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Date Posted: 16:08:05 07/04/03 Fri
Author: Ricardo Lacerda
Subject: Task 9 - Task-Based Approach

The task-based approach.

In a communicative language course, the main goal is to develop student’s communicative competence. A good way to provide this situation is through the Task-based approach. The task-based learning (TBL) is supported by the concept that pupils, while facing real life situations, using the language to solve real problems, are indeed proporcionating themselves one of the richest learning experiences.

In what concerns this approach, a task can be defined as an activity in which people are exposed to a situation that involves solving a problem using the target language. This problem can vary from simple ones, like asking the bill for the waiter in a restaurant or filling the gaps in the lyrics of a song, to much more complex others. This way, students are learning, practicing what they have already learnt and being prepared to real world situations out of the classroom.

Tasks involves basically two kinds of demands. The cognitive demands reffers to concepts and understanding of the world and social issues. The language demands are those related to the use of the taget language and of the mother language concerning the TL’s learning process. Neither of them can be much ahead of what students actually know about the subject. In other words, a task must be designed very carefully. It cannot be too difficult, so that students can get demotivated, nor too easy, otherwise they will not have anything to learn from it.

A good way to design and manage a TBL class is presented by Skehan in his schemes, where he divides the process into three basic stages:
- Pre-task Stage: The topic is introduced. The vocabulary needed can be elicited through brainstorming, and it is useful to have the focus on the grammar structures that are to be used. The task is explained and teachers have to make sure it is clear for everybody.
- During-task Stage: Now, students have the chance to interact with each other and work on solving the ‘problem’. It is important to impose a time limit, although it can be, depending on teacher’s feelings about the class, transgressed.
- Post-task Stage: It is time to present the results to the teacher or, better, to the whole class. This way, students are improving oral and listening skills, as well as interacting with the others, seeing that there can be several ways of solving the same problem, or achieving the same goal.

In my opinion, since TBL can bring so much of what is, at first, considered ‘extra class’ subjects into the classroom, it is one of the systems which students might best benefit from. It is not just about learning a foreign language. If used correctly, this approach can transform FL classes into a space where real, meaningful and true learning occurs.

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