Designing Tasks for a TBL style lesson

Designing Tasks For use with a Task-Based learning Approach

Before you can begin to design tasks to use with TBL you must understand exactly what it is and what it is trying to achieve. The best way to begin an explanation of that is by saying what it isn’t trying to achieve. Unlike the “Presentation- Practice- Production” (PPP) model of language teaching a task in TBL isn’t specifically trying to introduce any one item of grammar to a class. Instead it is giving students a chance to use and build on the structures they know and to develop their fluency in expressing their ideas in English. The point of TBL is to get them talking naturally about a topic and exploring the ways that they can do this.

You might be thinking that if this is the approach then how do they ever learn anything new, anything they don’t already know. There are two answers to this question. The first is that thy learn from each other. Not all students know exactly the same things so that they will, by performing a task in a group, expand each others English.

The second answer is that when using a TBL structure in a lesson, the task isn’t the ONLY thing that is done. There should be a pre-task phase where the teacher introduces the topic, gives relevant vocabulary and structures.

This does not need to be as explicit as standing at the front and describing them. In fact I almost never do that. It’s far better to introduce them naturally by using them yourself. When the students have completed the task there is always a feedback phase where the students demonstrate what they have done and where the teacher can go through any points of language that have come up in the lesson - vocabulary, grammar, style etc.

So, how do we design a task?

There are a number of vital elements to be taken into account when designing a task.

It must

have a point and completion criteria

have clear instructions or demonstration

involve all the students

be relevant to their study and appropriate for their age and level

not be either too complicated OR too simple

not be too vague

actually be “doable”

have a set time for completion

have a built in review phase so that students can share their answers

Have a point and completion criteria

The first, and most important, element is that a task must have a point and completion criteria. The students must know what they are aiming for and, crucially, how they will know when they have completed the task. Tasks that are too vague or too open ended won’t benefit the students and might well fail altogether.

Example

In a lesson that is about shopping for clothes.

Bad: Just asking the students to roll play a dialogue about buying and selling clothes.

Good: First, get the groups to choose two students to be shopkeepers. The others will be customers. Then give each shopkeeper the same list of items they sell. The shopkeepers must decide on a price for each item. While they do that give the customers a list showing what they want to buy and how much in total they have to spend. These lists can be different for each customer. They must decide how much they want to spend on each item.

When the shopkeepers and customers have prepared tell them that the shopkeepers objective is to make as much money and as many sales as possible and the customers objective is to buy everything for as low a price as possible. Everyone should keep a record of what they have bought or sold and how much it cost.

Demonstrate both rolls in short sample dialogues with students.

Set a time limit.

This task has a point - different for the two different rolls but that doesn’t matter - and they will know when they have finished because all of the customers will have bought everything or run out of money.

Have clear instructions or demonstration

It’s important that they task is described clearly/ Exactly how you describe it will, of course, depend on the class. There are some general principles though.

You should always use language of the lowest level you can to describe the task to the students. They may be capable of understanding higher level instructions but they may not. As it is crucial that they understand what to do it is better to keep the instructions as simple as possible.

Plan, before the lesson, how you will give verbal instructions and written instructions. Think about exactly what you will write on the board and exactly what you will say. The task may be clear in your mind but just trying to describe it to the class without planning might not make it clear to the students.

When you have planned it, leave it for a while, then come back to it and read it through and simplify it as much as possible.

Write the instructions in simple, clear, command language.

Don’t write, “I would like you to discuss which animals you would like to keep as pets at home and consider the problems you might have with them.”. Write. “Which animals you would like as pets. What problems would you have with them? Ask the others in your group.”

Also remember that demonstration is better than explanation. It isn’t always possible to demonstrate a complete activity but where you can - using a student to help, if necessary - show the students how to do the task rather than just writing it on the board.

Involve all the students

One thing that commonly goes wrong with activities is that you set up the task, give the instructions, hand out any materials they need and immediately one student starts doing it while the rest of the group start chatting in their native language about television or music or boy and girlfriends and not participating at all. It’s better, where possible, to design tasks that need input from everybody or where everybody can contribute their ideas. If the task is one that could be done by one student you can allocate a student in each group as the leader and give that student additional instructions to ask everyone in the group for their ideas. The best tasks need everyone to participate to be completed. Information gap tasks are always good and can be done at all ages and levels.

Example

In junior classes I often use the well known diary task where each student has been given a different partially completed diary for a week of activities and they must ask each other questions such as “what are you doing on Monday evening”. The objective is for them, without showing their papers to anyone else, to find a day and time when they are all free to go swimming together.

A more complex task for older students is “gatecrasher” where all the students have a card giving information about the character they are playing but one student has the “gatecrasher” card. They are told that they have all met at a party and must ask each other questions to decide who the gatecrasher is. If they have a character card they must use it to answer. the gatecrasher is free to say anything.

Be relevant to study, age and level

I used to teach adult refugees who had come to live in England. My tasks would often involve such things as how to deal with solicitors, how to register with a doctor or where to community centres that had translation or interpreting services. Now I teach teenagers in state schools in China. Those tasks would be boring and pointless as they are things that none of them is ever likely to need to do.

Teenagers the world over are far more likely to be engaged by lessons about sport, music or movies. Older students may be interested in ecology or wildlife preservation or history. You need to judge the interest of your classes carefully. They are far more likely to do a task that interest then than one they find boring and irrelevant.

Also, if you are teaching in a state school, they will probably have another English teacher who has a particular text book that they use. You don’t need to use the same book but it’s a good idea to take a look at the topics they have done recently and use similar themes. This will make your lessons more relevant to their studies and give a stronger consistency.

Not be too complicated or too simple

Judging the level, especially in large mixed-ability classes, can be very tricky but things will go a lot better if you can get it right. The most important thing to remember is that a task that is too simple is as bad as a task that is too difficult. If the first group has finished before you have got half way round the room monitoring the others then they will naturally find other things to do - such as their maths homework or reading the latest Basketball magazine. Recovering in a class where half the students have stopped listening can be a tough job. One way round this is to try to create tasks that have multiple objectives that build on the ones already achieved or to design a second phase to a task to extend it so that students who work at it more slowly need only complete the first part while faster students can work on the second part.

Example

In the simple diary task described above you can easily add a number of extensions. Once the students have found the day when they can all go swimming you can ask them to find another day when they are already doing the same thing (with or without specifying what it is.) Or you can ask them to find a day when all but one of them are free to go to the park and then reschedule the missing person’s diary so that he or she can take part.

Not too vague

We have really already dealt with this in the section on having a point and a completion. A task that is vaguely defined will result in students not knowing where to begin.

“Discuss your favourite TV programs.” is too vague.

“Make a list of everyone in your groups favourite TV programs and for each one find out what it is about, when it is on and why they like it.” is better.

Even better would be too put a series of questions relating to TV on the board and then give your own answers before getting each group to conduct a survey and record the results, with each group feeding back at the end of the task.

Be “doable”

This should be obvious but you will find that it isn’t. When you have devised a task leave it for a while and then try to do it yourself. Better still, get someone else to try it out. If the task can’t be done then it is useless. For example if you give students a letter of the alphabet and ask them to list in thirty seconds as many countries as they can beginning with that letter,then it’s no good giving X because there aren’t any.

This is a particular problem with logic puzzle style activities. If you are going to give a puzzle to be solved then make sure it has a solution.

Also, make sure you know the solution (and how to obtain it) so that you can explain it clearly.

Timing and Review

When you set a time limit make sure it is realistic. Remember that a task that you can complete in a minute will take much longer for your students. Don’t be afraid to allow extra time if nobody is getting close to finishing as your time limit runs out.

Allow plenty of time for a review and feedback phase at the end of a task. If you have ten groups who need to feed back that’s a good chunk of a forty-five minute lesson gone. I get around this by monitoring closely during the task and making a note of anything that I think will need to be reinforced at the end. Then rather than getting feedback from every group, I get feedback from the groups that have completed the task but have raised some interesting points as they were doing it.