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Activation task: A piece of classroom work involving communicative interaction, but not one in
which learners will be rehearsing for some out-of-class communication. Rather they are designed
to activate the acquisition process.
Enabling skills: mastery of language systems grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, etc. which
learners to take part in communicative tasks.
Language exercise: A piece of classroom work focusing learners on, and involving learners in
manipulating some aspect of the linguistic system.
Communication activity: a piece of classroom work involving a focus on a particular linguistic
feature but also involving the genuine exchange of meaning.
Reflection
Integration
Active learning
Scaffolding
Recycling
Task dependency
Scaffolding: lessons and materials should provide supporting frameworks within which the
learning takes place.
Task dependency: within the lesson, one task should grow out of, and build upon the ones that
have gone before.
Recycling: recycling language maximizes opportunities for learning and activates the organic
learning principle.
Active learning: learners learn best by actively using the language they are learning.
Integration: learners should be taught in ways that make clear the relationship between
grammatical from, communicative function and semantic meaning.
Reproduction to creation: In reproductive tasks, learners reproduce language models provided
by the teacher, the textbook or the tape. These tasks give learners mastery of form, meaning
and function, and provide a basis for creative tasks. In creative tasks, learners are recombining
familiar elements in novel ways.
Reflection: learners should be given opportunities to reflect on what they have learned and how
they are doing.
Task components
Identifying task components
In Nunans point of view, the framework which combines simplicity with the power to analyze the
majority of learning tasks has three components: goals, input and activities. These three in turn
imply certain roles.
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Goals
Goals are the general intentions behind any given learning task. They provide a point of contact
between the task and the broader curriculum. They may relate to a range of general outcomes
(communicative, affective or cognitive) or may directly describe teacher or learners behaviour.
Goals were classified as Communicative, Socio-cultural and learning how to learn in an Australian
project.
Input
Input refers to the data that form the point of departure for the task. Input for communicative
tasks can be derived from a wide range of sources: letters, postcards, street map, bus
timetables, etc.
Non-authentic material is any material which has not been specifically produced for the purposes
of language teaching.
Using authentic material offers students the opportunity to make use of non-linguistic clues
(pictures, layouts, symbols, etc.) and to deal with small amount of print which at the same time
contains complete and meaningful messages. In addition, language is natural, by altering it for
teaching purposes we risk making the reading task more difficult. We may be removing clues to
meaning.
Activities
Activities specify what learners will actually do with the input which forms the point of departure
for the learning task.
There are three general ways of characterizing activities: rehearsal for real world, skills used and
fluency/accuracy.
Authenticity
There are arguments for and against both real-world and pedagogic tasks. Some say classroom
activities should parallel the real world as closely as possible as language is a tool of
communication, the purposes of the tasks should be the same in class as they are in real life.
Others say that students should be engaged in problem-solving tasks as purposeful but without
the rehearsal requirement that they should be realistic or authentic as natural social behaviour.
Language display for evaluation tends to lead to concern for accuracy, monitoring, reference
rules, possibly explicit knowledge, problem solving and evidence of skill-getting.
In contrast, language use requires fluency, expression rules, a reliance on implicit knowledge and
automatic performance. It will on occasion also require monitoring and problem solving
strategies, but these will not be the most prominent features.
Settings
Settings refers to the classroom arrangements specified or implied in the task. It also requires
consideration of whether the task is to be carried out wholly or partly outside the classroom. A
wide range of configurations is possible in the communicative classroom, although practical
considerations such as class size can constrain what is possible in practice.
It is useful to distinguish between mode and environment. Learning mode refers to
whether the learner is operating on an individual or a group basis. Operating Environment
refers to where the learning actually takes place.
Task types
There are two main ways of classifying tasks:
1- From a cognitive perspective:
This classification is base on the cognitive operations that different tasks require on the part of
learners. (Prabhu)
Information Gap: They involve a transfer of given information form one person to another-or
from one form to another, or from one place to another-generally calling for the encoding or
decoding of information from or into language. E.g. sharing information with a partner.
Reasoning Gap: They involve deriving some new information from a given information through
processes of inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or a perception of relationships or
patterns e.g. solving puzzles
Opinion Gap: They involve identifying and articulating a personal preference, feeling, or
attitude in response to a given situation. E.g. giving your opinion.
2. From a pedagogic perspective:
This classification is based on the tasks that may be designed or found in teaching materials.
(Willis)
Task in projects
Ribe and Vidal distinguish three generations of tasks to explain how a project is developed.
First generation tasks are those which are commonly found in communicative classrooms and
which are used to develop communicative ability
Second generation tasks present more challenge since they require learners to both manipulate
language and to use cognitive abilities at the same time. They focus primarily on content,
procedure and language.
Third generation tasks are characterized by an educational purpose as well as a cognitive and
linguistic one. They aim at developing the personality of the student though the foreign
language.
Interactional demands vary with the type of interaction required. e.g. pair work, with the
participants in the talk, adults or peers, and with the nature of the interaction, e.g. questions and
answers
Metalinguistic demands may include the use of technical terms about language in production
or comprehension e.g. in instructions, in feedback.
Involvement demands vary with the ease or difficulty the learner has in engaging with the
task. E.g. length of task stages, links to childs interests and concerns.
Physical demands vary with how long the child must sit still for, with actions needed, with fine
motor skills needed e.g. to write
Task support
When we think on terms of support, we try to use what the children already do to help them
master new skills and knowledge, or we try to match tasks to childrens natural abilities and
inclinations.
Types of task support
Cognitive support can come from the contextualization of language, from the use of concepts
already developed, from familiar formats of graphics or activities, from familiar topics and
content.
Language support can come from re-use of language already mastered, from moving from easier
domain to more difficult, e.g. spoken to written
Interactional support can come from the type of interaction, e.g. pair work
Metalinguistic support can come from the content and activity that is easy for learners to engage
with e.g. links to child s interests and concerns.
Physical support can come from variation in sitting and moving, use of familiar actions.
Balancing demands and support
Whether learners can d the task and whether they learn anything by doing it, depends not just
on the demands or on the support, but on the dynamic relationship between demands and
support.
The follow up stage builds on successful completion of the core, perhaps with a public
performance of work done in the core or with written work based on oral language used in the
core.
Objectives
Objectives are statements about how the goals will be achieved
Through objectives, a goal is broken down into learnable and teachable units.
By achieving the objectives, the goal will be reached,
The objective must relate to the goal.
Another aspect of the relationship between goals and objectives is that of cause and effect.
Objectives are in a hierarchical relationship to goals.
Goals are more general and objectives are more specific.
Brown points out that one of the main differences between goals and objectives is their level of
specificity
Goals are more long term and objectives are more short term
Objectives. Nunam
Objectives can be useful to guide the selection of structures, functions, notions, tasks, and so on;
to provide a sharper focus for the teachers, to give learners a clear idea of what they can expect
from a language programme, to help in developing means of assessment and evaluation.
As goal statements are relatively imprecise, they can act as general signposts but we need thr
objectives in order to provide information for course and programme planner.
Performance objectives should contain three components: the performance component, the
conditions component and the standards component.
The specification of conditions and standards leads to greater precision in objective setting, and
also facilitates the grading of objectives.