English Methodology

What is task based learning?

• During the lesson students are focused on learning about something.

• It is an approach in which learning revolves around the completion of meaningfuL assignament

What are task based activities?

• You can list people, places, things, actions, reasons, everyday problems, things to do in various circumstances etc.

• This could be anything that interests them from a serious science subject to their favourite pop star or even a topical news story or film.

What is a task based syllabus?

• A text-based approach explores how texts work. The purpose of a text-based approach is to enable learners to become competent, confident and critical readers, writers and viewers of texts.

• An approach where learners carry out tasks such as solving a problem or planning an activity. The language learnt comes out of the linguistic demands of the activity.

What is task based assessment?

• Teaching is concerned with establishing how well learners are able to mobilize language to achieve their communicative goals, rather than examining their knowledge of language

  systems and structures.

• An example of task is when a child took all his parent's energy. An example of

  task is when you assign Joe the job of taking out the garbage.

The Task teaching style is an option available to students under Student-Directed Teaching, a progressive teaching technology that aims to give the student a greater sense of ownership in his or her own education.

• TASK TEACHING

• CONTENT BASED LEARNING

Task-based learning has some clear advantages

• Unlike a PPP approach, the students are free of language control. In all three stages they must use all their language resources rather than just practising one pre-selected item.

• Taking information from different sources, re-evaluating and restructuring that information can help students to develop very valuable thinking skills that can then be transferred to other subjects.

What are the disadvantages of problem based learning?

Disadvantages of problem-based learning

• Particularly in monolingual classes, the overuse of the students; native language during parts of the lesson can be a problem. Because the lesson isn;t explicitly focused on language practice students find it much easier and quicker to use their mother tongue. Try sharing your rationale with students and explain the benefits of using the target language rather than their mother tongue.

• Lack of traditional instruction and progression through material. Objective evaluation may be difficult. May be difficult to fail a student. Need more teachers/facilitators - ideally 1 for each 6 students.

NUMBER THE FOLLOWING LESSON PLAN FROM THE PREVIOUS IDEAS OF TASK BASED LEARNING TAKE CARE THE STAGES OF A LESSON PLAN

• Pre-task (15-20min)

  Aim: To introduce the topic of nights out and to give the class exposure to language related to it. To highlight words and phrases.

   Show sts pictures of a night out in a restaurant / bar and ask them where they go to have a good night out.

• Planning (10min)

   Each pair rehearses presenting their night out. Teacher walks around, helps them if they need it and notes down any language points to be highlighted later.

• Task (10min)

   Students do the task in twos and plan the night. Match them with another pair to discuss their ideas and any similarities and differences.

• Preparation and materials

  You will need to record two people planning a night out on the town.

• Report (15 min)

   Class listen to the plans, their task is to choose one of them. They can ask questions after the presentation.

NUMBER THE FOLLOWING LESSON PLAN FROM THE PREVIOUS IDEAS OF CONTENT BASED LEARNING TAKE CARE THE STAGES OF A LESSON PLAN

• Warm-up activity:

  
  

  The preservice teacher wrote on the board some words that are used to express the opinion and students guessed the topic. E.g. personally, in my opinion, in my experience, I consider, for me, I think, etc.

• Linguistic goal:

  To recognize the different words used to express opinions.

• Development:

  Task 1: Student chose an environmental problem and then made some questions about it to ask to their partners.

  Task 2: Students designed a Vox-Pop. They asked their question to their partners and they answered them. Then they created a poster that contains all their partners’

  answers.

• Communicative goal:

  To answer some questions asked by their partners about environmental problems and

  facts.

• Lesson Plan Number 3:

  Expressing Your Opinion

What are the advantages of content-based instruction?

• It can make learning a language more interesting and motivating.

  Students can use the language to fulfil a real purpose, which can make students both more independent and confident.

• Students can also develop a much wider knowledge of the world through CBI which can feed back into improving and supporting their general educational needs.

•  CBI is very popular among EAP (English for Academic Purposes) teachers as it helps students to develop valuable study skills such as note taking, summarising and extracting key information from texts.

• It is a strong communicative approach where students spend a lot of time communicating. PPP lessons seem very teacher-centred by comparison. Just watch how much time the students spend communicating during a task-based lesson.