Teachers Exploring Tasks in English Language Teaching

✍ Scribed by Corony Edwards, Jane Willis

• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 311
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

This book was written for language teachers by language teachers, with a view to encouraging readers to use more tasks in their lessons, and to explore for themselves various aspects of task-based teaching and learning. It gives insights into ways in which tasks can be designed, adapted and implemented in a range of teaching contexts and illustrates ways in which tasks and task-based learning can be investigated as a research activity. Practicing language teachers and student professionals in graduate TESOL and Applied Linguistics programs will find this a rich resource of varied experience in the classroom and a stimulus to their own qualitative studies.

✦ Table of Contents

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 6
About the Contributors......Page 9
List of Abbreviations......Page 12
Acknowledgements......Page 13
Introduction: Aims and Explorations into Tasks and Task-based Teaching......Page 14
1 Task-based Language Learning and Teaching: Theories and Applications......Page 26
Part A Implementing Task-based Learning: Contexts and Purposes......Page 44
2 Developing from PPP to TBL: A Focused Grammar Task......Page 46
3 Integrating Task-based Learning into a Business English Programme......Page 53
4 Language as Topic: Learner–Teacher Investigation of Concordances......Page 63
5 Storytelling with Low-level Learners: Developing Narrative Tasks......Page 71
6 Adding Tasks to Textbooks for Beginner Learners......Page 82
7 Using Language-focused Learning Journals on a Task-based Course......Page 91
Part B Exploring Task Interaction: Helping Learners do Better......Page 102
8 Exam-oriented Tasks: Transcripts, Turn-taking and Backchannelling......Page 106
9 Training Young Learners in Meaning Negotiation Skills: Does it Help?......Page 116
10 Task Repetition with 10-Year-old Children......Page 126
11 Collaborative Tasks for Cross-cultural Communication......Page 140
Part C Exploring Task Language: Lexical Phrases and Patterns......Page 152
12 Interactive Lexical Phrases in Pair Interview Tasks......Page 156
13 Multi-word Chunks in Oral Tasks......Page 170
14 Can We Predict Language Items for Open Tasks?......Page 184
Part D Investigating Variables: Task Conditions and Task Types......Page 200
15 Fighting Fossilization: Language at the Task Versus Report Stages......Page 204
16 Storytelling: Effects of Planning, Repetition and Context......Page 214
17 The Effect of Pre-task Planning Time on Task-based Performance......Page 227
18 Balancing Fluency, Accuracy and Complexity Through Task Characteristics......Page 241
19 Quality Interaction and Types of Negotiation in Problem-solving and Jigsaw Tasks......Page 255
Epilogue: Teachers Exploring Research......Page 269
References......Page 293
C......Page 301
D......Page 302
F......Page 303
I......Page 304
L......Page 305
N......Page 306
P......Page 307
R......Page 308
S......Page 309
W......Page 310
Y......Page 311