Task-based Language Learning and Teaching1

by Rod Ellis
Oxford University Press 2003
0-19-442159-7 Reviewed by Andrea Mattos

Rod Ellis is one of the best-known authors in the field of Second Language
Acquisition (SLA) and Language Pedagogy. As such, in this recently launched book –
Task-based Language Learning and Teaching – he writes with expertise about a wide
variety of topics in an accessible and reader-friendly style, offering an updated view of this
important area of language teaching and research. For those who are not well-acquainted
with task-based teaching, the book brings a glossary and a warning: “this is not a ‘how to’
book”. On the contrary, the book attempts to answer a number of key questions in the field,
looking at the problems as well as the advantages offered by the approach.
The book contains ten chapters, each of which has a specific objective. The first
chapter, for example, offers a framework for describing tasks and provides an overview of
the key issues through the examination of tasks from the perspective of both SLA research
and language pedagogy. The author concludes the chapter with a short but inspiring
discussion of the relationship between researching and teaching tasks which touches on the
half-century-old question of the gap between SLA research and language pedagogy.
The other chapters of the book can be divided into two main areas that correspond
to the areas presented in the title, that is, Language Learning (Chapters 2 to 6) and
Language Teaching (Chapters 7 to 10). Chapter 2 deals with the relationship between
listening comprehension and language learning, and how listening tasks can contribute to
both the teaching and research of this skill. Chapter 3 deals with interaction tasks, which
are said to have a potential relationship with language acquisition. The author discusses
how tasks are carried out in interaction, focusing on three major areas of importance to the
relationship between task and language use: negotiation of meaning, communicative
strategies and communicative effectiveness. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with tasks in relation to
learner output, that is, how tasks affect the learners’ overall fluency, accuracy and language
complexity. While chapter 4 is concerned with the production that results from unfocused
tasks, chapter 5 considers learners’ output in focused tasks. Still concerned with language
learning, chapter 6 adopts an alternative view based on the Sociocultural Theory of Mind
(SCT). First, the author provides a short but consistent outline of the main tenants of SCT
and then reviews a number of task-based research which draw on this theory and its
constructs.
Chapters 7, 8 and 9 are concerned with Language Teaching and, therefore, with
more practical issues for those teachers who want to adopt the task-based approach.
Chapter 7 deals with the design of task-based syllabuses and Chapter 8 with the
methodology of task-based teaching. The use of task-based approach for language
assessment – a topic that could not be missing from such a comprehensive volume – is
dealt with in chapter 9.
Finally, in the last chapter, the author discusses why task-based approach has not
been very much used as the basis for language pedagogy, although it has clearly proved
itself as an effective tool for language learning. He also tries to address several theoretical
criticism that have been posed on task-based teaching and suggests that teacher training
programs can help to make task-based teaching methodology better-known to teachers and
thus help to spread the approach in language pedagogy. Certainly, a highly recommended
book.
1
Publicado na Revista English Teaching Professional, n. 38, p. 46, May 2005.