The ministry of higher and secondary specialized education of the republic of uzbekistan

Homework Task Eight

As explained in the key concepts section there are four main characteristics that constitute a ‘task’ in the TBLT framework: (1) meaning is primary; (2) there is a goal which needs to be worked towards; (3) task completion has some priority; and (4) there is a real-world relationship. Using the lesson from Homework Task One, explain if you use a true ‘task’ in the lesson. Thus, how does the task you identify use the four main characteristics. If not, please create a task that can be used for your Homework Task One and explain how it is a task using the four main characteristics.

Task based language learning is kind of all the rage these days as part of the overall communicative approach. This focuses on having students being competent communicators as opposed to some of the older models like grammar-translation or the audio-lingual method. I personally love task-based activities because they give students a reason to do something as opposed to just using the language in a meaningless kind of way such as in a “repeat after me” activity. Students have to complete something, such as a presentation or some research about a country of their choice, including money and currency and then make a poster about it. I’m all about student-centred language teaching. After all, students should be doing the hard work, not me! One of the main benefits of the task based approach is that students are engaged and working on something basically the entire time. The role of the teacher is to set up the activity, offer some guidance and feedback but that’s about it. A task-based activity is one in which students have to use language to achieve a specific outcome. The best TBL activities reflect real life and allow students to use whatever language they want as long as they are able to complete the task.

The goal of this lesson is to better motivate learners and engage their interest in target language culture through the topic of “Sports”. According to the topic, “Coaching a soccer team” or “Commentating a match” can be taken as an example of TBLT task. In these tasks we can observe:

(1) meaning is primary: whether students understand all sport idiomatic expressions, phrases and are able to use them in their writing is important. For these reasons they have their duties of what to do during the task.

(2) there is a goal which needs to be worked towards: as a pair the students create their descriptive together.

(3) task completion has some priority: in order to complete the task, the students have complete organized activities that leads to successful accomplishment of the task.

(4) there is a real-world relationship: students produce a brief commentary of the football match.

Homework Task Nine
Watch the following video from YouTube about Post-method Language Teaching: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy2P4zUdzXo. Using the lesson plan from Homework Task One, explain how your lesson identifies the concepts of particularity, practicality, and possibility; or, the 10 macro-strategies. Elaborate on the principles or strategies which do not fit (or may be not so much necessary) for your lesson.

The video presents a clear understanding of the Post-method of Language Teaching which is supported with facts and research findings. According to EFL teaching scholars, the post-method language teaching contains of three key terms that can help in explaining the idea of the method. For instance, Particularity means that there is no special “recipe” for effective language teaching. In other words, teaching procedures will vary depending on “particular teachers, teaching a particular group of learners pursuing a particular set of goals within a particular institutional context embedded in a particular sociocultural milieu” (ibid., p.34). Another issue which is clarified in the video is Practicality. The factor of practicality in teaching means that any procedures which are “recommended” for language teachers are ought to be practical to the context, otherwise they are useless, something that teachers can use in their classrooms. The third one is possibility can be explained in a way that language teachers use those procedures which are possible in their classrooms from a social, cultural and political perspective. The three essential terms can be used in explaining the lesson of homework task one in explaining how they describe the post-method language teaching. For that reason, it can be stated that the students are given opportunities to interact with each other as the teacher uses the possible classroom from a cultural perspective.

All presented above can be found while analyzing the lesson. One of them is Maximize learning opportunities in which language teachers create many different opportunities for learning during a lesson. The next one is Facilitate negotiated interaction which language teacher support learners to interact with one another, so that they can share his/her own individual standpoints, in a way that is relevant to. Another one is Promote learner’s autonomy. From the lesson it can be clarified that the language teachers enhance the learner’s self-study and self-control strategies to help them feel more empowered learners. Integration of language skills is the strategy in which language teacher teaches all four skills; not separate, but integrating all of them.