BOOK REFLECTION
Willis, D., & Willis, J. (2007). Doing task-based teaching. Oxford University Press.
Chapter 1
The purpose of task-based teaching (TBT) is to build learners’ confidence and willingness of using their limited language resource so they could use the language in a real life setting. Current approaches to TBT also notice the importance of grammar, so it also included some form-focused activities. The tasks are varied based on classroom setting and student type. There are two approaches to teaching, form-based and mean-based. Form-based teaching is also known as tradition teaching, which refers to PPP (presentation, practice, production). Teachers have more control in this setting. Mean-based teaching, aka task-based teaching, has three focus to engage students in communication, focus on meaning, focus on language (focus on form), and then focus on form (focus on forms). Teachers have less control in this setting, they only step in if they want to clarify certain point or make comments to the problem draws the attention. For most teachers, they include both approaches in their teaching and seeking a balance point. A task in language learning setting refers to use language to achieve a particular goal or solve the problem in a particular situation and understand the meaning is essential. There are multiple things used to assess the task effective or not, and the level of engagement is the number one. It is very difficult for people to concentrate what they want to say and how they want say it at same time. Since it is very hard for a form-focused student switch to meaning-focused and the purpose of learning language is to use it in communication, the teaching sequence normally would not start with grammar.
Chapter 2
There is a sequence of introduce a task-based teaching in a classroom, teacher-led introduction, individual work on, group discussion, teacher-led class discussion, reading activity, discussion and evaluation, form-focused activities. In order to better cooperate those into one class, as a teacher we need to do preparation, which should start with identify topic and decide a target task. Always keep in mind to pick a task that closely reflect the real world, so the language they learned in class can be used in real situation. Although task-based teaching primarily focuses on meaning, we need include form-focused activities at the end of each section. By pointing out the key form at the end, learners have more sense of the new language, highlight the point that they will learn, and provides motivation that make them feel some achievements. In addition, in a language class, we do not have to prohibit first language using as a teacher. We encourage students to use their target language whenever they can even a fragment sentence.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 introduces different tasks that can be used in teaching process. The main focus of those tasks are written and spoken, but normally speaking & listening and reading & writing come together, so those tasks could let students to practice their four skills. When teachers choose a text form newspaper or other place, they have to have a purpose in mind. Useful tasks: discussion tasks, which helps to involves learner, to engage their interest and provide a reason; prediction tasks, which can separate into many sub steps. By giving the title, let students predict what the text would talk about, then provide some parts of the reading, let students discuss in group to predict the whole story and share with the class; following by reading the story and figure out what is the different between the real story and the story they predicted, teacher may introduce some forms appeared in the story, finally students need retell the story without looking. It practiced multiple skills and it is useful in real life. Title prediction is commonly used when reading newspaper or academic paper which give us a cue what would in the paper. Story retelling also a useful task that we commonly used in daily life, for example, when we shared news with friends or family. Other tasks include jigsaw task, general knowledge tasks, and corrupted text. In addition, we can apply multiple tasks to one text in order to practice different skills or just have more chance to practice.
Chapter 4
In chapter 4, it introduces topic and theme. Teachers can design a class contain one specific topic or theme but involve numbers of task include both target task and pedagogic task. Students can involve in the process of selecting topic, so they would more engage to the class. Although the topic may not represent all the students’ interest, it is enough to increase their motivation and more active in class. Brainstorming and fact-finding are useful tasks involving lists, which also use as game in class (memory challenge, guessing game, etc.). The chapter also point out an idea that it is far more positive to build on what your learners already know, than to start with what they do not know. While we choose a task, we need evaluate it first, weigh more on the task that closest to real life. Charts and table are useful tools. Teachers can use it to organize students’ thought in class and students can use it to clear their thought, which mind maps would have same function but with more freedom about what to put down. Other useful tools to clarify things and help understanding include time lines and story lines. In addition, although tasks are mainly for improve oral and aural skills, teachers can include reading and writing into practice.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5 introduced some useful tasks based more on learners’ cognitive ability, including matching, comparing, problem solving, project, and storytelling. All those tasks could apply in real world situation. Since all those tasks require language output from learners, during the production process, learners probably aware of their own linguistic gaps and more likely to notice words and phases that they could have used. Also, noticing is a requirement for acquisition take place. Thus, those tasks could help acquisition occur. Problem solving and puzzles have to be designed base on learners’ cognitive development level. If the problem too difficult, they cannot figure out the answer, then the focus would switch from linguistic to life experience. If the problem too easy, they can solve the problem without use much negotiation that they did not have enough practice. Therefore, when teaches design a task have to consider both linguistic level and cognitive level. Projects can be used as a final checkpoint to check out learners’ overall understanding. Both chapter 4 and chapter 5 give us an idea about how to break a general topic into different tasks and apply in class.
Chapter 6
As early chapter mentioned, tasks should be central to language learning. The focus of learning language should be meaning and prevent form-focused activities to detract from a focus on meaning. However, we could introduce forms especially words or phrase as preview of the topic and focus on certain grammar point at the end. During the task, teacher should provide implicit hint to let students figure out useful structure. Also, teacher should use correction as focus on form. Those corrections have three important functions to help learners, 1) prevent fossilization, 2) help motivate learners, and 3) provide useful negative feedback. In addition, to be able to pass examinations is an important goal for learners. Although the major focus for task-base teaching is on meaning, with more examination practice, learners also can preform as well as students who learnt from form-focus teaching, and sometimes even better. Because the real language work that they have done in task-based activities makes language more memorable than form-focused activities. In general, this chapter discussed that meaning should be the primer focus in task-based teaching. Forms should be tools to help learners conduct the task. The time to focus on forms could happen while the task ongoing, which implicit provide useful words and phrase, or at the end, teacher explicit point out useful structure and explain to students in detail. It also includes useful method about how to introduce forms in task-based teaching.
Chapter 7
In traditional classroom setting, teacher-dominated discourse is limited opportunities for students to use the language. A well-balanced task-based teaching should ensure that learners has experienced different discourse types so that more close to real world. However, it is very hard to perform a real world issue in the classroom setting because things happen randomly in real world that we cannot predict what people would say word by word. Thus, there are different teaching methods that teachers can use to remedying these failures. Learners have different needs to satisfy when they learn a new language. Since in a classroom we could not fulfill everyone’s need, most tasks we use are related to everyday language. Tasks like storytelling, reading newspaper, electronic communication of writing and reading, etc. There are some artificial tasks like remembering game, which may never happen in real world, but the concept of this game involve real world discourse. Role-play is a common used method in task-based teaching. The advantage is that it mirrors real life, but on the other hand, it imposes an unnecessarily heavy load on learners. A possible solution is to separate out the role-playing element from the task by information exchange. In addition, teachers have 6 different roles in classroom, 1) leader and organizer of discussion, 2) manager of group/pair work, 3) facilitate, 4) motivator, 5) language knower and adviser, and 6) language teacher.
Chapter 8
Teachers may come up many different ideas when they plan the class, but those ideas often need to adapt or refine so that it can meet the needs of learners. Learner's needs should be the primer factor when teacher decide the task for class. Each task should has certain degree of flexibility that teacher could alter it based on students' level or response. While setting up the plan for class, there are seven parameters need to be considered forehead, open or closed outcome, starting points for task/input and timing of priming stage, pre-task preparation, control of agenda and task, interaction patterns and participant roles, pressure on language production, and post-task activities. Starting point is first thing we need to do when introduce a new topic. If we could build base on their experience and let them actively involve in the discussion, students may have higher motivation to study the topic. Pre-task give learners a time to consider the topic. Starting with a slightly light linguistic material, it may promote students to think more. If learners have low motivation, teachers need to control the agenda and task structure more carefully. Teacher could not create a complex task that students may loss their interest more quicker, but a too simple one may not satisfied the purpose of learning. Allowing students to work in pairs or groups provide more variability to the task that students may use more language while they negotiation with each other. An appropriate amount of pressure would help to "push" output to achieve accuracy. Recycling texts could be a good post-task after the mean task. Although it is same material, learners could notice different linguistic features each time, which may reinforce their study. Other post-task activities could be presentation, ask students to do evaluation and reflection of the test.
Chapter 9
The formations of syllabus are varied. There is syllabus with list of linguistic items, syllabus form lexical strand, syllabus based on topic, or syllabus from functional strand. The organizing principle of the course will be a list of language forms which will be treated systematically and build up gradually throughout the course. The issue of creating a syllabus is that it rests on doubtful assumptions about the way a language is learnt, but language learning is a complex process that does not strictly follow a certain sequence. However, we could not teach the whole language at once, so we are obliged to break language down and isolate each item and try to make them accessible to learners. Treat the syllabus as cyclical. One approach for designing a syllabus is a meaning-based approach. It depends on the purpose of learning. Each course should have unique expected outcome, different outcomes could help to determine the topic or activity of each lesson. Using "can do" statement while writing out the syllabus, it indicated the expected outcome from each lesson. It is not only used to reminder the teacher about their teaching goal, but also provide an idea to students that what they need pay more attention during the class and the exception for their achievements. The task sequence related precisely to specific learner outcomes and it should be sequenced from simple to complex. Based on Willis and Wills, there are four aspects to grade a task, cognitive familiarity, cognitive processing, communicative stress and code complexity. According to what we learnt in class, this idea mixed up task difficulties and task complexity together. Thus, while we evaluate the task, also take the factors of leaners into account which would influence the evaluation of task itself. Therefore, we should only consider the task complexity while sequence tasks. In addition, teacher should not use much time on teaching rare words. The process of syllabus design: step 1: identify learners needs (what do they want to do with the language) and select appropriate topics (what do learners want to read/write/take about)--Consider from learners aspect, not what teacher want. Step 2, design task sequence (select or create appropriate tests). Step 3, task syllabus (check tasks and texts for level of difficulty. Make adjustments according to parameters of task design and order task sequences to produce a task syllabus-sequences based on task complexity. Step 4, language syllabus (analyze texts--pedagogic corpus for relevant language coverage. Step 3 and Step 4 need to be constantly monitor the effectiveness of activities in the classroom and refine and reorder materials where necessary.
Chapter 10
There are 10 common problems perceived with TBT: lack of time to design and prepare tasks, lack of time to do tasks in class, confusion about tasks and TBT, previous learning experience that students do not consider doing task is part of learning, lack of learner motivation, not suitable for beginners and low level students, too much L1, lack of perceived progress, fear of losing control, and exam pressure. A possible way to solve the problem of lacking time for design and prepare tasks is to create or identify tasks and activities that just need tweaking, which means tasks with high flexibility so that we do not build a task from scratch every time. Using multiple techniques to add more availability to tasks. For example, instead ask students to tell facts, give them true or false statement, change partners after one or two activities, and recycle materials to expand their range of language experience and make the reading process more engaging. Finding the time to design tasks and plan TBT tasks is essential. The book suggested three things we could do to help us make time to do preparation work: collaboration, collecting texts and collecting recordings. Methods to make time more efficient in classroom are 1 ask learners to prepare topic- and task-related words at home, 2 set grammar exercises for homework, 3 do the listening/reading and follow-up activities at home, 4 encourage independent vocabulary learning. Those methods not only benefit for time management in classroom, but also bring other advantages of rapid independent learning of words and phrases (pg. 216). Engage students into the learning process so that able to increase their motivation and hold a positive attitude.
The purpose of task-based teaching (TBT) is to build learners’ confidence and willingness of using their limited language resource so they could use the language in a real life setting. Current approaches to TBT also notice the importance of grammar, so it also included some form-focused activities. The tasks are varied based on classroom setting and student type. There are two approaches to teaching, form-based and mean-based. Form-based teaching is also known as tradition teaching, which refers to PPP (presentation, practice, production). Teachers have more control in this setting. Mean-based teaching, aka task-based teaching, has three focus to engage students in communication, focus on meaning, focus on language (focus on form), and then focus on form (focus on forms). Teachers have less control in this setting, they only step in if they want to clarify certain point or make comments to the problem draws the attention. For most teachers, they include both approaches in their teaching and seeking a balance point. A task in language learning setting refers to use language to achieve a particular goal or solve the problem in a particular situation and understand the meaning is essential. There are multiple things used to assess the task effective or not, and the level of engagement is the number one. It is very difficult for people to concentrate what they want to say and how they want say it at same time. Since it is very hard for a form-focused student switch to meaning-focused and the purpose of learning language is to use it in communication, the teaching sequence normally would not start with grammar.
Chapter 2
There is a sequence of introduce a task-based teaching in a classroom, teacher-led introduction, individual work on, group discussion, teacher-led class discussion, reading activity, discussion and evaluation, form-focused activities. In order to better cooperate those into one class, as a teacher we need to do preparation, which should start with identify topic and decide a target task. Always keep in mind to pick a task that closely reflect the real world, so the language they learned in class can be used in real situation. Although task-based teaching primarily focuses on meaning, we need include form-focused activities at the end of each section. By pointing out the key form at the end, learners have more sense of the new language, highlight the point that they will learn, and provides motivation that make them feel some achievements. In addition, in a language class, we do not have to prohibit first language using as a teacher. We encourage students to use their target language whenever they can even a fragment sentence.
Chapter 3
Chapter 3 introduces different tasks that can be used in teaching process. The main focus of those tasks are written and spoken, but normally speaking & listening and reading & writing come together, so those tasks could let students to practice their four skills. When teachers choose a text form newspaper or other place, they have to have a purpose in mind. Useful tasks: discussion tasks, which helps to involves learner, to engage their interest and provide a reason; prediction tasks, which can separate into many sub steps. By giving the title, let students predict what the text would talk about, then provide some parts of the reading, let students discuss in group to predict the whole story and share with the class; following by reading the story and figure out what is the different between the real story and the story they predicted, teacher may introduce some forms appeared in the story, finally students need retell the story without looking. It practiced multiple skills and it is useful in real life. Title prediction is commonly used when reading newspaper or academic paper which give us a cue what would in the paper. Story retelling also a useful task that we commonly used in daily life, for example, when we shared news with friends or family. Other tasks include jigsaw task, general knowledge tasks, and corrupted text. In addition, we can apply multiple tasks to one text in order to practice different skills or just have more chance to practice.
Chapter 4
In chapter 4, it introduces topic and theme. Teachers can design a class contain one specific topic or theme but involve numbers of task include both target task and pedagogic task. Students can involve in the process of selecting topic, so they would more engage to the class. Although the topic may not represent all the students’ interest, it is enough to increase their motivation and more active in class. Brainstorming and fact-finding are useful tasks involving lists, which also use as game in class (memory challenge, guessing game, etc.). The chapter also point out an idea that it is far more positive to build on what your learners already know, than to start with what they do not know. While we choose a task, we need evaluate it first, weigh more on the task that closest to real life. Charts and table are useful tools. Teachers can use it to organize students’ thought in class and students can use it to clear their thought, which mind maps would have same function but with more freedom about what to put down. Other useful tools to clarify things and help understanding include time lines and story lines. In addition, although tasks are mainly for improve oral and aural skills, teachers can include reading and writing into practice.
Chapter 5
Chapter 5 introduced some useful tasks based more on learners’ cognitive ability, including matching, comparing, problem solving, project, and storytelling. All those tasks could apply in real world situation. Since all those tasks require language output from learners, during the production process, learners probably aware of their own linguistic gaps and more likely to notice words and phases that they could have used. Also, noticing is a requirement for acquisition take place. Thus, those tasks could help acquisition occur. Problem solving and puzzles have to be designed base on learners’ cognitive development level. If the problem too difficult, they cannot figure out the answer, then the focus would switch from linguistic to life experience. If the problem too easy, they can solve the problem without use much negotiation that they did not have enough practice. Therefore, when teaches design a task have to consider both linguistic level and cognitive level. Projects can be used as a final checkpoint to check out learners’ overall understanding. Both chapter 4 and chapter 5 give us an idea about how to break a general topic into different tasks and apply in class.
Chapter 6
As early chapter mentioned, tasks should be central to language learning. The focus of learning language should be meaning and prevent form-focused activities to detract from a focus on meaning. However, we could introduce forms especially words or phrase as preview of the topic and focus on certain grammar point at the end. During the task, teacher should provide implicit hint to let students figure out useful structure. Also, teacher should use correction as focus on form. Those corrections have three important functions to help learners, 1) prevent fossilization, 2) help motivate learners, and 3) provide useful negative feedback. In addition, to be able to pass examinations is an important goal for learners. Although the major focus for task-base teaching is on meaning, with more examination practice, learners also can preform as well as students who learnt from form-focus teaching, and sometimes even better. Because the real language work that they have done in task-based activities makes language more memorable than form-focused activities. In general, this chapter discussed that meaning should be the primer focus in task-based teaching. Forms should be tools to help learners conduct the task. The time to focus on forms could happen while the task ongoing, which implicit provide useful words and phrase, or at the end, teacher explicit point out useful structure and explain to students in detail. It also includes useful method about how to introduce forms in task-based teaching.
Chapter 7
In traditional classroom setting, teacher-dominated discourse is limited opportunities for students to use the language. A well-balanced task-based teaching should ensure that learners has experienced different discourse types so that more close to real world. However, it is very hard to perform a real world issue in the classroom setting because things happen randomly in real world that we cannot predict what people would say word by word. Thus, there are different teaching methods that teachers can use to remedying these failures. Learners have different needs to satisfy when they learn a new language. Since in a classroom we could not fulfill everyone’s need, most tasks we use are related to everyday language. Tasks like storytelling, reading newspaper, electronic communication of writing and reading, etc. There are some artificial tasks like remembering game, which may never happen in real world, but the concept of this game involve real world discourse. Role-play is a common used method in task-based teaching. The advantage is that it mirrors real life, but on the other hand, it imposes an unnecessarily heavy load on learners. A possible solution is to separate out the role-playing element from the task by information exchange. In addition, teachers have 6 different roles in classroom, 1) leader and organizer of discussion, 2) manager of group/pair work, 3) facilitate, 4) motivator, 5) language knower and adviser, and 6) language teacher.
Chapter 8
Teachers may come up many different ideas when they plan the class, but those ideas often need to adapt or refine so that it can meet the needs of learners. Learner's needs should be the primer factor when teacher decide the task for class. Each task should has certain degree of flexibility that teacher could alter it based on students' level or response. While setting up the plan for class, there are seven parameters need to be considered forehead, open or closed outcome, starting points for task/input and timing of priming stage, pre-task preparation, control of agenda and task, interaction patterns and participant roles, pressure on language production, and post-task activities. Starting point is first thing we need to do when introduce a new topic. If we could build base on their experience and let them actively involve in the discussion, students may have higher motivation to study the topic. Pre-task give learners a time to consider the topic. Starting with a slightly light linguistic material, it may promote students to think more. If learners have low motivation, teachers need to control the agenda and task structure more carefully. Teacher could not create a complex task that students may loss their interest more quicker, but a too simple one may not satisfied the purpose of learning. Allowing students to work in pairs or groups provide more variability to the task that students may use more language while they negotiation with each other. An appropriate amount of pressure would help to "push" output to achieve accuracy. Recycling texts could be a good post-task after the mean task. Although it is same material, learners could notice different linguistic features each time, which may reinforce their study. Other post-task activities could be presentation, ask students to do evaluation and reflection of the test.
Chapter 9
The formations of syllabus are varied. There is syllabus with list of linguistic items, syllabus form lexical strand, syllabus based on topic, or syllabus from functional strand. The organizing principle of the course will be a list of language forms which will be treated systematically and build up gradually throughout the course. The issue of creating a syllabus is that it rests on doubtful assumptions about the way a language is learnt, but language learning is a complex process that does not strictly follow a certain sequence. However, we could not teach the whole language at once, so we are obliged to break language down and isolate each item and try to make them accessible to learners. Treat the syllabus as cyclical. One approach for designing a syllabus is a meaning-based approach. It depends on the purpose of learning. Each course should have unique expected outcome, different outcomes could help to determine the topic or activity of each lesson. Using "can do" statement while writing out the syllabus, it indicated the expected outcome from each lesson. It is not only used to reminder the teacher about their teaching goal, but also provide an idea to students that what they need pay more attention during the class and the exception for their achievements. The task sequence related precisely to specific learner outcomes and it should be sequenced from simple to complex. Based on Willis and Wills, there are four aspects to grade a task, cognitive familiarity, cognitive processing, communicative stress and code complexity. According to what we learnt in class, this idea mixed up task difficulties and task complexity together. Thus, while we evaluate the task, also take the factors of leaners into account which would influence the evaluation of task itself. Therefore, we should only consider the task complexity while sequence tasks. In addition, teacher should not use much time on teaching rare words. The process of syllabus design: step 1: identify learners needs (what do they want to do with the language) and select appropriate topics (what do learners want to read/write/take about)--Consider from learners aspect, not what teacher want. Step 2, design task sequence (select or create appropriate tests). Step 3, task syllabus (check tasks and texts for level of difficulty. Make adjustments according to parameters of task design and order task sequences to produce a task syllabus-sequences based on task complexity. Step 4, language syllabus (analyze texts--pedagogic corpus for relevant language coverage. Step 3 and Step 4 need to be constantly monitor the effectiveness of activities in the classroom and refine and reorder materials where necessary.
Chapter 10
There are 10 common problems perceived with TBT: lack of time to design and prepare tasks, lack of time to do tasks in class, confusion about tasks and TBT, previous learning experience that students do not consider doing task is part of learning, lack of learner motivation, not suitable for beginners and low level students, too much L1, lack of perceived progress, fear of losing control, and exam pressure. A possible way to solve the problem of lacking time for design and prepare tasks is to create or identify tasks and activities that just need tweaking, which means tasks with high flexibility so that we do not build a task from scratch every time. Using multiple techniques to add more availability to tasks. For example, instead ask students to tell facts, give them true or false statement, change partners after one or two activities, and recycle materials to expand their range of language experience and make the reading process more engaging. Finding the time to design tasks and plan TBT tasks is essential. The book suggested three things we could do to help us make time to do preparation work: collaboration, collecting texts and collecting recordings. Methods to make time more efficient in classroom are 1 ask learners to prepare topic- and task-related words at home, 2 set grammar exercises for homework, 3 do the listening/reading and follow-up activities at home, 4 encourage independent vocabulary learning. Those methods not only benefit for time management in classroom, but also bring other advantages of rapid independent learning of words and phrases (pg. 216). Engage students into the learning process so that able to increase their motivation and hold a positive attitude.