Revista simpozionului Eficienta si calitate in educatie 2018 Revista simpozionului | Page 51

Task-based language learning and is considered to be a category of communicative language teaching as it has its origins in it. In my opinion, teachers follow the task-based principles for language learning taking into consideration some reasons, turning it into an instrument to make the students use the language in a really communicative way, rather than the communication that results from classroom activities which have no direct connection to real-life situations. Other educators, like Prabhu in the Bangalore Project, thought that tasks “were a way of tapping into learners' natural mechanisms for second-language acquisition”, and weren't concerned with real-life communication by itself. By interacting with others, students have the opportunity to listen to language which may be beyond their present ability, but which may be assimilated into their knowledge of the target language for use at a later time. In this respect Candlin and Murphy (1987:1) note, “the central purpose we are concerned with is language learning and task present this in the form of a problem-solving negotiation between knowledge that the learner holds and new knowledge.” All in all, TBL is language learning by doing. Activities in a lesson are generally organised into stages, according to what their role is in the teaching-learning process. In case of a language lesson, a traditional model for the planning has been the PPP approach (Presentation, Practice, Production). Using this model, the teacher firstly presents the individual language items (for example, the present simple structures), followed by the practice in the form of spoken and written activities (often pattern drills), and then used by the learners freely, in speaking or writing exercises. Despite the fact that the grammar point chosen for this procedure may well correspond accurately with a grammatical syllabus, this approach is frequently criticized for its apparent unpredictability of the selected grammar structure, which is possible not to meet the linguistic needs of the learners, and the fact that the production stage is often based on a rather inauthentic emphasis on the chosen structure. There is a description of the way a PPP lesson would proceed. In the first stage, Presentation, the teacher presents the context and situation for the language (e.g. describing a robot), and both explain and demonstrate the meaning and form of the new language (e.g. “can” and “cannot”). Students are then asked to complete a controlled practice stage, where they are asked to make sentences, match halves of sentences, or fill gaps. This stage of the lesson demands that the students use the language in a correct manner, but it can help them feel more comfortable when using it. Finally, they go on to the production stage, in which the students can speak more freely about themselves (e.g. “I can speak English, but I cannot speak German.”), or about other people in the real world (“My mother can/cannot drive.”). The PPP approach is more effective for teaching basic language at lower levels. There may be some problems with the PPP approach: - the teacher may feel that the students are able to deal with the new language when producing structures accurately in the class. Surprisingly, after a few lessons, students may feel uncomfortable to producing the language correctly or even they may not produce it at all. 51