c. Task Grading and Continuity
Grading a task might be important because it will sort the materials and task from the ones that are easy to be understood to the ones with certain
difficulties for the learners. As learners vary from different backgrounds and competences, grading should be considered in doing a materials development.
What is meant by grading? Richards, Platt and Weber 1986 in Nunan 2004:113 define grading as the arrangement of the content of a language
course or textbook so that it is presented in a helpful way. Grading can also refer to the teachers’ decisions on what to teach or do first, second, and the
rest of the teaching and learning process based on the course book used Nunan, 2004. The use of grading will give effects on the order of words or
vocabulary, structures, tenses, topics, skills, and many more. Hence, in order to make a good task grading and sequencing,
materials developers need to consider the process of the components of task and the stages of knowledge acquisition in a teaching and learning process. A
task, however, should be interdependence, and it should have a continuity. Nunan 2004 proposes the task continuity principles in the following table.
Table 2: The Task Continuity Principles Nunan, 2004: 126 Phase
Steps within a phase
A. Processing 1 Read or study a text
– no other comprehension response required.
2 Read or listen to a text and give a non- verbal, physical response e.g. learner raises
hand every time key words are heard. 3 Read or listen to a text and give a verbal
response e.g. write down key words every time they are heard.
Phase Steps within a phase
4 Read or listen to a text and give a non- physical, nonverbal response e.g. check-off
a box or grid every time key words are heard.
B. Productive 1 Listen to cue utterances, or dialogue
fragments and repeat them, or repeat a complete version of the cue.
2 Listen to a cue and complete a substitution or transformation drill.
3 Listen to a cue e.g. a question and give a meaningful response i.e. one that is true
for the learner.
C. Interactive 1 Role play e.g. having listened to a
conversation in which people talk about their family, students, working from role
cards, circulate and find other members of their family.
2 Simulation discussion e.g. students in small groups share information about their
own families. 3 Problem-solving information gap e.g.
in an information gap task, students are split into three groups; each group listens to 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..
7. Materials Evaluation
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