themselves, and by those who support them in the
language learning process.

3. TASKS ARE CHALLENGING


The above-mentioned feature of tasks being perceived by the student as a bridgeable
challenge ties up with the basic idea that the input and output demands of tasks should
be slightly above the current learners’ level of proficiency: If there is no gap between
the learners’ current interlanguage system and task demands, there will be little to learn.
However, if the gap becomes too wide, students may become frustrated or demotivated.
This implies that as students’ language development progresses, tasks should gradually
become more complex. In essence, task sequencing is a matter of creating a coherent scale

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Task-Based Language Education 135

of increasingly complex approximations to the real-world target tasks: the manipulation of a


wide range of task parameters (such as text length, complexity of grammar and vocabulary,
cognitive processing demands and task demands with regard to accuracy and complexity)
has been mentioned in the literature in this respect (e.g., Robinson 2001; Bygate, Skehan,
and Swain 2001). In the different stages of their learning trajectory, then, students should
be confronted with new input and new output demands. However, they should not be left to
their own devices when this happens: It is through interaction with peers (and particularly
more knowledgeable peers) and with their teachers that students can meet the challenges
the task introduces and learn new language by bridging the gaps they were confronted with.

4. TASK PERFORMANCE ELICITS ACTION AND INTERACTION


In task-based language education, the student is perceived as a highly active participant,
who is assigned a fair share of autonomy in giving shape to the actual performance of the
task in the classroom. In other words, tasks that are designed by the syllabus developer
are not blueprints for activity (Breen 1987; Berben, Van den Branden, and Van Gorp
2007; Carless 2002). Tasks open “learning spaces” in which the students can move about,
exploring the form-function relationships they are ready to learn, focusing their attention
on specific linguistic features of the input, and producing the kind of output that their
interlanguage resources currently allow them to do (Van den Branden 2009). This students
will do while trying to interact with the other participants in the classroom: Tasks are
designed to elicit intensive interaction, resembling true communication, between peers and
between the students and the teacher. Students are asked to exchange information, to have
discussions about challenging topics, to try and unravel the information in written or oral
texts together, to describe objects, pictures and events to other group members, to write
truly communicative messages or give feedback about the messages produced by other
students. In a secondary classroom, for instance, pairs of students can be asked to write
out instructions to perform a scientific experiment. After the pairs have written their first
draft, they hand over their instructions to another pair of students who do not know the
experiment and have to try to perform the experiment guided by the written instructions:
the “authors” are allowed to watch the “performers” in action; the latter are allowed to ask
clarification questions if they fail to understand the instructions. On the basis of this tryout,
the authors are asked to revise their written instructions. As the example shows, interaction
in the task-based classroom serves multiple functions, among them allowing students the
chance to practice their target language skills for authentic purposes and creating situations
in which students will likely receive feedback and interactional support that is finely tuned
to their learning needs.

5. TASKS PERFORMANCE INVOLVES COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE USE


AND METALINGUISTIC REFLECTION
Task-based classroom activity starts from, and builds upon, students’ attempts to develop
communicative behavior. This, however, does not mean that TBLT should be equated with
a “meaning-only” approach. While the students are trying to cope with the input they are
confronted with and the output demands of tasks, they will be facing the challenge to com-
prehend and construct adequate, increasingly complex, and increasingly accurate messages.
This implies that the student activity elicited by task-based work will spontaneously give
rise to all kinds of interludes in which formal features of language can be focused upon in
an explicit way. Form should be defined broadly in this respect, ranging from attention paid
to morphogrammatical aspects of the language system to a focus on sociopragmatic issues,
the meaning of words or a metalinguistic discussion of appropriate writing, speaking, or lis-
tening strategies. Formal interludes (“focus on form”) may be inserted in task-based work,
using different methodological formats and at different moments in the task performance

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136 Kris Van den Branden

cycle (before, during, and after task performance). Typically, highly relevant formal fea-
tures will be dealt with when a student asks for this or when many students performing the
same task run into the same formal problems. In the latter case, certain formal features may
prove to be task-essential. Paying attention to formal linguistic features at these moments
may increase the chance that students find the explicit form-focus relevant to their personal
needs, and will be able to apply the new explicit knowledge to actual language use almost
immediately.

THE ROLE OF THE TEACHER IN TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING


From the above, it can be inferred that the teacher is a crucial participant in stimulating,
guiding, and supporting the students’ language learning. In TBLT, teachers are expected to
do the following:
r Motivate the students to invest intensive mental energy in task performance,
and to support their level of motivation throughout the various phases of a
task-based activity.
r Efficiently organize the task-based activity, for instance by giving clear instruc-
tions and preparing the students for task performance, guiding the formation
of groups (for group work), making sure that students have all the material
necessary for task completion or are informed about the ways they can obtain
these materials.
r Interactionally support the students while they are performing the task, and
differentiating between students (or students groups) while doing so.

With regard to the third core action that teachers are expected to take, a number of
interactional moves have been suggested to be particularly fruitful in terms of promoting
language learning. For instance, through recasting, the teacher can offer the students richer
versions of what they were trying to say, but are not yet able to put into (adequate or
accurate) words. Likewise, through the negotiation of meaning, teachers can help their
students to unravel the meaning of new words and expressions. By asking clarification
and confirmation questions, or giving feedback, the teacher can “push” the students into
producing more complex output. Finally, by joining the conversation and checking students’
comprehension, the teacher will be able to offer input of the kind that is suited to the students’
needs, and raise the chance that the input will turn into intake. Many of these interactional
moves are also expected to occur in group work – so among students – especially when
task formats, such as opinion-gap and information-gap tasks, challenge the learner to
convey information that the other students do not have. In sociocultural views on language
learning (e.g., Lantolf 2006), the co-construction of new knowledge and skills that occurs
in interaction between teachers and learners, and among learners, actually constitutes the
core of learning activity. In this perspective, interaction is learning, rather than one of a
long list of useful devices that foster the restructuring of cognitive systems that scientists
usually refer to as learning.
For many teachers, task-based language teaching represents a major shift away from
their traditional classroom practice. For instance, teachers who have been working with a
PPP (present, practice, produce) syllabus for a long time may find it hard to systematically
adopt functional tasks as the basic unit of educational activity in their classrooms. Similarly,
the assertiveness and intensive processes of peer interaction that tasks are expected to give
rise to may clash with firmly established, more hierarchical teacher-student relations in cer-
tain cultures. So, even though TBLT is propagated as a very promising language teaching
pedagogy in governmentally issued educational policy documents around the world, the
actual implementation of task-based language teaching in authentic classrooms shows far

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Task-Based Language Education 137

more erratic patterns and wide variation between teachers, countries, continents, and educa-
tional systems. Along the way, different shades of “task-basedness” have emerged. Skehan
(1998) distinguishes “strong” and “weak” forms of TBLT, while Ellis (2003), in a simi-
lar vein, subsumes different types of TBLT under headings like “task-supported language
teaching” versus “task-referenced language teaching.” As can be expected, these terms are
intended to cover virtually all the points on the continuum between a strongly teacher-
dominated, discrete-point, form-focused approach in which tasks are merely inserted to
allow students an incidental chance to practice specific forms for semiauthentic purposes
on the one hand, to full-blown, learner-centered, holistic, functional approaches in which
the performance of authentic tasks forms the core business of educational activity, and a
focus of form is only inserted when necessary to construct more adequate meaning. In
the latter case, there is a strong tendency to leave the traditional physical setting of the
classroom and integrate language learning with communication in real-life situations (for
instance, stimulating language development as the students are trying to communicate with
their real-life partner on the work floor or over the Internet).

TASK-BASED ASSESSMENT
In TBLT, tasks are used not only as a basic unit for the description of goals and for the orga-
nization of educational activity in the classroom, but also for the assessment of students’
language skills and the progress they are making. For this purpose, learners will be periodi-
cally asked to perform tasks that replicate authentic language use and strongly resemble the
kinds of tasks that students are expected to perform outside the classroom; in other words,
task-based syllabi of the strong form are characterized by a strong coherence with regard
to the selection of target tasks (goals), classroom tasks (education), and assessment tasks
(evaluation).
The students’ performances of these tasks will preferably be rated according to the
criteria that reflect the norms of task accomplishment in the target discourse communities
(Norris, Bygate, and Van den Branden, 2009; Norris et al. 1998). The rating thus primarily
focuses on the extent to which the student can perform tasks to criterion as established by
insiders or experts in the field, rather than on the students’ ability to complete discrete-point
grammar items. For productive tests, assessment grids accompany the assessment tasks,
carefully describing what items are required to meet the preset quality standards, and what
formal demands need to be met.
Assessment directly feeds back into educational activity. Assessment not only informs
the students about the progress they have made or the current interlanguage level they
have acquired but also provides teachers and headteachers with rich information about the
effectiveness of the educational support they have offered to individual learners, and the
gaps in the students’ current interlanguage system that require more intensive treatment.
To enhance the integration of assessment, teaching and learning, recent developments with
regard to task-based assessment include the introduction of portfolios (in which, among
other things, the students collect samples of tasks they have performed), peer interaction
(inviting students to rate and evaluate each others task performances) and dynamic assess-
ment (in which, for instance, teachers assess the extent to which they need to interactionally
support classroom performance of semiauthentic tasks by individual students).

CONCLUSION
Task-based language education fully acknowledges the basic insight that language learning
is a highly complex endeavor. Developing language skills, involving the integrated use

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138 Kris Van den Branden

of various subskills, requires ample opportunities for students to learn in real operating
conditions. In task-based language education, therefore, relatively straight lines are drawn
between the authentic tasks that learners need to be able to perform outside the classroom
(target tasks), the tasks that constitute the backbone of educational activity (classroom
activities), and the tasks that are used to ascertain the progress the learners are making
(assessment tasks). This does not, however, imply that task-based language education is a
straightforward enterprise for teachers: since learners are bound to differ in terms of the
speed with which they make progress, the task motivation they show, the level of language
proficiency they have already acquired, and many other features, they are bound to react
to the input and output demands of classroom tasks in many different ways. In order to
create order in this human chaos, the main essence of the task provides a crucial guiding
line for teachers: if 25 students are trying to write a report about an observation they have
made, the main questions remain (irrespective of which student the teacher is supporting):
What elements should a good report contain? Which message has the student produced
until now? What kind of support could take this student a bit further on the road toward the
accomplishment of a better report than the one he or she has produced so far? Ultimately,
the main essence of language use remains the same: making social meaning for a purpose,
and using linguistic forms to do so in an adequate way.

Key readings
Bygate, M., P. Skehan, & M. Swain. (Eds.). (2001). Researching pedagogic tasks: Second
language learning and testing. Harlow: Longman.
Crookes, G., & S. Gass. (Eds.). (1993). Tasks and language learning: Integrating theory
and practice. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Norris, J. (2009). Task-based teaching and testing. In M. Long & C. Doughty (Eds.), The
handbook of language teaching (pp. 578–594). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.
Samuda, V., & M. Bygate. (2008). Tasks in second language learning. London: Palgrave.
Van den Branden, K. (Ed.). (2006). Task-based language teaching: From theory to practice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Van den Branden, K., M. Bygate, & J. Norris. (2009). Task-based language teaching: A
reader. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Van den Branden, K., K. Van Gorp, & M. Verhelst. (Eds.). (2007). Tasks in action: Task-
based language education from a classroom-based perspective. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge Scholars Publishing.

References
Berben, M., K. Van den Branden, & K. Van Gorp. (2007). “We’ll see what happens.” Tasks
on paper and tasks in a multilingual classroom. In K. Van den Branden, K. Van Gorp, &
M. Verhelst (Eds.), Tasks in action: Task-based language education from a classroom-
based perspective (pp. 32–67). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Breen, M. (1987). Learner contributions to task design. In C. Candlin & E. Murphy (Eds.),
Language learning tasks (pp. 23–46). London: Prentice Hall.
Bygate, M., P. Skehan, & M. Swain. (Eds.). (2001). Researching pedagogic tasks: Second
language learning and testing. Harlow: Longman.

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Task-Based Language Education 139

Carless, D. (2002). Implementing task-based learning with young learners. ELT Journal 56
(4): 389–396.
Dörnyei, Z. (2002). The motivational basis of language learning tasks. In P. Robinson (Ed.),
Individual differences and instructed language learning (pp. 137–158). Amsterdam:
John Benjamins.
Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Lantolf, J. P. (2006). Sociocultural theory and second language learning: State of the art.
Studies in Second Language Acquisition 28:67–109.
Long, M. (2005). Second language needs analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Long, M., & G. Crookes. (1992). Three approaches to task-based syllabus design. TESOL
Quarterly 26:27–56.
Norris, J., J. Brown, T. Hudson, & J. Yoshioka. (1998). Designing second language perfor-
mance assessments. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press.
Norris, J., M. Bygate, & K. Van den Branden. (2009). Task-based language assessment.
Section introduction. In K. Van den Branden, M. Bygate, & J. Norris. (2009). Task-
based language teaching: A reader (pp. 431–434). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Robinson, P. (2001). Task complexity, cognitive resources, and syllabus design: A triadic
framework for examining task influence on SLA. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and
second language instruction (pp. 287–318). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Skehan, P. (1998). A cognitive approach to language learning. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Van den Branden, K. (Ed.). (2006). Task-based language teaching: From theory to practice.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
. (2009). Mediating between predetermined order and chaos: The role of the teacher
in task-based language education. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 19 (3):
264–285.
Van den Branden, K., M. Bygate, & J. Norris. (2009). Task-based language teaching: A
reader. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

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