Learning English Through Communication

The case for TBL (Aprendiendo ingles a través de la comunicación: el caso de TBL)

Enseñar inglés como segunda lengua en el contexto colombiano no es una tarea fácil: lecciones enmarañadas, falta de recursos, poca motivación de los estudiantes, metodología poco exitosa, entre otras cosas, hacen de esta tarea un reto a superar. Pensando en estas condiciones, Eleducador.com quiso desarrollar la temática, para dar a nuestros maestros de inglés herramientas para afrontar el reto de alcanzar los estándares en lenguas extranjeras, a partir de un uso comunicativo de las mismas.

Teaching English as a foreign or second language in the Colombian context is not an easy task: crowded lessons, lack of resources, little student motivation, unsuccessful methodology, among other things, seem to be the rule rather than the exception. Eleducador.com wanted to approach this subject to share with our English teachers some tools that may com handy in the running to reach the standards for foreign languages.

The situation becomes more challenging as the standards for foreign languages are directed towards communicative success, which is something our EFL educational system seems not ready to cope with.

¿What can we do to meet the challenge? ¿Are we condemned to continue the cycle of low EFL learning in the high school? One of the central claims of this presentation is that we can start the change by incorporating Task Based Learning (TBL) in our classrooms. Rather than proposing it as the «solution», I want to present this methodology as «an option» that can be of great use in the a variety of contexts.

The reasons why TBL is useful for promoting second language proficiency have been discussed by many authors. From this discussion I want to highlight the following benefits of using TBL:

TBL creates opportunities for meaningful, authentic interaction
TBL promotes the integration of skills
TBL generates students involvement, tasks are intrinsically motivating
TBL develops knowledge
TBL fosters automatization
TBL promotes collaboration and the creation of zones of learning (zones of proximal development).
TBL contributes to cognitive development.

¿But what are tasks? Again, many authors have provided different definitions, salient among them are Nunan´s (1989), Breen´s (1989), and Crook´s (1986). Here I will take the definition provided by Bygate, Skehan, and Swain (2001), which states tha.

¿A task is an activity which requires learners to use language, with emphasis on meaning, to attain an objective?

Learning english through communication: The case for TBL Keywords in this definition are activity, language, meaning, and objective.This implies that a task encourages learners: to be communicatively and cognitively busy with the language (van Lier, 1996), to see language-in-use as necessary for task completion, to focus their attention on conveying or processing messages rather than on their form, and to direct their efforts towards a certain destination or product. These aspects of the definition of tasks have been expanded by Ellis (2003), who states that tasks are a work plan, concentrate on meaning, require the use of real-world language, can involve any skill, encourage cognitive processes, and have a clear communicative outcome. Based on this, then, we can say that the crucial characteristics of tasks are their concentration on meaning production or processing, their focus on a purpose or product beyond language itself, and their encouragement of interaction and sharing.

Although different categories for classifying tasks have been presented, Ellis’s (2003) is very simple and illustrative. Tasks can be of two main types:focused or unfocused. The former refers to those tasks that concentrate on developing a certain language item, like a structure or lexis. The latter refers to tasks which are not designed with a particular grammatical item in mind, but which engage the learner in ?being busy with the language? (Van Lier, 1996), productively and receptively and in communication. The first ones can be grammatical or consciousness raising; the second type can be pedagogic or real-world.

Tasks can have different configurations. Some of them are surveys, filling out charts (based on reading, conversation or listening), writing a report based on different information, reading and completing a registration form, interviewing classmates and pulling information together, following instructions of different type, finding- someone-who activities, etc.

Finally, several features need to be taken into account at the moment ofdesigning a task. These are: goal, input, conditions,procedures and predicted outcomes. Goal refers to the general purpose of the task, input to the information that is supplied by the task (oral, written, graphic, etc), conditions to the way in which this information is presented ( split vs. shared information, or the way in which the information is to be used), procedures to the methodological route followed (pair work, group work, planning time, no planning time, team work, and so on), and predicted outcomes refers to both the product that arises from completing the task (which might be linguistic or non-linguistic) for example, students might simply raise their hands or put a series of pictures in order based on a reading or listening, and to the linguistic and cognitive processes That the task is supposed to generate .

The implementation of TBL, though not easy at first, may generate opportunities for developing EFL proficiency due mainly to the reasons presented above. For this, the TBL approach will require several moments: the pre-task cycle, the task cycle, and the post-task cycle. The purpose of the first moment is to allow students time to plan, to provide a task model by doing a similar task or to pre-teach key linguistic items (Ellis, 2003). During the task phase students do the task and participate of the learning-generating interaction. Finally in the post-task moment, students present the task product, awareness is raised or the task is repeated, if necessary.

Learning english through communication: The case for TBL

Not everything is shiny in TBL. Several are the concerns this methodology has raised. So, as well as there are many academics who support it, there are many others who have different things to say against it. One of them is the fact that when students enter the task-phase, they do not necessarily use the language we have so carefully and devotedly taught them in the pre-task phase. This seems so due to the fact that when communication starts, learners try to cope with its demands with whatever linguistic resources they have at hand and which have become automatic in their use, and these might not necessarily be the ones we have been teaching.

To sum up, TBL seems a reasonable way to promote communication in the FL classroom in our contexts. The only fact of trying communication out in our classrooms through TBL is in itself a significant step for the development of meaningful EFL learning experiences. So, let’s give TBL a chance.

COMMON REFERENCES IN TBL:

Bygate M. Skehan, P. and Swain M. 2001. Researching Pedagogic Tasks.Pearson Education
Ellis, R. 2003. Task-based language learning and teaching.Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ellis, R. 2006. Planning and Task Performance in a Second Language. Oxford University Press
Lantolf, J. (ed). 2000. Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning. New York: Oxford University Press.
Lantolf, J. and S. Thorne. 2006. Sociocultural Theory and the Genesis of Second Language development. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lave, J. and E. Wenger. 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate Peripheral Participation. Cambrige: Cambridge University Press.
Nunan, D. 2005. Task-Based Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press.
van den Branden, K. 2006. Task-Based Language Education: From Theory to Practice. Cambridge Applied Linguistics. UK
Willis, D. and Willis, J. 2007. Doing Task-Based Language Teaching. Oxford Handbooks for Language Teachers. OUP.