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Task-Based Language Teaching

TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING

The concept of task has become an important element in syllabus design, classroom teaching and learner assessment. Tasks are defined in terms of what the learners will do in class involving learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge rather than in the world outside the classroom. There are some keys characteristics of a task:
  • Meaning is primary 
  • Learners are not given other people’s meaning to regurgitate 
  • There is some sort of relationship to comparable real-world activities 
  • Task completion has some priority 
  • The assessment of the task is in term of outcome 

Broader curriculum consideration
Curriculum is a large and complex concept, and term itself is used in a number of different ways_ program study or science curriculum and syllabus. 
Generally, at the vary minimum a curriculum should offer some aspects such as
a. In planning
  • Principles for the selection of content 
  • Principles for the development of a teaching strategy 
  • Principles for the making of decisions about sequence 
  • Principles on which to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of individual students and differentiate the general principles to meet individual cases 

b. In empirical study
  • Principles on which to study and evaluate the progress of students 
  • Principles on which to study and evaluate the progress of teachers 
  • Guidance as to the feasibility of implementing the curriculum in varying school contexts, environments, and peer group situations 
  • Information about the variability of effects in differing contexts and on different pupils and an understanding of the causes of the variations 

c. In relation to justification
  • A formulation of the intention or aim of the curriculum which is accessible to critical scrutiny. 

Communicative learning teaching
The relationship between communicative learning teaching and task-based language teaching are synonymous. It’s argued that CLT is a broad, philosophical approach to the language curriculum that draws on theory and research in linguistics, anthropology, psychology, and sociology, whereas task-based language teaching represents a realization of this philosophy at the level of syllabus design and methodological.

Alternative approaches to syllabus design
In a seminal publication, there two types of approaches to syllabus design those are synthetic and analytical. All syllabus proposals that do not depend on a prior analysis of the language belong to this second category.

Experiential learning
Experiential learning takes the learner’s immediate personal experience as the point of departure for the learning experience. It has disserved roots in a range of disciplines from social psychology, humanistic education, developmental education, and cognitive theory.

Policy and practice
Task-based language teaching was still innovation at the level of official policy and practice. If official documents are to believed, TBLT has become a cornerstone of many educational institutions and ministries of education around the world.

Learner roles
One way of dealing with this tendency is to sensitize learners to their own learning processes by adding to the curriculum a learning strategies dimension that should be possible for learners to make choices about what to do and how to do it. This implies a major change in the roles assigned to learners and teachers.
Task-Based Language Teaching