Principles of Teaching Reading

18 Task-based learning also gives the teacher an opportunity to be as creative as possible to assign tasks for the students. It means the teacher should prepare interesting materials for the students to make them motivated. Willis explained that in this approach, the teacher generally is as a monitor and motivator. As a monitor, teacher let the students accomplish the tasks individually or in groups. Teacher should make sure that students are doing the right task. As a motivator, teacher should encourage students to take part, no matter how weak their language. a. Task Types According to Pattison 1987, as stated by Nunan 2004, there are seven task types, namely: 1. Questions and answers These activities are based on the notion of creating an information gap by letting students make a personal and secret choice from a list language items which all fit into a given frame. 2. Dialogues and role plays These activities require students to participate more willingly and learn more thoroughly than when they are told to simply repeat a given dialogue pairs. 3. Matching activities In these activities, the task for the students is to recognize matching items, or to complete pairs or sets. 19 4. Communication strategies The aim of these activities is to encourage students to practice communication strategies such as paraphrasing, borrowing or inventing words, using gesture, asking for feedback and simplifying. 5. Pictures and picture stories Many communication activities can be stimulated through the use of pictures. 6. Puzzles and problems These activities require students to make guesses, draw on their general knowledge and personal experience, use their imagination and test their powers of logical reasoning. 7. Discussions and decisions In these activities, students collect and share information to reach a decision. b. A Framework for task-based language teaching Willis 1996 divided task-based methodology into three parts; pre-task, task cycle, and language focus. 1. Pre-task This is the shortest stage in framework. This stage introduces the class to the topic and the task, activating topic - related words and phrases. The teacher explores the topic with the class and may highlight useful words and phrases, helping students to understand the task instructions. The point of this stage 20 focuses on topic and language. It not teaches large amounts of new language or grammar st ructure, but to encourage students’ confidence in handling the task. 2. Task Cycle Task stage offers learners the opportunity to use whatever language they already know in order to do the task, then to improve that language, under teacher guidance, while planning the reports of the task Nunan, 1996. During the Task stage, the students may perform the task in pairs or small groups while the teacher monitors from a distance. The students then plan how they will tell the rest of the class what they did and how it went, and they then report on the task either orally or in writing, andor compare notes on what has happened. 3. Language Focus In the Language focus stage, the students examine and discuss specific features of any listening or reading text which they have looked at for the task andor the teacher may conduct some form of practice of specific language features which the task has provoked. Figure 2.6: A framework for Task-based Learning based on The Willis TBL Framework Willis, 1996: p.52 Pre-task Introduction to topic Task Cycle Task Planning Report Language focus Analysis Practice