The ministry of higher and secondary specialised education of uzbekistan the uzbek state world languages university the english teaching methodology department

The task-based approach. Approaches to task-based learning (TBL) can be seen as a significant further evolution of CLT, both in terms of views of language in use and the development of classroom methodology. Although teachers have been operating with the notion for some time, it is only in recent years that frameworks have become more explicit and formalized. J. Willis (1996: 23) offers a simple definition: ‘tasks are always activities where the target language is used by the learner for a communicative purpose . . . in order to achieve an outcome’ (italics added). In other words, TBL is goal-oriented, leading to a ‘solution’ or a ‘product’. Nunan (1989, cited in Nunan, 1999: 25) makes a further distinction between ‘real-world’ and ‘pedagogical’ tasks, the latter defined as ‘a piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing, or interacting in the target language while their attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to express meaning, and in which the intention is to convey meaning rather than manipulate form’. Despite this emphasis on communication and interaction, it is important to note that the TBL approach is concerned with accuracy as well as fluency. It achieves this most obviously through the TBL framework, which has three key phases:

1. the pre-task phase, which includes work on introducing the topic, finding relevant language and so on

   
   

2. the task cycle itself

   
   

3. language focus.

   
   

Let us look at why we need to evaluate materials in the first place. For the term evaluation, we take Tomlinson’s (2003c) definition: ‘Materials evaluation is a procedure that involves measuring the value (or potential value) of a set of learning materials’. It is probably reasonable to assume that there are very few teachers who do not use published course materials at some stage in their teaching career. Many of us find that it is something that we do very regularly in our professional lives. We may wish at this stage to make a distinction between teaching situations where ‘open-market’ materials are chosen on the one hand, and where a Ministry of Education (or some similar body) produces materials that are subsequently passed on to the teacher for classroom use on the other.

No textbook or set of materials is likely to be perfect, and there does not seem as yet an agreed set of criteria or procedures for evaluation (see critical reviews of the evaluation literature in Tomlinson, 2012a; Mukundan and Ahour, 2010). This is inevitable ‘as the needs, objectives, backgrounds and preferred styles of the participants differ from context to context’ (Tomlinson, 2003c: 15). We nonetheless need some model for hard-pressed teachers or course planners that will be brief, practical to use and yet comprehensive in its coverage of criteria, given that everyone in the field will need to evaluate materials at some time or other.
Let us see the types of claim that can be made for materials in the introduction. The following example is part of the introduction taken from a recent EFL series. We have italicized certain terms and key concepts that we feel need further investigation:
• Tasks and activities are designed to have a real communicative purpose
rather than simply being an excuse to practise specific features.
• We have placed a special emphasis on representing an accurate multicultural view of English as it is spoken today. Many courses still represent the English-speaking world as being largely UK- and US-based. Considering the fact that there are now more non-native English speakers than native, we have also included a variety of accents from a wide range of countries and cultures.
• Throughout the Student’s Book, learner autonomy is promoted via clear cross-referencing to features in the Workbook and elsewhere. Here students can find all the help and extra practice they need. We can deduce from this that the claims made for the materials by the author/publisher can be quite strong and will need critical evaluation in order to see if they can be justified. From the ‘blurb’ and the introduction we can normally expect comments on some/all of the following:
• The intended audience. We need to ascertain who the materials are targeted at, be it teenagers aged 13 and upwards or adults, for example. The topics that will motivate one audience will probably not be suitable for another.
• The proficiency level. Most materials claim to aim at a particular level, such as false beginner or lower intermediate. This will obviously require investigation as it could vary widely depending on the educational context.
• The context in which the materials are to be used. We need to establish whether the materials are for teaching general learners or perhaps for teaching English for Specific Purposes (ESP). If the latter, what degree of specialist subject knowledge is assumed in the materials?
• How the language has been presented and organized into teachable units/ lessons. The materials will contain a number of units/lessons, and their Design of Materials and Methods respective lengths need to be borne in mind when deciding how and if they will fit into a given educational programme. Some materials will provide guidelines here such as ‘contains 15 units, providing material for 90–120 hours of teaching’. In other words, the author expects that between 6 and 8 hours will be required to cover the material.
• The author’s views on language and methodology and the relationship between the language, the learning process and the learner. In many cases the date of publication of the materials will be of importance here. For materials written over the last 20 years or so designed to fit into a multi-component syllabus or corpus-based lexical syllabus, we might expect the author to make claims about including quite a large amount of learner involvement in the learning process. This will require investigation. For example, the materials may claim to help the learner in an understanding of what is involved in language learning and contain various activities and tasks to develop this.