More problematic is providing ‘point of need’
instruction with groups, while still maintaining
lesson flow and engaging the attention of all
learners. ‘Instructional detours’ (to use Cazden’s
expression) need to be short, to the point, yet
salient: a case of ‘putting the task on hold’ for a
minute or two, while an error is remedied or a
grammar point explained. Of course, involving
other students in the intervention is often a viable
means of avoiding the lesson becoming a series of
one-to-ones. Ideally, too, a running record needs to
be kept of these interventions, so that they can be
revisited after the task, and so as to provide a
‘scaffold’ for a possible repetition of the task. A
further stage, in which learners review and record
the grammar and vocabulary issues that arose
during the lesson, serves not only to help fix these
in memory, but to persuade those who crave it that
formal accuracy has not been sacrificed for the
sake of fluency.
References
Cazden, C. (1992) Whole Language Plus: Essays
on Literacy in the US and NZ, New York: Teachers
College Press.
Gee, J.P. (2007) What Video Games Have To
Teach Us About Learning and Literacy, New York:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Long, M. and Norris, J. (2009) ‘Task-based
teaching and assessment’, in van den Branden, K.,
Bygate, M. and Norris, J. (eds), Task-based
Language Teaching: A Reader, Amsterdam: John
Benjamins.
Nelson, M.W. (1991) At the Point of Need:
Teaching Basic and ESL Writers, Portsmouth, NH:
Heinemann.
Samuda, V. (2001) ‘Guiding relationships between
form and meaning during task performance: the
role of the teacher’, in Bygate, M., Skehan, P. and
Swain, M. (eds.) Researching Pedagogic Tasks:
Second Language Learning, Teaching and Testing,
London: Longman.
Willis, D. (1990) The Lexical Syllabus: A New
Approach to Language Teaching, London: Collins
ELT.
How a Task-Based Approach
Works: Learning by Doing
TBLT – the hype!
The concept of ‘learning by doing’ has been around since time immemorial, although as a more formalised
approach to language learning, TBLT (task-based language-learning and - teaching) has only existed since
the mid-1980s.
Since its inception in the world of EFL, teachers have been bombarded with reminders of how wonderful
TBLT is and how, if we simply make everything ‘task-based’, our students will make enormous gains in their
language proficiency. This “drooling” over TBLT has even led to large organisations throwing out their old
textbooks and methodologies and demanding that their teachers adhere exclusively to task-based syllabuses
and teach only task-based lessons.
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