Session 10: Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Task-Based Language Teaching (TLBT)
The post below demonstrates my assessment of communicative language teaching (CLT) and task-based language teaching (TBLT). For this week, the readings introduced me to these two methods which I was not familiar with at the time. Although I am an English language arts teacher, I didn't know that there were so many different ways to teach English as a second language. I was interested in finding out more about the benefits and drawbacks of these styles.
In my reflection you can see that I find it useful to think of communicative language teaching within the cooperative learning environment. Cooperative learning, as I was trained to implement it, contains many opportunities for structured social interaction. Students need ample opportunity to practice their production of academic language for extended amounts of time (Verplaetse 2008). I recognize the benefits of the other teaching methods as well, and agree that they could meet the varied needs of learners in different circumstances. I agree with Diaz-Rico (2008) when she says in chapter three that every person's mind will make meaningful connections to learning in its own way. In my post and the comments it is evident that I am open to using all forms of language teaching in appropriate contexts: communicative, task-based, grammar translation, audiolinguistic, and various cognitive/behaviorist/social-interactionist strategies. You never know which types of learning a student will respond to best, so they should have the opportunity to try different learning scenarios and be assessed accordingly. I am glad to have the exposure to these different types of teaching and learning so that I can make decisions for my students.
In my reflection you can see that I find it useful to think of communicative language teaching within the cooperative learning environment. Cooperative learning, as I was trained to implement it, contains many opportunities for structured social interaction. Students need ample opportunity to practice their production of academic language for extended amounts of time (Verplaetse 2008). I recognize the benefits of the other teaching methods as well, and agree that they could meet the varied needs of learners in different circumstances. I agree with Diaz-Rico (2008) when she says in chapter three that every person's mind will make meaningful connections to learning in its own way. In my post and the comments it is evident that I am open to using all forms of language teaching in appropriate contexts: communicative, task-based, grammar translation, audiolinguistic, and various cognitive/behaviorist/social-interactionist strategies. You never know which types of learning a student will respond to best, so they should have the opportunity to try different learning scenarios and be assessed accordingly. I am glad to have the exposure to these different types of teaching and learning so that I can make decisions for my students.
Amanda's reflection on March 30, 2014:
1. Given your teaching context (ESL, EFL, general ed, elementary, secondary, etc.), what are the benefits and drawbacks of communicative language teaching (CLT)?
2. Given your teaching context (ESL, EFL, general ed, elementary, secondary, etc.), what are the benefits and drawbacks of task-based language teaching (TBLT)?
3. List at least one activity for CLT and/or TBLT you might want to incorporate into your current (future) teaching. Explain how you will use the activity in your class and why
1. The context of my teaching experience is in general ed middle school and some high school. I strongly believe that age level and developmental level of the children has something to do with which techniques and methods are useful for SLA. I am going to address the questions in terms of secondary students, assuming that middle school classes will need to prepare kids to make the transition to high school. Middle school classrooms should introduce philosophies of teaching and learning that will be represented in the high schools, starting at middle school if not before.
CLT seems to be very learner centered. Communication requires at least two roles: the speaker and the listener (or writer/reader when the communication is not verbal in nature) (Brandle 2008, p.22). These roles can be freely exchanged and students in a class with CLT will have the opportunity to flex their language muscles in both roles, as long as they are engaged and motivated to participate in the learning environment. Instructors who are not well-trained or practiced in offering communication-centered learning will probably have difficulties with their classroom management and keeping students actively performing the expected communications that meet their expectations, concerns expressed in Littlewood (2007). I can see the authentic communication being very beneficial to students who are already somewhat familiar with the target language and have internal motivations to continue to hone their skills through communications with other learners or native speakers. The opportunity to communicate may even be a motivating factor. To alleviate anxiety within the students and the teacher about classroom management, cooperative learning scenarios might provide the structure needed to maintain a working class environment.
2. The working definition that I have in mind for TBLT is a continuum of lesson plans that could include many communicative tasks at various level of student independence from the teacher as "taskmaster". The benefits of these tasks would be that they provide students with a more authentic learning situation that may appeal to multiple intelligences or learning style preferences.
*Out of behaviorism, cognitivism, and social interactionism, I lean most strongly toward cognitive/constructivist theories. I support the statement in the top paragraph on p. 47 in Diaz-Rico ch. 3 that every person constructs meaning and integrates mental function in a unique way. No two people will come to the same understanding along the same avenue. Differences in our students provide a wealth of novel learning experiences as diverse as each classroom. This complexity deserves our respect. This is why I think that an understanding of TBLT provides a framework for teachers to give students the most meaningful language experiences that are appropriate for them.
Drawbacks for using TBLT are that it could be misunderstood or implemented poorly. Teachers who do not have a groundwork of learning objectives developed for their students could spend a great deal of time and energy trying to help students make sense of their tasks and the experiences that result. TBLT is probably misunderstood, as Littlewood notes, because the term "task" is broad and the types of tasks can range from student-centered to content-centered.
*Slides: (cont'd from answers above) I see value in behaviorism and social interactionism as well, which I would like to address here. Behaviorist-type teaching methods such as grammar-translation and audiolingual have been useful to me in Second Language Acquisition in the past, so I think it is important that these systems be available to students who find them effective and relevant to learning their target language. I think behaviorism seems less complex than some of the more recent methodology and so it is sometimes disregarded as inappropriate for contemporary classrooms, but it would be a mistake to assume that this is true for every student at any level of development. There are times when repeated practice in its most time-efficient and basic forms can create the needed neural pathways, such as memorizing vocabulary with the intent to translate words in an instant while communicating in the target language. Not all students will develop in this way and therefore an exam that asks for translations is not to be used as a sole form of assessment.
3. I would like to try some variation of the Input Strategy activty in Brandl (2008) Task 11 (p. 31) and Appendix 1.4 (p.35) where the task is to describe the story pictures in a target language so that other classmates can understand the story. The purpose of this task is to provide input; that is, many instances of the target language being used by native and non-native speakers to describe the story. Brandl states:
"Needless to say, there is no way we can replicate this rich input in the classroom alone in order to develop native-like language skills.
Nevertheless, the input provided needs to be as rich as possible. As Doughty and Long (2003) put it, rich input entails “realistic samples of discourse use surrounding native speaker and non-native speaker accomplishments of targeted tasks” (p. 61). This makes one of the most obvious necessities in teaching a foreign language that the student get to hear the language, whether from the teacher, from multimedia resources (TV, DVDs, video and audio tapes, radio, online), from other students, or any other source, and furthermore be exposed to as rich a diet of authentic language discourse as possible."(p. 12)
I know that this is mentioned as a task-based strategy, but the amount of teacher control over the task will determine the type of input the students are receiving. I would probably prefer that students treat this as a communicative task wherein they can use authentic conversation to input the story for a peer, practicing gestures, body language, and other input strategies. Students would need to be aware of these components of the task before they begin.
Starian's Post:
1. Benefits and Drawbacks of CLT
One of the benefits of CLT is that it focuses on real world scenarios and gives the students the opportunity to practice conversations on a daily basis. Also, focusing on the target language as long as possible can help immerse students in the language because it engages all students at the same time.
Some of the drawbacks include: loud classroom (which does not bother me at all as long as it is purposeful and on-subject conversation) and classroom management can be difficult if routines are not in place. Also, within the secondary classroom, there are only a handful of ELL students and the rest are native English speakers who have mastered conversational English and therefore need higher level and more challenging English tasks. Native English speakers might get bored if it is not tailored to capture everyone's attention. In these cases, we need more time to prep in order to differentiate for different levels of English proficiency.
2. Benefits and Drawbacks of TBLT
TBLT may allow more room for native language use when the target language is not vital. This can strengthen the ability to remain rocused for extended periods of time. Benefit of both CLT and TBLT is that they are flexible enough to manipulatre based on our own teaching styles and preferences. One of the drawbacks might be that students are more focused on a task rather than interacting with each other. This drawback can also be considered a necessity in some respect because students (whether going to college or into the workforce) must learn how to put their nose to the grindstone and get work done. In secondary education, students need to learn somewhere along the way that school work is not always going to be fun. Also, TBLT may not align with the skills needed to perform successfully on formal assessments like the MAP, ACT, SAT, etc...
3. What activity would I incorporate into a future class (CLT/TBLT)
Lesson #1 discussed on page 23 of Principles of Communicative Language Teaching and Task-Based Instruction called "What's her name?" is something I would like to do in the secondary classroom perhaps as an anticipatory set to a Shakespeare play in which it is difficult to keep characters straight. The audio recording would not have the same info as the example, but the concept would be the same. I would use this because it focuses on skills needed to identify characteristics and story lines--this may be easier through audio than in text--which is what makes this a great precursor to reading. I remember listening to recordings in Spanish and they helped me to identify conversational Spanish in a dialect that was difficult to understand at first. I would say the same would stand for students learning English. Utilizing recordings would also allow the students to have access before and after the lesson.
Extra Comments on Sesson 10 Slides
Behaviorist, Cognivist, Social Interactionist?
I think I more closely align with the Cognivist and Social Interactionist based on the types of lessons I have taught in the past and what I find valuable in my own education and in my future classroom. The advantages to each of my preferred teaching styles is that it allows us to focus more on developing skills that the students will continue to need throughout their schooling. This facilitates learning on a larger scale, but the only drawback that comes to mind is that we might not be able to get as detailed with literature or the subject matter as we would otherwise like. I enjoy having my students interacting constantly throughout the class and I enjoy planning project in which the use their cognitive skills that we all need when interacting with others. So, not only do I like to focus on cognitive skills, I like to make sure their are social norms and skills involved as well. I think this is especially important for ELL students with diverse backgrounds who may follow different social norms in their culture.
Amanda's reply:
Hi Starian!
You put it succinctly when you pointed out classroom management as an issue in CLT without routine. I feel like I have been a champion for cooperative learning in our discussion board posts, but when students are used to cooperative learning it can make such a difference in how smoothly new tasks are introduced and put to practice. Then once the students have performed a task and understand the steps involved, they are prepared to perform those tasks with more challenging content later on. I have seen this improve participation in students who need that structure and familiarity before they will engage in a task where there is some risk involved for them.
Other than following task structures (or combining them to form new tasks) it is useful to provide gambits or sentence starters for ELL, SPED, or hesitant students so that they have even lower risk of failure. For example, say students are familiar with round-robin sharing with a shoulder partner and mixer activities where they walk around the room and find a new partner. You can combine these two tasks into a new activity and ask that the students use class content to perform a language task, maybe describing characters from a text. You could write on the board some gambit or sentences/sentence fragments that the students can use to jump-start their conversations, such as the W- questions in the What's Her Name? activity (and perhaps some sample answers). In my experience, students who need the support will look to the board to give themselves confidence and the more advanced speakers will improvise, exposing peers to more free-flowing and creative uses of the target language. I wonder however if having those supports is too much of a handicap for the hesitant students and should be done away with once students have practiced.
Your philosophical interests in cognitive and social interaction suggest to me that you would feel comfortable teaching in a classroom with high frequency of cooperative learning. Consider Kagan or other CL that places a high emphasis on appropriate social skills and positive interaction. The structures they provide can be used with a variety of content and specify social skills like "make eye contact with your partner as you speak" and "thank your partner for sharing when he/she is finished."