Teachers Exploring Tasks in English Language Teaching

Prepublication praise for Teachers Exploring Tasks in English LanguageTeaching

‘Jane Willis’ and Corony Edwards’ edited collection of papers, TeachersExploring Tasks in English Language Teaching, offers an excellent “makingpublic” of the variety of ways in which teachers use tasks to betterunderstand their teaching and their students’ learning. The range ofreports – focusing on students, on content, and on classroom commu-nities in a variety of geographical and educational settings – is impres-sive. In adopting task-based teaching, as Willis and Edwards define it,the contributors to this collection write about their classroom practicesfrom a common point of view, creating in a sense a shared “grammar”of the classroom. This approach then makes their accounts both veryreadable and, I would think, highly replicable by readers. Clearly, class-room teaching generally, and ELT teaching in particular, is coming ofage as teachers explore what and how their students learn, and articu-late the understandings that result from their explorations, as they doin this volume.’—Donald Freeman, Dean Language Teacher Education,School for International Training, USA

‘ESL teachers in the United States and other English-speaking countriescan make effective use of every chapter in the book’—Betty Lou Leaver,Dean, New York Institute of Technology in Amman, Jordan

‘High quality, extremely readable and accessible … I anticipate that thisvolume will be extremely popular with classroom teachers. I found itrefreshing, and even exciting, to read accounts of professional practiceby people who have not hitherto been widely published. The volumewill be useful not only on MA courses but also on a wide range of in-service courses … an exciting and innovative project.’—Professor DavidNunan, The English Centre, Hong Kong

‘Classroom teaching and learning ordinarily center on specific languagetasks. Instruction becomes more effective when teachers understand therole of language tasks, recognize their students’ needs, and apply both

types of information in a sound, creative way. With better task-basedinstruction as a goal, current and future teachers will benefit from theenlightening explorations in this book. In addition, researchers will findthat this book can inform and enrich many classroom investigations.’—Professor Rebecca Oxford, University of Maryland, USA

Teachers ExploringTasks in EnglishLanguage TeachingEdited by

Corony EdwardsSenior Lecturer in Applied English Linguistics, Centre for English language Studies, University of Birmingham, UK

and

Jane WillisHonorary Visiting Fellow, Department of Languages and European Studies, Aston University, UK

© Selection and editorial matter Corony Edwards and Jane Willis 2005

All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of thispublication may be made without written permission.

No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmittedsave with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of theCopyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licencepermitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP.

Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publicationmay be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright,Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published 2005 byPALGRAVE MACMILLANHoundmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010Companies and representatives throughout the world.

PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the PalgraveMacmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd.Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdomand other countries. Palgrave is registered trademark in the EuropeanUnion and other countries.

This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fullymanaged and sustained forest sources.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication DataTeachers exploring tasks in English language teaching / edited by

Corony Edwards, Jane Willis.p.cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.ISBN 978-1-4039-4557-0 (paper)1. English language – Study and teaching – Foreign speakers.

I. Edwards, Corony, 1959– II. Willis, Jane R. (Jane Rosemary), 1944–

PE1128.A2T373 2005428’.071’1—dc22

2004048935

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 114 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05

ISBN 978-1-4039-4557-0 ISBN 978-0-230-52296-1 (eBook)DOI 10.1057/9780230522961

v

Contents

About the Contributors viii

List of Abbreviations xi

Acknowledgements xii

Introduction: Aims and Explorations into Tasks and Task-based Teaching 1Jane Willis

1 Task-based Language Learning and Teaching: Theories and Applications 13Ali Shehadeh

Part A Implementing Task-based Learning: Contexts and Purposes 31

2 Developing from PPP to TBL: A Focused Grammar Task 33Lamprini Loumpourdi

3 Integrating Task-based Learning into a Business English Programme 40Patricia Pullin Stark

4 Language as Topic: Learner–Teacher Investigation of Concordances 50Raymond Sheehan

5 Storytelling with Low-level Learners: Developing Narrative Tasks 58Patrick Kiernan

6 Adding Tasks to Textbooks for Beginner Learners 69Theron Muller

7 Using Language-focused Learning Journals on a Task-based Course 78Jason Moser

Part B Exploring Task Interaction: Helping Learners do Better 89

8 Exam-oriented Tasks: Transcripts, Turn-taking and Backchannelling 93Maria Leedham

9 Training Young Learners in Meaning Negotiation Skills: Does it Help? 103Seung-Min Lee

10 Task Repetition with 10-Year-old Children 113Annamaria Pinter

11 Collaborative Tasks for Cross-cultural Communication 127David Coulson

Part C Exploring Task Language: Lexical Phrases and Patterns 139

12 Interactive Lexical Phrases in Pair Interview Tasks 143James Hobbs

13 Multi-word Chunks in Oral Tasks 157Maggie Baigent

14 Can We Predict Language Items for Open Tasks? 171David Cox

Part D Investigating Variables: Task Conditions and Task Types 187

15 Fighting Fossilization: Language at the Task Versus Report Stages 191Craig Johnston

16 Storytelling: Effects of Planning, Repetition and Context 201William Essig

17 The Effect of Pre-task Planning Time on Task-based Performance 214Antigone Djapoura

18 Balancing Fluency, Accuracy and Complexity Through Task Characteristics 228Gregory Birch

vi Contents

19 Quality Interaction and Types of Negotiation in Problem-solving and Jigsaw Tasks 242Glen Poupore

Epilogue: Teachers Exploring Research 256Corony Edwards

References 280

Index 288

Contents vii

viii

About the Contributors

Corony Edwards is from Britain and is a senior lecturer at theUniversity of Birmingham where she is Director of Learning andTeaching for the School of Humanities, and a course tutor for theirdistance MA TES/FL programme. She has taught English language since1986 and has run numerous EFL teacher training courses and workshopsin the UK and many other countries. She is co-editor of English LanguageTeacher Education and Development journal, has published in academicjournals and books, and has written conventional and web-basedteacher development materials. In 2003 she was shortlisted for aNational Teaching Fellowship Award.

Jane Willis is from Britain but has worked extensively overseas as anEnglish teacher and trainer. She has written several prize-winning booksincluding A Framework for Task-based Learning (Longman), and Englishfor Primary Teachers, co-authored with Mary Slattery (OUP) and hasedited, with Betty Lou Leaver, Task-based Instruction in Foreign LanguageEducation: practices and programs (Georgetown University Press). She hasrecently retired from Aston University, Birmingham, UK, where shetaught on their Masters in TESOL & TESP programmes. She continues towork as a writer and ELT consultant and travels widely.

Maggie Baigent is British, has an MSc in TESOL from Aston Universityand is currently working at the University of Bologna, teaching studentsof all levels. She carried out this research at the British Council, Bologna,Italy. She has contributed teaching materials to the coursebook seriesClockwise and Natural English (OUP).

Gregory Charles Birch is from Canada and lives in Japan. He receivedhis MSc in TESOL from Aston University. He currently works at SeisenWomen’s College. He completed this study while working at NaganoNational College of Technology.

David Coulson is British (MA Japanese Studies, Essex University; MSc TESOL, Aston University) and works with lower intermediate levelsand above in the British and American Studies Department of NiigataWomen’s College in north-west Japan. He is currently pursuing a PhDin vocabulary acquisition at Swansea University, UK.

David Cox is British and has an MSc in TESOL (Aston University). Hehas taught in Australia, Japan and the UK. He carried out the researchfor this paper when working for GEOS Language System in a school inNara, Japan. He is now back in the UK where he is working on theopportunities offered by Webcam technology for language tuition.

Antigone Djapoura is Greek Cypriot and works in a Private LanguageInstitute in Cyprus, teaching mainly 14–15-year-old learners. She holdsan MA in TEFL/TESL from the University of Birmingham and loves beinginvolved in anything that deals with the practical issues of teaching.

William Essig is from the USA and is currently teaching in a Japaneseuniversity in Osaka. He holds an MA TEFL/TESL from the University ofBirmingham. His main interests include implementing TBL and devel-oping practical materials for classroom use.

James Hobbs, from England, has an MSc in TESOL from AstonUniversity. He now teaches at Iwate Medical University, but conductedthis research while teaching lower-intermediate English major studentsat a private Japanese university. He is continuing research into variousaspects of task-based learning.

Craig Johnston, from Canada, is working towards an MSc in TESOL fromAston University and teaches at Kansai Gaidai College in Osaka, Japan. Heis interested in TBL and lexical approaches to language learning.

Patrick Kiernan is from Britain and has been an English teacher inJapan since 1990. He has an MA in TEFL/TESL from BirminghamUniversity. He is now teaching at Tokyo Denki University and workingon a cross-linguistic analysis of conversational narrative for his PhDstudies in Applied Linguistics at Birmingham University.

Seung-Min Lee (Steve) is Korean and worked as a primary schoolteacher for 10 years. He has since become a teacher trainer and nowworks at the Korea National University of Education where he took hisPhD in Primary English Education. He also has an MA in TES/TEFL(University of Birmingham).

Maria Leedham is from Britain. She has taught Japanese and mixed-nationality groups since working in Japan in 1989. She is now a teacherand teacher trainer at both Universities in Oxford and an MSc studentat Aston University in Birmingham.

Lamprini Loumpourdi (Lana) is from Greece, where she has worked asa teacher in a private language institution for six years, teaching

About the Contributors ix

students of all ages and levels, preparing them for standardized exams.She has an MA in TEFL/TESL from Birmingham University and iscurrently working on a PhD at Aristotle University, Thessaloniki.

Jason Moser is from Canada. He has an MA in TES/TEFL from theUniversity of Birmingham. He has lived in Japan for over eight years andworks at a number of universities in Japan including Osaka University.

Theron Muller is from the USA and is currently working in Japan. Heresearched this report at ‘English for You’, a private language school inNagano, Japan. He is pursuing his MA in TES/TEFL with the Universityof Birmingham.

Annamaria Pinter is from Britain. She has a PhD in the area of TeachingEnglish to Young Learners from the University of Warwick, where she iscurrently working as a lecturer at the Centre for English Language TeacherEducation (CELTE). Her previous experience was in Hungary, as anEnglish teacher in the lower primary sector, and later as a teacher trainer.

Glen Poupore is a Canadian English Instructor, working in theDepartment of English, Konkuk University, Seoul, Korea and also for theKonkuk–Illinois Joint TESOL Certification Program, in Seoul. He is cur-rently studying for a PhD in Applied Linguistics at the University ofBirmingham.

Patricia Pullin Stark (MA TESOL London) is British. She works forFribourg University in Switzerland, where she teaches undergraduates.Patricia is currently working on a PhD on social cohesion in workplacecommunication at Birmingham University.

Raymond Sheehan is from Ireland. He teaches at Higher Colleges ofTechnology in the United Arab Emirates. His learners are mostly begin-ner to intermediate level and have recently completed secondary edu-cation. He has an MA (NUI), an RSA Diploma in TEFL and an MSc inTESOL (Aston University).

Ali Shehadeh, from Syria, is associate professor at the Department ofEnglish, University of Aleppo, Syria, and currently at the College ofLanguages and Translation, King Saud University, Saudi Arabia. His areasof interest include SLA, teaching methodology and task-based learningand instruction. His work has appeared in the English Teaching Forum,English Teaching Professional, ELT Journal, TESOL Quarterly, LanguageLearning, and System. He is an external MA dissertation supervisor on theOpen Distance Learning programme of The Centre for English LanguageStudies at the University of Birmingham.

x About the Contributors

List of Abbreviations

CAE Certificate of Advanced English (UCLES Examination)DDL Data-driven LearningEFL English as a Foreign LanguageELT English Language TeachingESP English for Specific PurposesFCE First Certificate in English (Intermediate level UCLES

examination)IELTS International English Language Testing Services (UK based

language qualification)L1 first language, mother tongueL2 second languageNS native speakerOHT overhead transparency/slidePET Preliminary English TestPPP Presentation, Practice, ProductionSLA Second Language AcquisitionSTEP Socio-cultural, Technological, Economic, and PoliticalSWOT Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, ThreatsTBI Task-Based InstructionTBL Task-Based LearningTBLT Task-Based Language TeachingTEFL Teaching English as a Foreign LanguageTESOL Teaching English to Speakers of Other LanguagesTESP Teaching English for Specific PurposesTOEFL Test of English as a Foreign Language (ED PSE CHECK)

(US-based language qualification)TT Team-TalkingUCLES University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate

Key terms are highlighted in bold where they first appear in the text, orwhere they are glossed or defined. The references for these items alsoappear in bold in the index where there are multiple page references.

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xii

Acknowledgements

As joint editors, we have thoroughly enjoyed our collaboration on thisproject. We would like to thank our contributors for their perseverance,their patience and enthusiasm over the 18 months of drafting, writing,revising and checking their papers. Their co-operation has been outstanding.

The whole collection has greatly benefited from the feed-back andconstructive suggestions of four anonymous readers who commented,some in great detail, on an early draft. Whoever you are, thank you!Thanks are also due to John Moorcroft for his initial advice in the plan-ning stages, to Jill Lake for her thoughtful feed-back on a near final draft,and to Betty Lou Leaver, Donald Freeman, Rebecca Oxford and DavidNunan for their encouraging words about the final script.

We are also grateful for the financial support of our respectiveUniversities, Birmingham and Aston, which enabled us to employDeborah Yuill of ‘WordWright’ to provide a thoroughly professionalindex.

Finally, we both would like to thank our respective husbands,Mohamed and Dave, for doing without us during our late nights at theoffice and the week-end days we spent at our computers.

The Editors have made every effort to trace copyright holders. In theevent that anyone has been inadvartently overlooked, the Publisherswill make amends at the earliest opportunity.