Task Based Learning in the School Context

 There is a lot of detail around what makes up full-on Task Based Learning, which I am going to avoid. I want to focus on what makes it important to me as a languages teacher in the school context.

The main point of Task based Learning is... Tasks.

And the point of a Task is that it is carried out with the focus on completing the Task. The focus is the completion of the Task, not on the language that is used. The pupils are communicating (or comprehending) in order to perform the task; not in order to use certain specified language structures.

It stands in contrast to an Exercise. In an Exercise, the pupil practises using certain language structures that have been being learned. You could see Task Based Learning as being the antidote to Presentation, Practice, Production. In the Presentation and Practice stages, it is clear that it is specific language structures that are being rehearsed. But even in the Production stage, the teacher will design the task (small t) such that those structures can be deployed. The teacher has specified the language to be used, practised it, and now they want to see the pupils using it more independently in a more open context.

This is what we do all the time in school. We ask pupils to practise over and over, challenging themselves to be more fluent, independent, spontaneous, expressive. And this works very well.

The risk is that pupils are able only to use the structures they have been working on most recently. And instead of communicating, they end up playing the game of saying things just to show off an expression or a tense. It's a good fit for exam criteria. Exam criteria can be deconstructed to determine the key language pupils need (vocabulary, tenses, idioms...). And the practice makes perfect paradigm is geared up to creating accurate work that gets the grade.

But at some level, I have the nagging idea that we aren't just teaching pupils to get a grade. We are teaching them the language. That they should be able to try to say things because they want to say them. Not just to tick off criteria in an exam. Very idealistic and sentimental, I know. But there's more to it. I think it is fundamental to learning that the pupil has a evolving body of language, a core, an interlanguage. I want them to be aware of the language as a whole. So they can call on everything they have ever learned. So they can make connections, links, patterns, rules.

We've all seen pupils who can't do words like a or the or is. And therefore can't say the simplest things. Because they've not made the language their own. They are reliant on the stages of Presentation, Practice, Production to be able to Perform and move on. And we've seen those pupils on the Spanish Exchange who CAN deploy their language in new situations. Who can say things they've not been taught, but find ways to communicate it all the same. With a focus on communicating successfully. From the building blocks of language that they have a grasp of. And these are the pupils who then acquire more and more language. It brings me back to the perennial snowball metaphor. They haven't let their language melt. They've gathered it into a snowball, made it theirs, and now more snow sticks to it.

This is what a Task does. It requires pupils to communicate, selecting and combining language from their whole repertoire, understanding how it works. Or exploring how it works. Finding ways to make it fit together. The immediate focus is getting the message across. But the effect of doing so is to explore the possibilities and limitations of the language at your disposal.

This can happen in anything from chit-chat (Did you watch the match? Where did you get your bag?) to written work (Tell me about your Town. Would you like to go to School in Spain?). The key is how we share with pupils the idea that they are learning to communicate and that the language they are learning is ALL the language, not just what we need for this exercise.

The tasks we set our pupils could be Tasks. But we fight it! We try to steer them to saying things that deploy the structures we have been practising or which meet the criteria. Pupils try to say things they can't quite say, or try apply a rule to an irregular form, or use English syntax, extrapolating from what they know, in order to communicate. And when they do this, we label it as an error.

I think that in order for language to be successful, we need to keep these possibilities alive:

    When we set work, we are genuinely interested in what the pupils say or write.

    When we challenge pupils to express themselves, both we and they understand that they can take risks even if this will naturally lead to more errors.

    If we ask pupils to express themselves, we are requiring them to curate their own repertoire of language that they can draw on.

If we do these things, then we are straying into Task Based Learning.