An inquiry-based approach to language teaching
Task-based language teaching: basic principles and misunderstandings

Task-based education is an inquiry-based approach to language teaching: learners are given plenty of opportunities to expand their language competences by performing meaningful reading, writing, listening, speaking and interaction tasks. During the past 40 years, task-based language teaching has become popular, but a number of myths and misunderstandings have emerged around it. I would like to discuss these in this article.

By Kris Van den Branden

Task: goal and means

If the main goal of a language course is for learners to learn to use the target language more efficiently, fluently and correctly in authentic language use situations, then current scientific research (Van den Branden, 2022) indicates that a task-oriented approach is strongly recommended.
In a task-oriented approach, learners' communication needs are first identified. This is done with a needs analysis: through a combination of observations, interviews and surveys, the situations in which learners need to be able to use the target language and what exactly they need to be able to do with it are described. The results of the needs analysis feed into the content of the curriculum: this increases the relevance of what happens in the classroom for the learners.
A task-based curriculum is built around language tasks. A language task is an activity that people undertake to achieve a certain goal and which requires the understanding and/or production of meaningful messages in the target language. Based on this definition, we can debunk a persistent myth about TBLT. Indeed, some teachers associate ‘task’ only with speaking tasks, where learners communicate information to each other in a fictional setting (e.g. unravel from the drawings which of the characters committed the theft and tell each other). However, this is a strong narrowing of the concept of ‘task’. Listening to a weather report on the radio to decide whether to bring an umbrella is a task in its own right. Reading a short message from your friend to understand why he will be late for the appointment and sending him a short reply is a task. Reading and implementing a recipe to prepare a dish is a task. Tasks need not be elaborate, nor complicated in terms of their forms of work. In real life, people frequently perform short, simple language tasks.
Creating an exercise where a student has to fill in only the correct ending of the verb in five separate sentences is not a task. That is a form-focused exercise. It is the kind of exercise where the learner's brain is given the luxury of focusing on one language element. In contrast, a task is about understanding and/or producing full-fledged meaningful messages.

Task-based teaching: not just for advanced learners

Some teachers think that task-based language teaching is possible only from a certain level onwards. According to them, beginners should first learn the basics of a language, for example through explicit vocabulary and grammar teaching; only then can they use the language to perform tasks. This, too, is wrong. Children in Flanders learn English en masse and by the age of 11 possess an average vocabulary of 3,000 words before they have received one hour of formal English language instruction (Peters et al., 2019). How did they do that? Task-based. They tried to understand and produce all kinds of meaningful messages while playing games, watching TikTok movies, following Netflix series or singing along to their favourite songs. In other words, they performed numerous purposeful listening and reading tasks. The reasoning can thus be reversed: language learners benefit more from explicit grammar and vocabulary teaching if they have already built up an implicit language base beforehand from performing simple language tasks.

Teaching can therefore involve tasks from the outset. Of course, the messages - and tasks - will be very simple in the early stages. For beginners, it is appropriate that language tasks are strongly anchored in a concrete here-and-now context with lots of visual support. For example, pupils learn language while crafting their own pencil box based on short oral instructions, learning to play a new sport, cooking together, finding their way around the school building or introducing themselves at a fictional reception. All are beginner-level tasks.

Implicit and explicit

The most persistent myth about task-based language teaching is that students have to discover everything on their own and only acquire language implicitly. However, task-based language teaching is not synonymous with implicit language learning. In task-based language teaching, there is indeed room for the explicit instruction of language aspects. More so, learners' attempts to perform a meaningful task create a precise context within which explicitly addressing vocabulary, grammar or strategies becomes useful and meaningful for learners. A sophisticated combination of language learning from meaningful language tasks and the explicit instruction of language forms accelerates the language learning process. For example, a task in which students discuss a variety of measures to save energy in the home may prompt explicit discussion of the rules for forming the steps of comparison. That explicit rule explanation can then be immediately applied by students in the remainder of the language task. The explicit instruction of vocabulary, grammar and strategies is thus embedded in, or attached to, the performance of language tasks as much as possible. Explicit instruction in task-oriented language teaching is also best offered repeatedly: better a series of short ‘grammar spots’ in which the grammar rule is repeatedly recalled every time a task requires it than one 50-minute lesson on that rule.

Targeted and interactive listening and reading

In foreign language teaching, students are often given a text to listen to or read, after which they have to answer questions about it. In task-based teaching, the questions come before the text. This is consistent with the principle that people read and listen purposefully. In the preparatory introduction phase, an interesting topic is introduced around which students recall their prior knowledge and around which an exciting question is formulated. Then, pupils purposefully listen to an audio clip or read a text in which they can find the answer to the question. Students listen to the audio clip twice, and between the two rounds of listening, students interact with each other and with the teacher to discuss together how far they have come in finding an answer. The teacher gives feedback, but does not yet give away the final answers after the first listening round: this keeps the second listening round interesting and engaging as well. In-depth interaction over read and listened texts, where the teacher challenges students to argue and check their interpretations against the text, is crucial within task-based language teaching. The likelihood that students will participate with interest increases the more interesting or relevant the text is to the students. In this respect, language teaching fortunately gives the teacher a lot of freedom to choose engaging topics.

Task-based learning and self-direction

Over the past decade, much empirical evidence has accumulated around the importance of self-directed competences. This also applies to language learners. For the development of writing skills, investing in language learners' self-direction appears to pay off strongly. This can be done, for instance, by discussing with learners at the start of a writing task the criteria for successful performance of that task: when is a letter of complaint to a company an effective letter? Students write a first draft and seek feedback on it from another student or the teacher based on the criteria. The learner can then revise their own text, again taking into account the success criteria. Integrating self-direction into a process-oriented approach to writing tasks increases the likelihood of pupils producing stronger writing products. Moreover, in this case, it increases the likelihood that learners have built up explicit knowledge of the criteria for writing effective complaint letters, which can help them tackle similar writing tasks in the future.

More than just language

Because task-based language teaching is built around the purposeful exchange of meaningful messages, it is about more than language alone. For example, if students are given the reading task to find out from various sources whether performing student jobs is detrimental to study results, then that reading task can be used to teach students how to assess the reliability of information. This can involve integrated work on language competences, information processing competences and digital competences. Likewise, a task in which students engage in a debate on a controversial topic can be used to teach students to be respectful of other opinions. This creates a mix of task-based language teaching and teaching of social and intercultural skills. Task-oriented language teaching does not stare blindly at language. Within task-oriented language teaching, it sometimes zooms in on particular language elements or rules, but that focus supports meaningful interaction and the personality formation of learners as effective, polite and respectful language users.

Coherence between curriculum components

Traditional language teaching is often compartmentalised. Learners are given separate listening lessons, reading lessons, grammar lessons, writing lessons.... However, empirical research shows that language education gains in effectiveness when strong connections are forged between skills, between form and meaning, and between contents. For example, students' reading comprehension can be enhanced when students write about what they have read. The comprehension of literary texts increases when pupils are offered dialogical literature lessons, where they share and discuss their interpretation of the literary text with others. Research also shows that pupils only become good at applying grammar knowledge if they are repeatedly given the opportunity to integrate grammar knowledge in performing meaningful tasks. Vocabulary that has been explicitly taught does not stick if that vocabulary does not recur repeatedly in functional, goal-oriented language tasks.

Conclusion

Task-based language teaching aligns with how people acquire language. It is an attempt to enrich the power of meaningful communication with the power of explicit instruction. That attempt becomes more effective when smart connections are forged between the two.

References

Ellis, R., Skehan, P., Li, S., Shintani, N., & Lambert, C. (2020). Task-based language teaching. Theory and Practice. Cambridge: CUP. 

Peters, E., Noreillie, A., Bulthé, B., Heylen, K., & Desmet, P. (2019). The impact of instruction and out‐of‐school exposure to foreign language input on learners’ vocabulary knowledge in two languages. Language Learning, 69, 747-82. 

Van den Branden, K. (2022). How to teach an additional language: to task or not to task. Benjamins Publishing Company. 

Van den Branden, K., Bygate, M., & Norris, J. (2009). Task-based language teaching: a reader. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.