This document discusses using tasks to teach language to young learners. It explains that tasks should provide both demands and support to encourage learning. Tasks involve preparation, a core activity, and follow up. They should have clear learning goals and balance cognitive, linguistic, and other demands with support like pictures and modeling. An example task teaches past tense verbs through a grid showing a child's weekend activities. Preparation activates vocabulary while follow up has children write the sentences.

1. CHAPTER 2 : LEARNING LANGUAGE
THROUGH TASKS AND ACTIVITIES
TEACHING LANGUAGES TO
YOUNG LEARNERS

2. OVERVIEW
 What task demands and support are
 How to balance task demands and support
 How to construct a task
By the end of this presentation you
will have an understanding about
of…
We will look at the framework for analysing task from a
learning perspective that takes account of young learners
social and cognitive development.

3. This Presentation include of:
 The task as an environment of learning.
 Task demands
 Types of demand
 Task support.
 Balancing demands and support.
 The importance of language learning goals.
 Defining “task” for young learners classroom.
 Stages in a classroom task
 Hani’s weekend: possible preparation and follow
up.
 Task-as-plan and task-as-action

4. THE TASK AS AN ENVIRONMENT FOR
LEARNING
 Task are used as a tool for checking how much pupils are
understanding
 Children are active learners that urge to find meaning and
purpose for activities that are presented to them and try to
complete the tasks .
Young learners will work hard to make sense of what teachers
ask them to do and come with their understandings of the
purpose and expectation of adults so that's way tasks can be
quickly useful at classroom.
Note: A warning with task is sometimes teachers may not notice
that pupils’ get confusion because of the children are anxious
to please the teacher. They may act as if they understand and
complete the task, but may not understand or learn from it.
Here again, we see the importance of a learning perspective

5. TASK DEMANDS
"The task demands will mean
how hard and how long
people will need to work to
complete it."
 Activities should be carefully
thought out and structure for
a target audience.
 Task should have both
structure and demands.

6. TYPES OF DEMAND
• Understand the way the grid works to
show times and actions
• Work left to right across columns and
top to bottom
• Understand that the pictures show
past actions
• Recognise the key action in each
picture
COGNITIVE
(related to concept and
understanding of the
world)
• Find the vocabulary to describe
each action
• Find the past tense ending for
each verb
• Put the words together in the right
order
• Pronounce the words
• Give correct stress and intonation
to words and sentences
• Understand teacher’s instructions
LANGUAGE
(related to using the
foreign language and to
uses of mother tongue
in connection with
foreign language
learning)

7. TYPES OF TASK DEMAND
COGNITIVE Deals with the contextualization of language, difficulty
of concepts that are needed to do the task (e.g. use of
graphics, colours, telling the time, etc)
LANGUAGE Determining the language whether spoken or written
Understanding the production
Extended talk or conversation
Genre
Needed grammar and vocabulary
INTERACTIONAL Type of interaction required e.g. pair work in participants in
talk-adult/peers.
Nature of interaction
METALINGUISTIC The use of technical terms about language in production or
comprehension
INVOLVEMENT Degree of ease or difficulty with the task
Links to the child’s interest and concerns
Novelty, humor, and suspense
PHYSICAL How long can the child sit still
Needed actions
Needed motor skills

8. TASK SUPPORT
 Picture
 The grid
 Explanation and
modelling

9. The Type of Task Support
COGNITIVE From familiar formats of graphics
From familiar topics and content
LANGUAGE Re-use of language
Moving from easier to difficult
Using known vocabulary and grammar
Use of L1 to support L2 development
INTERACTION
AL
Type of interaction
From helpful co-participants
From the use of familiar routines
METALINGUIS
TIC
From familiar technical terms to talk about new language
Clear explanations
INVOLVEMENT Can come from content and activity that is easy
Mixing physical movement and calm, seated activities
PHYSICAL Variation in sitting and moving
Use familiar actions
Match to fine motor skills development

10. HOW TO BALANCE DEMANDS
AND SUPPORT
We can here recall the idea of the zone of proximal
development, or space for growth, that children
need for their language and cognitive development.
ZONE OF PROXIMAL DEVELOPMENT + SPACE
FOR GROWTH = what children need for their
growth and development
Note: The zone of proximal development
(ZPD) is the gap between what a learner has
already mastered (the actual level of
development) and what he or she can
achieve when provided with educational
support (potential development).

11. HOW TO STRIKE A BALANCE
 THE GOLDLILOCKS PRINCIPLE
A task that is going to help the learner learn more
language is one that is demanding but not too
demanding, that provides support but not too
much support
Language learning is a repeated process of
stretching resources slightly beyond the current
limit/ability, learning new skills and moving on to
the next challenge
For example:
She uses the example of lifting weights, if one starts off using
too much weight (demands are too high), then injury may
follow, but if the weights are too light (Too much support), then
the weight lifter isn’t gaining anything (not learning), so, the
trick is to start off with something just slightly above your
current level (slightly above your ZPD) and then “raise the bar”

12. LANGUAGE LEARNING GOALS
 HOW CAN TEACHERS ENSURE THAT THE
BALANCE OF DEMANDS AND SUPPORT
PRODUCES LANGUAGE LEARNING?
 Set clear and appropriate language learning
goals
 Provide scaffolding for the tasks – breaking down
into manageable steps with sub goals
!!!too many demands will make children anxious,
too few demands will make language learning
boring. Thus teachers must be careful design of
sub goals should help ensure success and
achievement at each step and of the task as a
whole.

13. DEFINING “TASK” FOR YOUNG
LEARNERS
 FEATURES OF TASK USE :
 Coherent and unify for learners – from topic,
activity and outcome
 Have meaning and purpose
 Have clear language learning goals
 Have a beginning and an end
 Involve learners actively
 Aim for dynamic congruence – age, socio-cultural
appropriate

14. STAGES IN CLASSROOM
TASKS
Three stage are…
 PRE-PARATION –
prepare learners to be
able to complete core
activities
 CORE ACTIVITY –
set up through
language learning
goals
 FOLLOW-UP – builds
on successful
completion of the
As an example of how the
stages
can combine to produce a
task,
we can see the Hani and
his
weekend, and place the
production of oral
sentences
from the gird as the core
activity in the center of the
an
imaginary task. We can

15. Hani’s weekend: possible
preparation and follow up.
 Core goals: Pupil saying
sentence about each picture in
the gird
 Preparation:
1. Activate the vocabulary that will
be needed (actions, names of
object in picture).
2. Help pupils understand the
grammar (teacher speak about
past tense).
3. Let pupils do exercises in pair.
 Follow up: The pupils write the
sentence they have constructed

16. For example:

17. TASK AS PLAN vs TASK IN
ACTION
 TASK AS PLAN
The task is in plan. Teacher may not know what will
happen when the activity is used. Cannot be fully
evaluated
o TASK IN ACTION
When the task is used in a class

18. In this presentation, we have
studied…
 Those tasks are used as a tool for checking how much
pupils understand.
 Those Activities shall be carefully thought-out and
structure for a target audience.
 That task shall have both structure and demands.
 Different types of demand like language, interactional,
involvement, physical demands, metalinguistics and
cognitive.
 What task support is.
 How to balancing demands and support (Goldilocks
principle)
 The importance of language learning goals.
 Stages in a classroom task (preparation, core activity
and follow up) Hani’s weekend (Angelica’s weekend):