Читать книгу Task-based grammar teaching of English - Susanne Niemeier - Страница 16

The task phase consists of three steps, namely the task itself, the planning of the learners’ reports on the task outcome1 and finally the reports themselves. A task is normally done in learner-learner interaction, either as pair work or in small groups. On the one hand, this increases the quantity of learner speech, as in teacher-class interaction only one learner can speak at a time, but in pair or group work many more learners can speak at the same time. This effect is even more pronounced in pair work, as everybody needs to be active and cannot try to hide behind others who may dominate the discussion floor in a group. On the other hand, pair or group work is important for authentic communication to arise as the learners have enough time to communicate outside of the teacher’s control.

Also R. ELLIS (2003: 178) stresses the importance of learner collaboration, arguing that “tasks (…) can be seen as tools for constructing collaborative acts” and, later on in his book, he speaks about “cooperative learning through collaborative dialogue” (2003: 269), i.e., the learners’ social skills are trained as well. Furthermore, learners who are anxious or nervous when they have to speak in front of the whole class may feel less nervous in pair or group work. It is usually best if the groups or pairs are formed under the teacher’s guidance, as this is a lot quicker than letting the learners find their own groups. Still, in order not to force the learners into predetermined groups, the teacher may, for example, let them draw numbers (i.e., if five groups have to be formed, the numbers on little pieces of paper go from 1 to 5 and everybody who has a ‘1’ is in ‘group one’ etc.) or colours (i.e., bits of paper which are coloured on the inside and everybody who has a yellow piece of paper, is part of ‘group yellow’ etc.). In this way, the learners cannot blame the teacher for having put them in a group they do not appreciate but they are themselves responsible for having drawn their groups.

While working on the task, the learners are expected to already use the new grammatical structure during their interaction and especially when formulating their reports, which can be facilitated by giving them clearly structured tasks. Example sentences on a worksheet are helpful as well. To pick up the ‘healthy food’ topic once more, the learners could be given a worksheet with a shopping list and can be told in the instructions on the worksheet that they are invited to a birthday party and have been asked to bring a fruit salad. The next item that appears on the worksheet would then be a list with the heading ‘shopping list – fruit salad’ and then several dotted lines, the first two or three of them could already be filled in with ‘1 melon’, ‘5 pears’, ‘3 bananas’ or similar.

In this way, the learners already see the plural –s in use and may deduce that its use is bound to a higher quantity than 1. The worksheet could furthermore contain illustrations showing signs at a market stand which mention ‘fresh carrots’, ‘delicious grapefruits’ or the like. The learners are then expected to fill six to ten lines with the quantity and the type of fruits they need to buy in order to make their favourite fruit salad. To motivate them even further, the last item on the shopping list could be called a ‘secret ingredient’, where the groups can use their imagination and add ants, spiders2, marshmallows or whatever tickles their fancy. This usually heightens the learners’ motivation, they will enjoy the task and possibly have strong reactions, which make them remember the grammatical structure in their future language use. If the learners are furthermore told that after the reports the class is going to take a vote on the best fruit salad, they will try to excel.

While the learners are working on the task the teacher should stay in the background as much as possible. Although it may be tempting for teachers to go from group to group (or pair to pair) and offer advice and help, they should only intervene when problems occur, for example, when the groups or pairs do not speak in English but in their native language or when a group or pair is completely stuck and asks the teacher for help. In learner-learner interaction, linguistic risk-taking behaviour is more likely to appear, due to the fact that the learners are peers. If the teacher controlled them, they would most certainly speak less and presumably only use language of which they are sure that it is correct. This can result in non-fluent communication and the new structure might not be used at all, because in such a situation the learners would act as language learners and not as language users. In an ideal case, the teacher just monitors from a distance and keeps track of the time. Some minutes before the time allowed for the task is over, the teacher should announce that the groups/pairs need to come to an end soon.

During the following planning phase for the report the learners need to work on the language that they will use for the report. Normally, the report is an oral report (although it may involve graphs, drawings, posters etc., but even these still have to be described orally) and every group member should say at least one sentence, as each of the group members is accountable for the group result. Therefore, the learners have to decide who says what and they then formulate their utterances together. They may ask the teacher for help with their formulations, but new vocabulary should only be introduced if it is easy to explain to the other classmates, who obviously need to be able to understand the others’ reports. The planning time for the report is important and should not be left out or shortened drastically. As R. ELLIS (2003: 137) states, “when there is opportunity for planning, accuracy is enhanced, a finding that is perhaps best explained in terms of learners’ use of explicit knowledge to monitor their performance”. As the planning is done in groups (or in pairs), the learners can negotiate the form and the meaning of their utterances and can pool their knowledge, helping each other out. In this way, learner-learner interaction can contribute to the learning effects of the task, as the learners have the opportunity to profit from as well as learn from each other’s world knowledge and linguistic knowledge.

The teacher’s role changes again during the report, as s/he becomes a moderator, calling on the groups/pairs, keeping track of the time frame, evaluating what the learners say and making sure that the rest of the class understands the reports. The teacher should also, either on a piece of paper or directly on the board, note down sentences that are to be used during the last task cycle phase, the language focus. If learners make mistakes during their presentations, these should be corrected implicitly in a non-intrusive way, for example, by a request for clarification or by repeating a sentence correctly. The report is a phase that should never be omitted as the learners want to present their task outcomes or products and as they need feedback.

If the time does not suffice to let all groups or pairs present, the left-over groups or pairs should be asked to hand in their reports so that they can get feedback as well. When the task was done in pair work, there is hardly ever enough time to let all pairs present. During the report phase, the teacher might want to call on pairs who have interesting results or solutions, which s/he will have noticed in the planning stage. When the task was done in group work, and provided that there is enough time for all groups to participate in the report phase, it is sometimes a good idea to have an election of the best result. Referring to the example given above, this could relate to the best fruit salad, which can then, for instance, be prepared for a future class breakfast. If the groups are not allowed to vote for their own salads, it is normally possible to reach a majority vote for one of the salads.