孙千慧
昆士兰大学
Implementing Task-based language teaching to enhance students’ speaking ability.
Sun Qianhui
University of Queensland
Introduction
As for many students, speaking is a vital part of second language (L2) learning and the other three skills are overshadowed by its importance (Nuana, 2001a). Speaking is a transformation process through which learners can convert their thought to meaningful oral information. The major issue of language students is they cannot use language to communicate with other people in an authentic context (Widdowson, 1978). Therefore, teaching speaking is not only to ask learners to read and recite dialogues, but students need to use utterance to create the message and simultaneously communicate with listeners. When I learned English in high school, I found that many English teachers require us to practice the dialogues that the students have memorized. It is not a meaningful task so that I am not able to promote my speaking skills. After that, I am eager to gain the opportunity to try real communication in English. Sometimes, teachers may ask the students to answer the questions, and I often feel nervous and anxious. Hence, according to my personal learning experience, it appears that the traditional teaching method cannot facilitate students’ speaking skills effectively. Considering the EFL students have few chances to practice English outside of the class, task-based language teaching (TBLT) as a useful approach can solve these problems.
This article calls for implementing TBLT to enhance students’ speaking ability. During the past three decades, there is an increasing interest of TBLT in second language acquisition (SLA) (Ellis, 2003; Bygate, 2016a; Long, 2015). With regard to Rohani (2011), TBLT as a language teaching method is worth implementing because it assists learners to focus on meaning rather than forms, and learners are able to speak the real language. Hismanoglu and Hismanoglu (2011) supported this statement and mentioned that the type of dialogue producing from TBLT activities is the same as the discourse that emerges in the real life. Further, during TBLT activities, learners can talk more inside the class, like to put forward a personal idea, to have a joke without large pressure and anxious (Nunan, 2004). After that, shy learners will speak confidently and have fun in the English class.
In this article, I advocate that implementing TBLT to enhance learners’ speaking skills. Firstly, to compare with the traditional language teaching method to verify the TBLT tool is more effective to foster learners’ speaking ability. Meanwhile, in terms of interaction theory and sociocultural theory, the article explains how TBLT facilitates students’ speaking skills. Secondly, the article focus on utilizing the combination of TBLT and computer assisted language learning (CALL) to facilitate speaking teaching and learning. Thirdly, in terms of students’ and teachers’ perspectives, the article summarizes the main issues that need to be considered while implementing TBLT activities. Finally, the article provides the implication of TBLT in future language teaching.
Main concepts
First, the TBLT approach design on situations in which students have few opportunities to use the language outside the classroom (Crookes, 1992). Learners practice speaking through primarily focusing on meaning, exchanging information by their own linguistic knowledge (Long, 2000; Eills, 2009). When teachers implement the TBLT approach in class, they should ask learners to engage in meaningful tasks in the target language. Such tasks relate to real-life situations, such as conducting a business meeting, participating in an interview, or buying food in a supermarket. TBLT approach can be divide into three stages, pre-task, during-task and post-task (Cook, 2001). In the pre-task, the teacher introduces the topic and an important part of the activity. In the task cycle, students perform the activity in the group and report back to class. In the review part, students can review their work and gain feedback.
Secondly, because the TBLT approach is based on interaction, so interaction theory and sociocultural theory can explain why the TBLT approach is significant for SLA. Interaction theory stated that communication as the basis of developing language proficiency because interaction can promote comprehensible input that is a significant part of SLA (Long, 2015). Sociocultural theory suggests language learning is a social process that high proficiency level learners provide scaffolding to assist low proficiency learners to stretch their knowledge and skills (Vygotsky, 1998). And the zone of proximal development (ZPD) refers to the distance between what the student can do by themselves without the assistance of others and what the learner can achieve with the help of others.
Lastly, computer-assisted language learning (CALL) refers to utilize a wide range of technology to help teachers and students teach and learn foreign languages (Aleissa, 2017). Further, CALL has radically developed in recent years, an increasing number of teachers integrate and use technology in the classroom (Chapelle, 2001). Therefore, CALL will play an essential role in SLA, how to integrate it with different language should be considered.
Traditional language teaching method and TBLT approach
As for the traditional language teaching method, teachers play a central role and guide learners to practice speaking in the formal way. For example, my college schoolteachers ask us to remember collocations and read followed by them. Students recite the given dialogue without personal knowledge and thinking. At the same time, lots of Chinese students feel embarrassing and do not have enough self-confidence to communicate with other people naturally. They feel afraid of occurring errors so that they are not willing to speaking English without high proficiency oral ability (Adams & Newton, 2009). Moreover, during a traditional language class, learners need to focus on grammar and there are few opportunities to communicate orally in the class. In general, there are four main problems in traditional language teaching. The first one is teachers control the class, so students have few opportunities to express their own thoughts. The second problem is traditional teaching method cannot help students practice in real-life situations, hence, students feel unfamiliar about how to use strategies to overcome the problem in real-life communication. Third, traditional language teaching focus on forms in which learners are limited solely to concentrate on language features without meaning. In this case, the fluency of the language is neglected. Lastly, many learners feel embarrassing about making mistakes which leads to they are low willingness to practice speaking skills.
To compare with traditional language teaching, TBLT refers to an approach that relies on the tasks as a key unit of encouraging learners to express thoughts and interact with others spontaneously. Chen (2011) pointed out speaking practice should be presented in context through dialogues because students can naturally use language to share the personal idea. During dialogues, learners gain opportunities to experience a more tangible and real situation in the classroom. In this case, learners are free to express opinions. TBLT develops interactive teaching via offering authentic situations activities and by providing students more freedom (Cook, 2001). Hence, learners use the target language and practice expression capacity by the TBLT approach. For example, after having role-played tasks, learners have subjective thoughts of the specific role and perceived they make significant progress with the ability of expression. In general, teachers can adopt the TBLT approach to enhance students’ verbal expression ability.
Furthermore, many learners feel difficulty communicating with others spontaneously because they do not know how to overcome the problems that appear in real life communication (Chen, 2011). Such tasks from TBLT are based on real-life situations, learners can make use of strategies for coping with communicative problems. In Rohani’s (2011) research, at the beginning of the TBLT practice, learners adopted some strategies for dealing with speaking difficulties. Learners reported that they have maximized the utilization of body language to make up for the shortage of vocabulary. After practicing for a period of time, learners maximized their lexical resource and reduce the use of gestures. Rohani (2011) indicated that the TBLT approach lets learners balance the use of strategies and vocabulary improvement autonomously. In this case, through TBLT activities, teachers are able to help learners to conquer different problems through designing real context activities in the language classroom. Since through TBLT activities which resemble real-life conditions, they can imitate authentic problem so that learners enable to practice pragmatic strategies to overcome all potential difficulties that lead to a failure of communication.
Moreover, learners can improve their speaking fluency and accuracy through the TBLT approach (Guchte et al, 2015). On the one hand, Speaking fluency was defined as the skills that learners can produce a rapid and comprehensible speech (Hamer, 2007). According to Gabriel’s (2017) research, even though some participants make lots of grammatical mistakes, they can still speak fluently. During TBLT activities, teachers cannot interrupt the conversation, so students would not detract from fluency. Meanwhile, if learners make some mistakes without impacting the understanding of the sentences, other interlocutors do not need to interrupt the conversation. Hence, speakers enable to improve their fluency in the target language.
On the other hand, actually, recasts have been used to maintain fluent communication and improve accuracy. In this corrective method, learners are not required to suspend dialogue to notice the accurate form (Lyster & Ranta, 1997). For instance, when I used wrong grammar, the teacher trend to modify my utterance by adding correct information without obstructing the fluent flow of communication. If a student says, “I want write”, other students or teachers can use recast to let him notice this error, they can say “what do you want to write?” Overall, TBLT activity as an effective platform for students to focus on form rather than forms, therefore, even if they make a certain amount of mistakes, it is acceptable to continue communication. Perhaps teachers want to provide corrective feedback, they still can adopt implicit strategies for maintaining fluency and let students notice their errors.
Finally, TBLT is able to reduce the anxiety of speaking and promote the students’ willingness to communicate with others. With regard to four language skills, learners reported that speaking is the most complex skill since it requires great motivation as well as a trigger to produce target language (Shumine, 1997). As Mori (2002) mentioned that, those who are extraverts and risk-takers fearless of making grammatical mistakes will normally be more talkative. On the contrary, those who are shy and conservative learners afraid of occurring errors so that they require a long period to become open to speak confidently. When they keep silent, they will feel safe and comfortable because they make fewer mistakes. However, the TBLT approach encourages students to convey the information by communication is more significant rather than to ask students to focus on grammar and sentence structure. In terms of Richards and Rodgers (2001), one of the advantages of the TBLT method over the traditional language teaching method is that students preferred to be more motivated if they considered the tasks are meaning and relative to real life situations. Further, during TBLT activities, teachers are responsible for design the tasks and assist students to complete the tasks. Therefore, teachers need to encourage learners to talk as much as possible in group work or peer interaction. For example, When I have studied at Queensland University, these teachers often encourage students to discuss with classmates. In semester one, I felt shy to communicate with classmates in English because I was afraid to make mistakes. However, I found out TBLT activities required us to primarily focus on meaning rather than focus on grammar and pronunciation, so I tried to speak confidently and communicate with classmates as much as possible. In general, TBLT approach not only facilitates the learners’ willingness to speak but also let learners feel these tasks are useful for real-life situation, so they are willing to participant in TBLT activities.
Theoretical framework
TBLT is theoretically framed by interaction and sociocultural theory as they both indicate the importance of interaction. It is important to notice that learning through communication among learners is an essential rule of the TBLT approach (Robinson, 2001). Meanwhile, tasks in TBLT contain mediation by others in interaction, in essence, the learning is socially constructed (Vygotsky, 1986). As for interaction theory, Krashen (1985) put forward, comprehensible input as an essential factor for SLA. Hence, in order to learn the language, students need to negotiate the meaning and generate comprehensible input. TBLT activity acquires learners to communicate with others so that learners gain opportunities to negotiate the meaning and understand each other. Relying on the negotiation of meaning, learners practice speaking fluency and accuracy through modifying their linguistic output and receiving help in comprehensible input (Compernolle, 2015).
Moreover, in terms of sociocultural theory, SLA as a social process is based on interaction (Vygotsky, 1986). The nature of ZPD needs the presence of higher proficiency learners and lower proficiency learners so as to provide the scaffolding in interaction to take place learning (Donato, 1994). This is similar to the process of the TBLT approach since it requires the presence of the learners who have low proficiency levels and the more knowledgeable peers or teachers in activities. Thus, the useful interaction required by ZPD is represented in the TBLT approach. TBLT activity constructs ZPD in whole classes between learners and teachers and among learners (Guk & Kelogg, 2007). In this case, the teacher as a facilitator promotes mediation, while the interaction among students promotes internalization (Guk & Kelogg, 2007). For example, a teacher in a speaking course may initially offer scaffolding for students by providing hints to guide learners step-by-step. And then, the teacher will slowly remove the scaffolding until students can finish speaking practice independently.
Combining CALL and TBLT to enhance students’ speaking skills.
With the growth of CALL in language teaching, an increasing number of teachers tend to integrate technology into classroom teaching (Petersen & Sachs, 2015). Doughty and Long (2003) mentioned the affinities of technology and TBLT, technology offers a platform for TBLT to implement naturally and authentically, in turn, TBLT offers a pedagogical framework for adopting the technology. First of all, Ortega (2009) analyzed the interdependence between TBLT and technology. In her perspective, technology and TBLT focus on experiential learning and provide learners with different choices, provides feedback to boost students’ motivation and activities’ authenticity. If teachers implement TBLT without technology, they merely ask students to deal with some activities in the classroom, so students do not get different choices about the types of activities. However, CALL lets students learn the language in any context by technology (Egbert, 2005). Technology enables to provides choices and opportunities to transcend the restrictions of the normal classroom context. Further, online materials and software can promote the types, authenticity, and scope of TBLT tasks. For example, Facebook assists learners to communicate with others outside the classroom and provides lots of various context for learners to engage in. Meanwhile, learners are able to use Zoom to speak with others anywhere, because the mobile phone is portable and convenient. In this case, teachers can combine CALL and TBLT approaches to extend the applicable scope of TBLT and provide more selection for learners to experience various authentic context.
Secondly, how to improve the motivation of learning have aroused a great deal of discussion, most researchers indicated that, students expect various options of their learning method and learning environment, expect to build connections with others and expect success (Guthrie & Wigfield, 2000). Among the many hypothesized advantages of CALL, the most frequently mentioned one is to facilitate learners’ motivation. In terms of Ushida (2005), the result of the study represented the effect of computer assisted TBLT approach in the classroom. By contrast, CALL motivated learner-initiated discussion and increased more output from students regardless of their individual differences. In research designed by Jogan et al. (2001), American language learners exchanged messages with Chile language learners to realize the different cultures. These student-central dialogues appeared to encourage these learners to engage in the interaction by Facetime. Perhaps the use of Facetime reduces their anxiety of commination, they prefer to talk more by using technology. This is an example of using CALL to reduce anxiety and increase willingness to communicate with others. Teachers can design some TBLT activities that combine with technology so that learners can enjoy in a comfortable atmosphere without the stress of a language classroom and face to face meeting. Wang (2004) pointed out, it is a positive effect on fostering students to learn individually without teachers’ help and fostering their motivation to learn outside the classroom by combining the TBLT and CALL.
The main issues of using TBLT
On the one hand, in terms of teachers’ perspectives, many EFL teachers mentioned that they have few opportunities to train in TBLT instruction, so they were not familiar with the process of designing and implementing TBLT activities (Zheng & Borg, 2014). Meanwhile, many EFL teachers reported, lack of appropriate materials for implementing TBLT is one of the most restrictive factors (Rooney, 2000). Therefore, teachers should design the materials by themselves, however, task design for EFL teachers can be very difficult, they should consider various problems, how to make the task authentic, how to group learners and how to design proper amount of input in pre-task. In this case, the process of task design is time-consuming and complex for teachers, they might lose enthusiasm to design TBLT activities. Further, teachers indicated the implementation of the TBLT approach in large classes can be an issue (Shu, 2004). Students have a different proficiency level of speaking which is challenging for EFL teachers to assist the group work and group students in the TBLT course. Additionally, in many countries, most of the language classes are taught using local language as the main interactive language rather than using target English to implement the TBLT approach due to the EFL teachers’ low oral communication level (Huang & Zhao, 2013). Thus, Non-native English-speaking EFL teachers often lack confidence to implement the TBLT approach.
On the other hand, from students’ perspectives, some students feel difficult to communicate with others in the target language due to poor oral ability (Zheng, 2014). They often use the first language to remedy the lack of L2 vocabulary which leads to minimal exposure to target language. In this case, students feel useless for engaging in the TBLT course. Moreover, many students reported that, technology might distract them from language learning. For example, when I use zoom to participate in TBLT activities, my attention is often attracted by irrelevant information, such as WeChat messages, news information or computer games. Therefore, how to control the TBLT activities that are assisted by technology is one of the main issues to implement the TBLT approach.
Implication
It seems that, the TBLT approach requires a more practical and effective training program should be designed for coping with teachers’ and students’ problems. However, as for EFL teachers, the current training program is outdated and overemphasizes the subject matter knowledge (Liu & Zhang, 2014). It is requiring training aims at enhancing teachers’ professional practical ability, like how to implement the TBLT approach in different level courses. Moreover, teachers should take an active part in training in TBLT and develop their competence to produce and adapt TBLT materials. Teachers require to be capable of designing, evaluating and adapting TBLT materials, to make sure the TBLT materials are suitable for specific teaching contexts. Further, in order to gain more useful TBLT materials and save time, it is useful to set up a national sharing online platform which can assist EFL teachers to design TBLT activities. Through sharing the TBLT model and activities, teachers can save time to prepare lessons.
Moreover, as for beginning learners, they have low speaking proficiency so that they feel complicated to speak fluently in TBLT tasks. Hence, EFL teachers should provide more hints in pre-tasks and reduce the complexity of the main tasks. Further, in order to increase the students’ motivation, teachers are going to connect the CALL and TBLT to stimulate students to practice speaking skills. At the same time, technology can promote various real-life context to let students prefer to engage in TBLT activities.
Conclusion
This article calls for implementing the TBLT approach to enhance students’ speaking skills. The first part demonstrates the advantage of the TBLT approach by comparing it with the traditional language teaching method. There are four advantages to use TBLT in speaking classes. First is students gain more opportunities to express their personal thoughts so that the TBLT approach enables students to practice expression ability. Second is TBLT provides a platform for students to experience how to overcome communicative problems in real life context. Hence, students are familiar with using strategies to cope with real interactive problems. The third is TBLT not only facilitate learners’ speaking fluency but also promote learners’ speaking accuracy. Because the TBLT approach focuses on form, students do not need to focus on mistakes that promote fluent communication among students (Rohani, 2011). Meanwhile, through their modified output, they are able to notice the mistakes and correct the mistakes by themselves. Eventually, the TBLT approach can reduce the learners’ anxiety and cultivate their self-confidence in communicating with others.
The second part shows how to use TBLT to enhance speaking ability in terms of interaction theory and sociocultural theory. It is important to provide a theoretical framework to support the advantage of TBLT. The third part focus on combining the CALL and TBLT, with the development of technology, teachers tend to utilize technology to extend the scope and authenticity of the TBLT approach (Chapelle, 2001). The last part summarizes some main issues about using TBLT. Even though teachers and students are facing some difficulty to implement TBLT, TBLT as a teaching tool can improve students’ speaking ability effectively.
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