12 Materials should take into account that learners differ in affective attitudes. 13 Materials should permit a silent period at the beginning of instruction.
14 Materials should maximize learning potential by encouraging intellectual, aesthetic and emotional involvement which stimulates both right and left brain
activities. 15 Materials should not rely too much on controlled practice.
16 Materials should provide opportunities for outcome feedback.
4. Task-Based Language Teaching TBLT
a. Definition of Task
When the tasks are transformed from the real world to the classroom, they become pedagogical in nature. Richards, Platt and Weber in Nunan, 1989: 6
define a pedagogical task as
”
“....an activity or action which is carried out as the result of processing or understanding language i.e. as a response. For example, drawing a map
while listening to a tape, listening to an instruction and performing a command may be referred to as tasks. Tasks may or may not involve the
production of language. A task usually requires the teacher to specify what will be regarded as successful completion of the task. The use of a variety
of different kinds of tasks in language teaching is said to make language teaching more communicative . . . since it provides a purpose for a
classroom activity which goes beyond the practice of language for its own sake.
” From this definition, tasks are defined in terms of what the learner will do
in class rather than in the world outside the classroom Nunan, 2004:2. Nunan 2004:4 also states that a pedagogical task is:
“…a piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their
attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to
express meaning, and in which the intention is to convey meaning rather than to manipulate form. The task should also have a sense of
completeness, being able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right with a beginning, a middle and an end.
” Skehan 1988, in Nunan 2004: 3 puts forward five key characteristics of
a task. They are : - meaning is primary;
- learners are not given other people’s meaning to regurgigate;
- there is some sort of relationship to comparable real-world activities; - task completion has some priority;
- the assessment of the task in terms of outcome.
b. Components of Task
Nunan 2004:41 proposes a simple model of a minimum specification of task as represented in the diagram below.
Goals Teacher role
Input TASK
Learner role Procedures
Settings ‘Goals’ are the vague, general intentions behind any learning task. They provide a
link between the task and the broader curriculum. ‘Input’ refers to the spoken, written and visual data that learners work with in the course of completing a task.
Data can be provided by a teacher, a textbook or some other source. ‘Procedures’
specifies what learners will actually do with the input that forms the point of departure for the learning task. ‘Role’ refers to the part that learners and teachers
