Tasks, Teachers and Task-based Principles in the actual Language Classroom

The purpose of this study is to explore the classroom practice of teachers while they are using a task-based syllabus and assess the extent to which their actual classroom practice is consistent with the main tenets of the task-based approach. We videotaped four teachers, team-teaching in pairs (differing in terms of their experience with task-based language teaching), and coded their classroom practice during a two-week summer school for adolescent newcomers at basic proficiency-levels. We assessed both teams while working with three tasks from the syllabus with an adapted version of a standardized assessment tool for the evaluation of teacher practice in task-based language learning environments (Devlieger and Goossens, 2007), which highlights task-based characteristics as put forward by Long (2014) in his 10 Methodological Principles. Results show that there was considerable variation between different teachers and within same-teacher practice across different tasks: the more experienced team of teachers complied with task-based principles to a greater extent, but only two thirds of the basic principles of task-based teaching were systematically implemented. Although to a lesser extent, the less experienced teachers' practices showed a task-based orientation, albeit with more and more outspoken variation than with the more experienced team. More specifically, for both teams, focus on form (a key characteristic of TBLT), was frequently found to be lacking. As such, this study reveals that a task-on-paper cannot provide all that is necessary to create authentic classroom practice according to task-based principles. Teacher experience in task-based language teaching and knowledge of task-based literature can be facilitative of implementation practices in line with the principles of task-based teaching. However, even experienced teachers are not willing or capable to implement all principles systematically: in their implementation of tasks, teachers can and will (and perhaps even must) deviate from task-based principles to follow up on the contextual demands of their classroom environment and their learners’ needs. References Devlieger, M. & G. Goossens (2007). An Assessment Tool for the Evaluation of Teacher Practice in Powerful Task-Based Language Environments. in K. Van den Branden, K. Van Gorp & M. Verhelst (Eds.), Tasks in Action: Task-Based Language Education from a Classroom-Based Perspective. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, p. 92-130. Long, M. (2014). Second Language Acquisition and Task-Based Language Teaching. John Wiley & Sons.status: publishe