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Date Posted: 23:45:43 07/03/03 Thu
Author: Gerson Santos
Subject: 9th_task-based_Approach

9th class – tasked based approach

Explain what a task-based approach is. Describe its main characteristics

Task-based approach is an approach in which the tasks or activities are carefully graded in order to develop the learners’s communicative competence, that is, to develop the following competences (Hymes):

- Functional competence: refers to the ability to use and apply a language to different communication purposes such as interacting with people, influencing people, avoiding trouble, expressing opinions and emotions, and so forth.
- Sociolinguistic competence: refers to the ability to use appropriate social meaning of the linguistic variants of language into specific communication situation.
- Interactional competence: means to knowing and using mostly-unwritten rules for interacting in many kinds of communication situations into a given speech community and culture.
In other words, the activities must be prepared according to the different stages of the learners’s course. So, the main aspects of task-based approach would be:
1. language data: the tasks must use authentic data in order to provide the learners different aspects of the language.
2. information: the learners are supposed to use the language to get information. It means that is is important that the tasks are formulated in way the the learners use the language for a specific purpose (message level).
3. opportunities for practice: the activities must be developed in order that the learners can in fact practice them.
In addition, these activities can be made deductively (when the teacher or someone provides an explicit information), or inductively ( learners formulate the rule of the language by studying examples of the language).
Besides, the activities must embrace as much as possible the following elements:
- Real-word tasks
- Pedagogical tasks
- Enabling skills
- Communicative activities
- Rehearsal tasks
- Language exercises
- Activation tasks
The three main characterists of task-based approach are:
1. the activities must have a goal or purpose in order to use the language;
2. creating a learning environment that cannot be recreated in the regular classroom;
3. the learners must be motivated, so, the activities are supposed to involve the learners.

In summary, the task-based approach aims at creating activities which makes the learners use the language for any purpose and situations from do a puzzle to share experiences. It can be also seen as activities development in which result in understanding the language by encouraging the learners to face challenges of real-world functions.

References

RICHARDS, J. & RODGERS, T. Approaches and methods in Language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. p.67-68.
http://simsim.rug.ac.be/staff/elke/recpast/taskbased.html
http://www3.telus.net/linguisticsissues/syllabusdesign.html
http://www.nuis.ac.jp/~hadley/publication/kosentbl/taskbased.htm
http://www.ericfacility.net/ericdigests/ed343407.html

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