2. Key questions for today
- What are the main objectives of the EFL
curriculum in Flanders?
-What can research tell us about what works in
ELT?
- How can teachers facilitate student
development in the most effective way?
3. ELT: main objectives
“De prioriteit van het Europese taalonderwijs is wat
leerlingen met taal kunnen doen en niet wat ze
erover weten. Kennis van woordenschat en
grammaticale structuren is geen doel op zich,
maar slechts een middel tot het verwerven van
communicatieve vaardigheden. Realistisch
taalgebruik in zinvolle communicatieve situaties
moet in ons taalonderwijs dan ook primeren.”
(Uitgangspunten eindtermen)
4. Eindtermen
Communicatieve vaardigheden
Moderne vreemde talen receptief en productief, mondeling en
schriftelijk effectief gebruiken als communicatiemiddel in relevante
situaties. In staat zijn het taalgebruik aan te passen aan het doel van
de taaltaak.
Functionele kennis
De functionele kennis beheersen die nodig is voor het uitvoeren van de
taaltaak. Via reflectie op de taaltaak de hierboven beschreven
functionele kennis uitbreiden om de doeltreffendheid en de
accuraatheid van de communicatie te verhogen.
Strategieën
Leerstrategieën verwerven om de specifieke taaltaken efficiënter te
kunnen uitvoeren. Talige en niet-talige communicatiestrategieën
aanwenden om aan de communicatieve behoeften te kunnen
voldoen.
5. Eindtermen Engels
Available at the website of the Flemish
Ministery of Education
http://eindtermen.vlaanderen.be/secundair-onderw
6. Key question
What can research tell us about what works in ELT? How
can teachers facilitate the development of the above-
mentioned target competences in the most effective
way?
TASK
Describe your 5 main principles of powerful and effective
English language teaching. Use short imperative
sentences to describe your principles.
8. Principles of language teaching
Long, 2009
MP1
Use tasks, not text, as the unit of analysis
9. Leerplan Engels
“Uit wat voorafgaat blijkt duidelijk dat de
ontwikkeling van de leesvaardigheid slechts
mogelijk wordt via taakgericht onderwijs
waarbij de leerstof niet wordt overgebracht
door de leerkracht, maar waarbij de
leerlingen via goedgekozen taken en
opdrachten de leerstof zelf kunnen leren en
verwerken.” (p. 32)
10. What is a task?
• Have a close look at the examples of tasks
in your handout and try to come up with:
– a list of the main features of tasks for the ELT
classroom
– a short definition of “task”
11. Task: definition
“A task is an activity in which a person engages in
order to attain an objective, and which
necessitates (or involves) the functional use of
language” (Van den Branden, 2006, 4)
“… by ‘task’ is meant the hundred and one things
people do in everyday life, at work, at play, and in
between. ‘Tasks’ are the things people will tell
you they do if you ask them and they are not
applied linguists” (Long, 1985: 89)
12. Main features of classroom
tasks
• Goal-oriented
• Motivating, interesting
• Functional use of language, often involving the integrated
use of different skills (“holistic tasks”), and approximating
the authentic use of language outside the ELT classroom
(i.e., producing and comprehending meaningful
MESSAGES)
• Gives rise to interaction
• Challenging (slightly above the students’ current level of
proficiency)
13. MP2
“Promote learning by doing”
If teachers want students to be able to use the language for
communicative purposes, they should give them ample
opportunity to try and do so…. Students do not first learn
a language and then use it, they learn it while trying to
use it (Hatch, 1978)
14. PPP
PPP = Present, Practice, Produce
• Present explicit information on isolated elements of the
language (vocabulary, grammar rules…)
• Practise these items in isolated contexts
• Produce these items in communicative exercises
• Severe criticism: this approach is inconsistent with the
way people acquire language (Ellis & Shintani, 2014;
Long, 2015)
15. What’s wrong with PPP?
• Syllabus is filled with artificial, unnatural language
(unlike the way people talk in real life)
• Learners are asked to quickly and perfectly
produce the new form (while new forms are only
gradually acquired); errors are natural!
• Learners need ample opportunity to practise:
frequency effects are among the most consistent
in SLA research.
• Problem of transfer: Explicit knowledge (what you
know about elements of the language) is not
simply and automatically transformed into the
ability to use these items for real-life purposes
16. A problem of transfer
“In a study abroad context, for instance, it is
very common to see students misuse or
completely fail to use a rule, which they
learned and practiced intensively in their
first year of study, well enough to get
perfect scores on the corresponding
classroom tests” (DeKeyser, 2007, 290)
17. What’s wrong with PPP? (2)
• If teachers want students to be able to use the language
for communicative purposes, they should give them
ample opportunity to try and do so…. Students do not
first learn a language and then use it, they learn it while
trying to use it (Hatch, 1978)
• Learners more efficiently learn language when using it for
content-related purposes than when studying it as a
subject (European Union, 2005). In the latter case, the
focus tends to be on the mere explicit learning about the
language; the student may be offered few opportunities
to apply the explicit knowledge to practical language use
18. MP3 – MP5
MP3 Elaborate input
MP4 Provide rich (not impoverished) input
MP 5 Encourage inductive (chunk) learning
e.g. “in case of emergency dial 411”, “If I
were a rich man, I would buy a big house”
19. MP3 Elaborate input
• E.g., through the use of recasts
A.He break his leg
B.So, he broke his leg, oh dear. How come?
A. He fell from stairs
B. Too bad, I fell from the stairs once, but
fortunately I didn’t break my leg then.
21. Imagine
• You are flight attendants. After a long flight from
Brussels to New York, you found an overcoat
that a passenger left on the plane. There were
several things in the pockets of the overcoat.
These objects might provide valuable information
about the identity of the owner.
• Date: April 8, 1998
• Task! Fill out the grid: Who is this mystery
person?
22. Things in pockets (1)
L, J, R, P = students/ T = teacher
L So so this man he married?
J Maybe. Uhm.. uhm… don’t know
L So we put here here
J Wait wait, look at this card (reading aloud) “When
can I see you again? Tennis court tomorrow?
Sylvia”
L Huh huh (laughing)
J That’s not his wife, I think
L No no (laughing)
J Maybe that’s his girlfriend
23. Things in pockets (2)
L Huh huh… So we put…
J Of course… uhm… many men are married and
have a girlfriend
J And three children! Bad! Bad!
L Maybe he’s divorced, and he now has a new
girlfriend…
J Yeah, better, better
L Or, or… maybe his wife is dead
J So we write…
L We don’t know. Maybe he’s married
J So, possible, it’s possible
L Okay, okay
24. Things in pockets (3)
T Right, what about his marital status?
J Uhm, we don’t know…uh, here’s a card “When can I see you
again? Tennis court tomorrow? Sylvia”
T Oooh interesting!
J Yeah, uhm, we think, uhm we think, Sylvia is not his wife.
T Oh you do? Why do you think so?
J Uhm because uhm, because you wife, uhm…
L Your wife don’t asks you “When can I see you again’.
J Your wife knows
T Or at least his wife should know, I should reckon. So, then,
who is Sylvia, do you think?
25. Things in pockets (4)
L A girlfriend maybe.
T His girlfriend, right.
L Maybe, Sylvia is uhm a new girlfriend.
T A new girlfriend? So, he used to have another girlfriend, is
that what you mean? (laughter) Energetic man!
L No no, maybe his wife is dead or so, or maybe he’s divorced,
and maybe Sylvia is his new… uhm… his new woman.
T Oh I see what you mean. So you’re not really sure he’s still
married? His wife may be dead, or they may be divorced,
and Sylvia may be his new flame…
L Yeah
T Okay, so then, what is your conclusion on marital status?
What shall we put here?
L It’s possible.
J Yeah possible.
T Okay. Less then 50% certain. Everybody agrees?
26. Things in pockets (5)
T Okay, so our conclusion is less than 50%. Okay, let
me… I would just like to point you out… Just pay
attention to form here… When I said… When I
referred to his marital status, I said ‘He may be
married’, ‘They may be divorced’. May, that’s the
modal verb that you use here. (writing on the
blackboard) He may be… So, if something is
possible, you use the verb ‘may’. I may go to the
cinema tomorrow, I may win the lottery. Weather
forecasts, for instance, always say things like ‘It
may rain’, ‘The sun may shine’, ‘Temperatures may
be up to 104’.
R Oops! Hot!
27. The best of both worlds
• Samuda (2001): “weaving form into
meaning intentions”
• Focus on form: Try to embed a focus on form
(grammar, vocabulary…) into the performance of
communicative language tasks, e.g. by explaining about
the meaning of a word or a grammatical rule while the
students are trying to use it (comprehend or produce).
Reduce the mental distance between explicit attention to
a form and its functional use to a minimum
28. The best of both worlds
• English teaching should be an attempt to harness
the benefits of a focus on meaning while
simultaneously, through use of focus on form (not
forms), to deal with its known shortcomings,
particulary rate of development and
incompleteness where grammatical accuracy is
concerned (Long and Norris, 2000)
29. MP7 and MP 8
• Provide negative feedback
! Referring to both implicit and explicit negative
feedback
• Respect learner syllabuses/developmental
processes
7+ 8 = provide individualized feedback and
interactional support
30. MP 9
• Promote cooperative/collaborative learning
• The speaking climate tends to be more
safe in small groups, encouraging risk-
taking
• Learners tend to be more active and
interactive in small groups
• Learners can learn a lot from each other,
both in same-ability and mixed ability
groups
31. MP 10
• Individualize instruction
(psycholinguistically, and according to
communicative needs)
32. The missing link (MP11)
• Provide socio-emotional support:
– Enhance students’ EFL self-confidence;
– Motivate students to use language and take
risks while doing so;
– Create a safe atmosphere;
– Fine-tune the contents of your educational
activities to students’ likes and interests
– Arouse interest in the language and culture
33. Summary
• “.. optimal practice in the foreign language classroom
should be interactive, truly meaningful, and with a built-in
focus on selective aspects of the language code that are
integral to the very nature of that practice.”
– L2 practice should be interactive
– L2 should be meaningful
– There should be a focus on task-essential forms”
(Ortega, 2007)
34. TASK
- Watch 3 short video clips taken from Scrivener (2011).
Learning teaching. The Essential Guide to English
Language Teaching.
- Evaluate in what ways, and to what extent, the teacher
fosters the learning of English. What kind of English
language learning is going on?
- To what extent is what you see consistent with the
methodological principles we discussed?
- How could you make it (even) more consistent with the
MP’s?
35. Methodological principles
(MPs)
• Use task, not texts, as the unit of analysis
• Promote learning by doing
• Elaborate input
• Provide rich (not impoverished) input
• Encourage inductive (chunk) learning
• Focus of form
• Provide negative feedback
• Respect learner syllabuses/developmental processes
• Promote cooperative learning
• Individualize instruction
• (Provide socio-emotional support)
36. References
• DeKeyser, R. (2001). Automaticity and automatization. In Robinson, P. (ed.), Cognition and second
language instruction (pp. 125-151). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Ellis, R., & Shintani, N. (2014). Exploring language pedagogy through second language acquisition
research. New York: Routledge.
• Ellis, N. (2009). Optimizing the input: frequency and sampling in usage-based and form-focused
learning. In Long, M. & Doughty, C. (Eds.). The Handbook of Language Teaching (pp. 139-158).
Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
• Hatch, E. (1978). 'Discourse analysis and second language acquisition‘. In E. Hatch (ed.) Second
Language Acquisition: A Book of Reading. Rowley: Newbury House.
• Long, M. (2015). Second language acquisition and task-based language teaching. Sussex: Wiley.
• Ortega, L. (2007). Understanding seond language acquisition. London: Hodder Education.
• Scrivener, J. (2011). Learning teaching. The essential guide to English Language Teaching. Oxford:
Macmillan.
• Skehan, P. (1998). A cognitive approach to language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Van den Branden, K. (2006). Task-based language teaching: from theory to practice. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press
