Task-based approach to language teaching and learning: rationale and arguments

¶ … language Teaching and Learning

In task-based instruction there is some misperception over the word 'syllabus' and 'curriculum', it is necessary, however, be appropriate in starting with commentaries that are terminological and their meanings. Candlin (1984: 31) made the suggestion that curriculum is involved with creating overall declarations about language learning, learning drive, knowledge, assessment, and the part and relations of learners and teachers. Syllabuses, in contrast, are more restricted and are founded on explanations and records of what really occurs at the classroom level as teachers and learners put on a given curriculum to their own condition (narrower definition). Nunan (1993:8) also concurs with Candlin and proposes:

'Curriculum' is connected with development, application, assessment,

Organization and management of education programs. 'Syllabus', conversely, emphasizes more narrowly on the assortment and grading of subject matter (Candlin, 1984).

With that said, the goal of this assignment is to describe 'task' and enlarge on the foremost values and features of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT). Then the researcher will refer to the advantages and disadvantages of TBLT for EFL learners and the right way of applying this approach in the educational context as well as outline possible application difficulties that are within those context

According to Willis' definition a 'task' is viewed as a "goal-oriented activity" or an activity which "involves the use of language but in which the focus is on the outcome & #8230; rather than on the language used to achieve the outcome."

Theory

Describing "task"

"By task, what is really mentioned is that it is a goal-oriented action with a clear determination. Doing a task that is communication includes attaining a result, generating a final creation that can be respected by others."

After going back "into the history of TBL, the first operators of the idea of task was N.S. Prabhu who began started working in Bangalore in South India. Prabhu had utilized TBL in extremely huge classes but grounded his teaching regarding a sequence of tasks (Willis, 2008). Prabhu "demanded that pupils were just more probable to learn language if they were discerning about a non-linguistic issue than if they were focusing on specific language types. Instead of a language form, students are offered with a task they have to achieve or an issue they have to resolve."

Task-Based Language Teaching comes as a strong growth of the Communicative Method. Even though TBL and CLT (Communicative Language Teaching) appear comparatively alike, one characteristic difference among them is that the previous emphasizes connotation as the pouring power to TB communication while the former purposes to "train pupils to utilize language systems suitably in a diversity of circumstances for a range of determinations (Ellis, 2003)."

Task-Based Language Teaching

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) emphases on the capability to be able to perform a job or action that is not using an explicit teaching of grammatical format. As talked about previous, such an method makes more favorable circumstances for the growth of second language (see Robinson, 1995, 2001; Robinson et al., 1996; Rahimpour, 1995a, 1995b, 1997,1999, 2001a. 2001b, 2002a, 2000b, 2002c, 2002d).

A third approach to the analytic program design is what most people would call the task-based language teaching (TBLT) Task-based language teaching roots dispute for an logical, primarily type B syllabus. The mission in TBLT is considered key to all of instructional strategy procedure, from the documentation of learner requirements to the measurement of student attainment. A distinction is made between target tasks, which are tasks as they occur in everyday life, and pedagogic tasks, which are pulled from the target task that are sequenced to produce the task-based syllabus. It is the pedagogic errands that teachers and students really work on in the schoolroom (Long, 1989: 89).

The pedagogic tasks are actually categorized and sequenced by the gradation of difficulty (from unassuming to complex). Task difficulty is not the replication of old-style linguistic grading standards; rather it effects from task issues themselves. These might comprise the amount of phases that are involved, the amount of answers to the problem, the amount of gatherings involved and the saliency of their unique structures, the location of task in exiled time and space, the quantity and kind of language necessary, the amount of sources challenging for consideration, and other language, cognitive or social issues (Long & Crookes, 1992: 45, 1993: 12).

As an analytic method it varies from the syntactic syllabus in simliar way as the practical and procedure syllabi, particularly in the supposition that the learner learns best when using language to converse about something. TBLT also is different from the two other logical curricula in a lot of ways. It differs from the procedural syllabus in that it stresses the importance of carrying out a needs analysis prior to instruction.

Identifying likely bases of task complexity certainly is an essential precondition for making ethical choices regarding the grading and sequencing of functions, upon which many of the worth of the TBLT will rest. Grading and sequencing of pedagogic errands is certainly a chief test for the task-based syllabus creators.

Principles and features of task-based language teaching.

Prabhu's observations, stated at the beginning of the project, guide to the first belief of task-based interaction that "language is a basically just a meaning system" and meaning is suppose to be given importance over form" (Watson, 2006) for the reason that TBL emphases on the language used to attain an exact result. Halliday (1973) in Willis makes the point that "language does not happen in an emptiness and it does not progress in an emptiness." In other words,-word items or abstract linguistic instructions can not trigger a learner's structure of language gaining according to the advocates of the Constructivist Theory (Piaget, Vygotsky, Dewey) who state that "knowledge occurs inside us [and it is built] every time we attempt to create sense of our knowledge." In other words, knowledge is universal and it can only take place in a meaningful environment as a whole. "Language develops in response to the need to mean and to comprehend what others are really meaning (Halliday, 1973; Willis & Willis, forthcoming). It shadows that resources we offer learners would permit them to emphasis first on imports in backgrounds and then go on to look at the phrasings that understand what they mean."