Week 7--designing a task

Date: 23rd Nov., 2011
Group members: Aziz, Hiroki, James, Mata, Peggy

Class Profile:
l They third year senior high school students who are preparing for entrance
exam of Japanese university.
l Their language level averages at upper intermediate.
l They are all boys.
l They are interested in girls, pop cultures, games, and comics, club
activities, university.

Task: University choice
Pre task:
The teacher firstly introduces their topic today—choosing their
future universities. Then he or she groups students into pairs and explains how
to conduct the task: the students have to analyze their strength and weakness
in order to match their target, accordingly, discussing the relevant questions.

Task cycle:
The students here need to set their target school, based on their preferences
and capabilities. They need to discuss what, where, why, when, how questions
about their future targets in spontaneous context. After that, they have to
come up with the results and report them to the class.

Language focus:
The teacher here provides the grammar usages of future tense and suggestion,
such as “I suggest/ recommend that” after students’ reports.

During the task cycle, some learners may
not be able to analyze themselves or decide which university they want to go;
thus, the teacher needs to facilitate them to set their goals and provide some guidelines
for them to discuss.

LC for Week 7: Designing a task

Group members: Deman , Noora, Yotah, Uzma, Khara, Janet, Evelyn , Kate , and Shaima

After our group discussion we viewed our all tasks and we combined all of them in one which is the following:

Class profile: students are in 6^th grade in elementary school( 26 of them, boys and girls are probably of the same age)

Level of English: medium

The Task: Shopping for finding a birthday present

The task starts with a role play that describe a shopping situation which the teacher create a small shop inside the class from their own stuff like, hat, scarf, pens, bags, jackets………etc. The teacher put a price on each thing. The teacher select two learners to play the role of customer( who is looking for a birthday present for his friend)and shop owner (seller) only by using body language and face expressions without speaking, and the other students will be the audience and work as groups and they should write (report)what they are doing step by step. After the scene comes to end, the group students should discuss what they performed and try to form a dialogue of their acting. Each group should report back their dialogue to the whole class.

Possible language arising:

The difficulties that they might encounter might be using tenses, sentence structure, needing more vocabulary so at that point the teacher might put a CD player which represents the same situation to listen and give them an idea of the right situation then the teacher will explain anything that it's unclear about structure or form.

LC for Week 7: Designing a task

Group members: Trang, Ebi, Zeo, Anna, Peach , Cindy

As for our group, we have a design for the task in the following:

Class profile:

   We take an example of a class from junior high school in China. In this class, the learners are around 13 years old, who are pre-intermediate learners and have different interest in learning English.

Task:

   The name of the task is “Draw and describe a house”

Step one:

Pre-task: teach them vocabularies outside the house on the board.

a.     Make a picture and label the parts around the house

b.    Ask students to work in group to name the parts.

c.     Teach the students the vocabularies.

Step two:

Task-preparation:

a.     Two students in a group.

b.    Draw their house.

Task-realization:

a.     Change groups and change roles

b.    Draw a picture again.

Task-report:

Let students to show how many parts of their house they draw in the picture.

Post-task:

a.     Choose a random picture from any group.

b.    Let students to pronounce the different parts of their house and emphasize the vocabularies.

c.     Reinforce students’ speaking competences who have difficult in pronunciation.


Possible language arising:

They should pay attention to communicate accurately and have an authentic pronunciation.

Week 6: Evaluating one of Willis’ tasks

Week 6: Evaluating one of Willis’ tasks
Group members: Gemma, Irene, Laia, Monica, Sean, Sunny

Summarising our overall discussion our group does not really believe that TBL is a significant alternative to the PPP model. We see these models as variations of the same base. Both approaches are divided into three main parts with similar objectives for each of them.
We disagree on TBL being genuinely learner-centred. Learners at the end do not get the chance to choose what to base the task on.
Regarding the second statement, we agree on TBL being a great communicative language teaching. However, we do think it is not based on sound principles but phrase usage. As Willis says the learner has “plenty of opportunities for real language use” but how realistic is that use? We see these opportunities more like those taking part in situational tasks or role play tasks rather than authentic conversations.
We agree of TBL being an approach that integrates very well the four skills (writing, reading, listening and speaking). But we disagree with Willis in the fact that it is concerned with both accuracy and fluency. As long as the teacher does not correct the mistakes that students make during their performances, they will not be aware of the form and will not have an accurate use of language. So we think meaning and fluency are given a higher importance.

Learning Circle Week 6 Group members: James, Hiro, Peggy, Mata and Aziz

1. 'For those who wish to adopt a genuinely learner-centred approach to their teaching [A framework for task-based learning] offers an alternative to the "presentation, production, practice" model'.

We felt that the task in question is learner-centred and does offer an alternative to the PPP model.

2. 'This book is based on sound principles of language learning and combines the best insights from communicative language teaching with a systematic focus on language form'.

This claim seems to be quite vague as we don’t know what is being referred to by ‘the best insights from communicative language teaching’. The task does allow for a systematic focus on spoken form though.

3. 'This approach allows the natural integration of skills and encourages in the learner a concern for both accuracy and fluency'.

The task does allow natural integration of different skills. There are lots of opportunities to practise speaking fluency, but we felt that there could be a slightly greater focus on accuracy. This could be achieved by providing more practice with the target language through task repetition, rather than potentially finishing the lesson after the language analysis stage.

4. 'This book on task-based learning (TBL) shows how tasks can be used as the central focus in a supportive methodological framework'

We all agreed wholeheartedly with this statement.

5. 'This task-based framework takes into account what we know about how people learn languages'.

We felt that there is still a lot of debate about how people learn languages, so found this claim a little bold. Having said that, we agreed that the task-based framework can certainly act as a guide for one approach to, or lesson shape in, language teaching.

6. 'We know that people cannot learn a language without plenty of opportunities for real language use'.

A key thing we discussed here was how to define ‘real language use’. We thought that the task offers learners ample opportunity to use language, but felt that the planning and report stages don’t necessarily mirror real, common language use,( though perhaps they do so as well as possible within the confines of the classroom situation).

7. 'We also know that too much emphasis on small-group communication without any call for accuracy may result in learners' grammar fossilising; some learners develop fluency at the expense of accuracy'.

We felt that the focus on accuracy comes very late in this task. Task repetition would allow learners the chance to use the language with greater accuracy, and would help to avoid learners developing fluency at the expense of accuracy.

Learning Circle Task 6

All the members of the learning circle were of the consensus that TBL does have a lot of similarities with PPP-“ presentation , production , practice ’’ model but it is not really an alternative of it . It is more like a variation of the model. However , all of us agreed that the task seems to deliver the promises made on the back of Willis’ (1996) book and follows the guidelines mentioned , like it gives the learners a chance or rather plenty of opportunities for language usage that in turn helps in encouraging their skills of fluency and accuracy . Although we agreed on most of the statements there was a difference of opinion on the last one; some said small- group communication is more effective if the learner is at ease in expressing his/her ideas vocally (as some learners might not feel confident enough being a part of a larger group) while others thought that this might result in learners’ grammar fossilizing.

In our Learning Circle we had lots of discussion on the topic but it led to more questions being raised than coming up with clearly defined answers. The members raised some question like:

a) When we talk of CLT and TBL all the focus is on communication then why is there an issue of focusing on language forms?

b) Difference between task and activity?

c) Clear distinction between PPP and TBL?




Group Members:
Deman , Kate, Janet , Noora , Shaima, Yiota , Evelyn, Khara & Uzma

LC for Session 6

Member: David, Trang, Peach, Zoe, Cindy, Anna

As to the first statement, in our group, we all think that it is delivered partially. The process of this activity does not follow PPP strictly, just share something, and it brings something new for the classroom. It really offers an alternative to the “presentation, production, practice” model, but not genuinely learned-centered. Throughout all the activity, we can see the subject is controlled by the teacher, and students should follow the model given by the teacher, and they cannot decide the topic, task and something they’d like to learn. So we all think this statement is partially delivered.
For the second statement, we all agree with that it is delivered in the task. As first, let students to think about which subjects they dislike or like, then listen to a dialogue for a while, after the input, the group discussion comes in. It encourages students to discover language themselves, so it is really based on sound principles of language learning. In the part of “language focus”, the focus on language form is delivered exactly.
Regarding with the third statement, in our group, we all hold that it is not delivered. Throughout the task, in terms of accuracy and fluency, the teacher does not supervise these points at all. In the part of listening, students even can copy each others’, so it is not natural at this point either. Totally, it is teacher- centered.
As for the fourth statement, we think it is delivered. In a broad sense, taking the whole process into consideration, we come to this agreement.
Taking the fifth statement into consideration, we think it is not delivered. Because the theory or research of second language acquisition doesn’t support this point, and if it doesn’t work., we can improve that.
For the sixth statement, in our group, we deem that it is not delivered. Since there is no other model can be compared, only from this one, we cannot draw such a statement. However, as to the “real language use”, it is indeed displayed in the listening part, but less plenty. Therefore, in this task, it doesn’t deliver the plenty of opportunities for real language use, but we all completely agree with this statement.
Regarding with the last one, we all think it is not delivered. Because in the small group activity displayed; students can complete the task without any accuracy, they just need to express themselves to others clearly, so only with fluency can they complete the task.