Components of Task Literature Review

b Read a cue and complete a substitution or transformation drill. c Read a cue e.g. question and give a meaningful response i.e. one that is true for the learner. d Interactive a Simulation e.g. reading a text about family, students, working from role cards, circulate and find other members of their family. b Discussion e.g. students in small groups discuss texts about their families. c Problem solving e.g. in an information gap task, students are split into three groups; each group read an incomplete description of a family; students recombine and have to complete a family tree, identify which picture from a number of alternatives represents the family etc.. In this ten-step sequence, the demands on the learner gradually increase, both within each phase, and from one phase to the next. It illustrates the notion of task continuity, where skills acquired or practiced in one step are then utilized and extended in succeeding steps Nunan, 1989: 119.

d. Principles of Task-Based Language Teaching

Nunan 2004: 35 summarizes seven underlying principles for task-based language teaching. They are explained as follows. 1 Principle 1: Scaffolding Lessons and materials should provide supporting frameworks within which the learning takes place. At the beginning of the learning process, learners should not be expected to produce language that has not been introduced either explicitly or implicitly. 2 Principle 2: Task dependency Within a lesson, one task should grow out of, and build upon, the ones that have gone before. 3 Principle 3: Recycling Recycling language maximizes opportunities for learning and activates the ‘organic’ learning principle. 4 Principle 4: Active learning Learners learn best by actively using the language they are learning. 5 Principle 5: Integration Learners should be taught in ways that make clear the relationships between linguistic form, communicative function and semantic meaning. 6 Principle 6: Reproduction to creation Learners should be encouraged to move from reproductive to creative language use. 7 Principle 7: Reflection Learners should be given opportunities to reflect on what they have learned and how well they are doing.