ALR B3 | Task-based Language Teaching Flashcards
In 1979, the Regional Institute of English in Bangalore, India, under the guidance of N.S. Prabhu, embarked on a five-year project that was to achieve legendary status in the _____ of English language teaching.
history
Referred to ever since as ‘_____’, the aim was to teach English to a small number of classes in local primary and secondary schools
using a syllabus that was based – not on a list of ____, as was customary in India at the time – but on a series of _____, where _____ are defined by Willis (1996) as ‘activities where the target language is used by the learner for a communicative purpose (goal) in order to achieve an
outcome’.
the Bangalore Project, grammatical patterns, tasks, tasks
Dissatisfied with the prevailing ‘_____’ methodology, but sceptical about replacing a syllabus of grammar items with a syllabus of functions or notions (as some proponents of
Communicative Language Teaching were advocating – see chapter 15), Prabhu opted instead for a _____ approach, and for ‘the creation of _____ in which learners engage in an effort to cope with
communication’ (1987).
structural-oral-situational, task-based, conditions
In this sense, he was following the lead of advocates of a ‘_____’ form of CLT, such as Dick Allwright (1979) who insisted: ‘If the “_____’s” management activities are directed exclusively at involving the learners in solving communication problems in the target language, then language learning will take care of itself’.
strong, language teacher
In other words, you learn to _____ simply by _____. And tasks – doing things that
involve real language use – provide the ideal _____ and _____ for communicating.
communicate, communicating, context, motivation
Prabhu, like many after him, rejected the view that a _____, whether of grammar items or of functions, and the PPP
methodology associated with it, are the optimal route to _____.
preselected syllabus, proficiency
Although supported by a long tradition in progressive education of ‘_____’, initially TBLT lacked a sound empirical basis.
learning by doing
Certainly, research into SLA was starting to cast doubt on the _____ of
teaching according to a syllabus of ‘_____’ (i.e. grammatical structures).
wisdom, forms
The learner’s ‘_____’ syllabus seemed to be immune to this kind of
_____.
inbuilt, manipulation
Moreover, research into the interactions between learners
when performing tasks, including the way that they negotiate and repair _____, suggested that these interactions might be a fertile site for _____.
communication breakdowns, acquisition
On the other hand, evidence from other ‘_____’ learning contexts, such as ______ (see chapter 1), indicated that an exclusive focus on communication – without some explicit attention to the
formal features of the language (called ‘_____’) – might result in ‘_____’, i.e. the temporary or permanent ______ of the language system.
deep-end, immersion, focus on form, arrested development, stabilization
Accordingly, the Bangalore model of TBLT – which discouraged ‘any
_____ to language itself’ (Prabhu 1987) – was reconfigured by scholars such as Mike Long so as to include a focus on form.
sustained attention
But it is a focus on form ‘which is by definition _____, i.e. _____ to the learner’s current stage of development’ (Long 2015). In other words, ‘_____ lead, the _____ follows’.
reactive, responsive, students, teacher
Much ink has been shed as to what constitutes a task, but there is general agreement that a task should be directed at achieving some outcome, where
language is the _____ but not the _____. Filling in the _____ in a gap-fill
exercise is not a task.
means, end, verbs
Finding the differences in two pictures, by
exchanging _____ with your partner, is.
spoken descriptions