Foundational Principles of Task-Based Language Teaching

Martin East

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367479060
• eBook ISBN: 9781000398441
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book is available Open Access.

This book introduces readers to the concept of task-based language teaching (TBLT), a learner-centred and experiential approach to language teaching and learning. Based on the premise that language learners can enhance their second language acquisition (SLA) through engagement in communicative tasks that compel them to use language for themselves, TBLT stands in contrast to more traditional approaches. Accessible and comprehensive, this book provides a foundational overview of the principles and practice of TBLT and demystifies what TBLT looks like in the classroom.

Complete with questions for reflection, pedagogical extensions for application in real classrooms and further reading suggestions in every chapter, this valuable and informative text is vital for anyone interested in TBLT, whether as students, researchers or teachers.

PART I

Theorising TBLT

1

Languages

How Are They Learned and How Should They Be Taught?

Introduction

Across the world, there is now widely held agreement that the fundamental goal of teaching and learning in languages programmes should be to help students to develop their communicative competence in the target language. The communicative agenda has been realised in classrooms in a range of ways. Task-based language teaching (hereafter TBLT) is one such realisation. As its name suggests, central to TBLT is the notion of task as something that language learners carry out for themselves as a means to drive second language acquisition (SLA) forward.

TBLT has been growing in momentum since the 1980s as part of the communicative agenda, and has caught the attention of a wide array of people working in a wide variety of settings. These people have included: teachers of a range of additional languages (L2), including English as L2, whether in so-called second language (ESL) or foreign language (EFL) contexts; teacher educators; curriculum designers; educational administrators; policy makers; language testers; SLA researchers; and textbook writers. Van den Branden et al. (2009) concluded on this basis that TBLT is being advocated in many contexts across the globe as “a potentially very powerful language pedagogy” (p. 1). The evidence is increasing that there is global uptake of TBLT ideas, and TBLT is now officially endorsed in a number of countries.

Interest in the power of TBLT to enhance L2 learners’ communicative competence has led many people over the years to investigate TBLT’s claims. Bygate (2020) informed us that TBLT’s on-going potential is evidenced by the fact that, four decades after the earliest publications, it remains “a topic of lively interest and debate” (p. 284). TBLT also remains a “contested endeavour” (East, 2017, p. 412), seen by several stakeholders as “still a relatively recent innovation” (Long, 2016, p. 28).

The perception of TBLT as an innovation to be questioned lies in its essentially learner-centred and experiential pedagogical approach, which stands in contrast to more traditional approaches to language pedagogy. The student-focused methods advocated by TBLT enthusiasts can often appear to clash with received wisdom that suggests that the teacher should remain in charge of what happens in the classroom. Practitioner uncertainty about TBLT is further compounded by confusion about what TBLT actually is, leading Hall (2018), for example, to claim that “significant differences can be seen in the way its various proponents have conceptualized the approach” (pp. 106–107).

In light of on-going questions and concerns, this book explores the theoretical and practical foundational principles of TBLT. At different points, I pose questions for reflection so that readers can link the ideas I present back to their own experiences with language pedagogy, whether as learners or teachers of an L2. At the end of each chapter, I present suggestions for further reading where these are helpful in illuminating and developing readers’ understanding of the phenomenon of TBLT. Fundamentally, my aim is to lay a foundation, indeed several foundations, as springboards from which readers can launch themselves, should they wish to go deeper in their exploration of any aspect of TBLT.

My principal concern in this book is the instructed context (i.e., what goes on inside a language classroom in contrast to more naturalistic environments for L2 learning). In this opening chapter, I go back to some very fundamental principles that have informed various approaches to classroom-based L2 teaching and learning. Some of the concepts I present may be well known to many readers. Others may be less familiar. However, presenting these fundamental principles will help to lay an important initial foundation for subsequent chapters where I will explore TBLT, and how TBLT has developed over the last 40 years.

Language Learning and Teaching in the Classroom

When considering how L2 learners’ communicative competence can best be advanced in the language classroom, there are two key questions to address at the outset:

1. How do students learn languages?
2. How should we teach languages?

The second question is contingent on answers to the first. That is, if we can answer the first question around how students learn, we will have some valuable information about how we might teach. These two fundamental questions exercise both teachers and scholars. Classroom practitioners want to be effective in their work and ensure that the students in their care have the best opportunities to make progress in their learning. Educational researchers are likewise concerned to investigate and pinpoint effective practices that will enhance learning. When it comes to L2 teaching and learning, language teachers’ reflections on practice and SLA researchers’ empirical investigations aim to identify the processes involved in learning a new language and what appears to have the most beneficial impact in and for the classroom. Several foundational theoretical perspectives on learning help to inform our thinking about effective instruction.

How Do Students Learn Languages?

Mitchell et al. (2019) argued that discussions about SLA have always been influenced by broader and more general discussions about human learning. One such discussion is the so-called nature–nurture debate. This debate raises an important question in response to the initial question, how do students learn languages? As Mitchell et al. put it, “[h]ow much of human learning derives from innate predispositions, that is, some form of genetic pre-programming, and how much of it derives from social and cultural influences as we grow up?” (p. 11). The classic text by Lightbown and Spada (2013) provided an excellent and detailed overview of various ways in which people have theorised and aimed to enhance language learning, whether as L1 (i.e., first language) or L2. Drawing on several of the key domains they explored, in what follows I outline three foundational but contrasting theoretical perspectives on learning. These have informed researchers’ and educationalists’ thinking, not only about language acquisition, but also, more broadly, about the acquisition of any knowledge or skill:

1. behaviourism, or, “it’s all about nurture”
2. innatism, or, “it’s all about nature”
3. interactionism, or, “it’s a bit of both.”

Behaviourism

The psychological theoretical perspective known as behaviourism was particularly influential in the 1940s and 1950s, predominantly in the United States, and formed a strong basis for understanding how effective learning might be constructed and developed. It owed much to the work of Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904–1990), a well-known American psychologist, although the concept and its advocates predated Skinner’s work.

Experiments with rats and pigeons helped Skinner to formulate the notion of reinforcement. The experiments enabled him to determine that he could control the animals’ behaviour through introducing rewards and punishments. The animals quickly learned which behaviours led to rewards, leading to what Skinner termed positive reinforcement. When certain behaviours were rewarded, the behaviour was repeated (or strengthened). Conversely, behaviour that was not reinforced tended to be less frequently repeated over time (or became weakened). Punishment was designed to reduce unwanted behaviour or strengthen a preferred outcome. Skinner’s theory of reinforcement and punishment became known as operant conditioning based on rewards and sanctions.

With regard to L1 acquisition, traditional behaviourists believed that children come into this world as blank slates (tabula rasa) on which knowledge can be written. Their L1 is acquired as a result of imitation, practice, feedback on success and habit formation. From this perspective, children imitate the sounds and language patterns they are exposed to in the environments around them, and when they receive positive reinforcement on their language use, such as being praised for saying something, or obtaining something they want, the patterns of language that led to the successful communication become ingrained and habitual. If, for example, a young child wants to have a cup of milk, that child learns through imitation how to ask for the milk. When children are successful in getting what they ask for, this reinforces children’s language use. They continue to imitate and practise the sounds and patterns until they form habits of correct language use that enable them to develop their language proficiency.

According to the behaviourist view, both the quality and the frequency of the language the child hears, alongside consistent reinforcement, are important. In other words, young children need to be presented with accurate quality language on a regular and consistent basis. It is only through frequently hearing and imitating accurate language that children can receive reliable reinforcement about their use of language and thereby succeed in acquiring language.

Translating the behaviourist perspective to the phenomenon of SLA, behaviourist-informed teaching approaches would be teacher-led and expository. In the behaviourist L2 classroom, the teacher would be the expert and leader who imparts knowledge and explains principles, for example, grammar rules and how they work. In this top-down approach, the students would sit passively, absorbing the knowledge that the teacher presents to them, and then practising the content through a range of activities such as grammar exercises, with positive reinforcement achieved through students’ (accurate) performances. Important elements of classroom work would include drilling, repetition, memorisation and rote learning, with the teacher explaining and presenting examples of language that the students need to acquire, and providing feedback on language use. Thus, in a very real sense, a behaviourist view on SLA would be predicated on the necessity for teachers to teach students all that they need to know.

Lightbown and Spada (2013) noted that behaviourism appears to present a reasonable explanation for how children acquire aspects of their L1, particularly the more frequent or pedestrian aspects, and at the earliest stages of acquisition. The behaviourist view of language acquisition, and a behaviourist take on learning and instruction, do have a level of intuitive appeal, and there is no doubt that they can give us a partial explanation of language acquisition. Lightbown and Spada went on to assert, however, that behaviourism cannot offer a satisfactory explanation of how children acquire and demonstrate command of more complex grammatical features.

Innatism

The 1960s witnessed a move away from behaviourism towards a more cognitive approach that took into account learners’ ability to work things out for themselves, leading to a contrasting theoretical framework for language acquisition – innatism. The innatist (or nativist) perspective owed a great deal to the work of the American theoretical linguist Noam Chomsky (1928–date), who became “one of behaviorism’s most successful and damaging critics” (Graham, 2019, §7, para. 12).

Critiquing Skinner’s (1957) book on verbal behaviour, Chomsky (1959) made the assertion that the behaviourist perspective cannot account for what came to be known as “the logical problem of language acquisition” (see, e.g., Baker & McCarthy, 1981) – or “the fact that children come to know more about the structure of their language than they could reasonably be expected to learn on the basis of the samples of language they hear” (Lightbown & Spada, 2013, p. 20). That is, children might be exposed to parts of language – sometimes...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Author Biography
• Preface
• PART I Theorising TBLT
• PART II Practising TBLT
• PART III Evaluating TBLT
• Index