Task-based language teaching: examples, explanations, references

1. PPP? TBLT? What’s the difference?
and why it matters
Shona Whyte
2017

2. PPP versus TBLT
• What are the main differences in the two approaches?
• What is your view of the arguments presented in favour
of each?
• What do you see around you in your school - more PPP
or more TBLT?

3. PPP: presentation,
practice, production
• Byrne 1976
• Teaching Oral English, Byrne
1986

4. Presentation
Language features are selected
and sequenced in advance for
explicit instruction, involving
contextualised presentation
followed by clarification of
meaning, form and use.

5. Practice
Controlled practice of the feature
is provided (e.g. in gap-fill
exercises, ‘closed’ speaking
practice activities and oral drills)

6. Production
Opportunities for use of the
feature is provided through free
production activities that attempt
to simulate real-world usage
(spoken or written) such as in
role-plays, discussions and email
exchanges.

7. Criticisms
1. The synthetically-sequenced, isolated
focus on form of PPP does not reflect how
languages are learnt (e.g. Ellis 1993a;
Lewis 1993; Willis 1994; Skehan 1998);
2. PPP focuses on teaching to the
detriment of learning, making it incompatible
with learner-centred approaches to
education (e.g. Lewis 1996; Scrivener 1996);
3. It is prescriptive and inflexible,
describing only one of many possible types of
lesson (e.g. Scrivener 1996).
it has
continued to
remain popular
as a paradigm
for initial
teacher training
courses such
as the
Cambridge
CELTA and the
Trinity
CertTESOL

8. Ellis and Shintani 2013 (1)
research . . . suggests that
there is merit in teaching explicit
knowledge of grammar as an end
in itself and in supporting this with
teaching some metalanguage. It
casts doubt on the value of the
second P (controlled practice) in
the PPP sequence

9. Ellis and Shintani 2014 (2)
The research also
suggests that explicit
instruction is much
more likely to be
effective if it is
directed at
grammatical
features that
learners have
partially acquired,
rather than at new
features...
Explicit grammar instruction
has a place in language
teaching but not based on
a grammatical syllabus.
Instead it should draw on a
checklist of problematic
structures and
observational evidence of
their partial acquisition

10. Arguments in favour of PPP
• PPP reflects well how many of us expect to be taught a new skill (even if
we don’t learn language like other skills)
• It stands to reason that demonstrations or presentations should precede
practice, and that slow, careful practice should precede more automated,
fluent practice.
• PPP is often culturally much closer to learner and teacher
expectations than alternative lesson frameworks based on for example
task-based learning
• PPP has dominated the organisation of the majority of mainstream ELT
coursebooks ever since Abbs and Freebairn used it for their Strategies
series in the 1970s

11. Good contexts for PPP
• new teachers
• low-income countries (teaching in difficult circumstances)
• lower level learners (beginners, special needs)

12. Limitations: PPP is less appropriate for
• higher levels of proficiency
• very young learners
• continuous, systematic use at all times
teacher educators are likely to make
greater gains by helping teachers to
understand how to use PPP more
effectively

13. Task-based language
teaching (TBLT)
• Long
• Ellis
• Skehan
• Willis

14. What is a task?
• a task is a workplan
• the plan engages learners
in authentic language
use
• the task includes
materials to help learners
achieve an outcome
• the outcome is specified in
communicative, not
linguistic terms
in the
Heart Transplant
Task learners are given
information about four
people requiring a heart
transplant, told that only one
heart is available, and asked
to decide who is most
deserving of the
transplant.

15. Second language acquisition research suggests
• language learning is best achieved not by treating language
as an ‘object’ to be dissected into bits and learned [..],
but as a ‘tool’ for accomplishing a communicative purpose.
• ‘learning’ does not need to precede ‘use’, but rather
occurs through the efforts that learners make to understand
and be understood in achieving a communicative goal.
• the interactions resulting from the performance of tasks in
a classroom resemble - in many respects - those found in
child language acquisition in the home

16. TBLT does not just serve
as a means of helping
students to use the
linguistic knowledge
they have already
acquired but serves as a
source of new
linguistic knowledge.
They do not just
contribute to the
development of learners’
fluency and confidence in
communicating in the L2
but also as a means for
building on and adding
to existing linguistic
resources.
Tasks, then, serve
a dual purpose.

17. Focus on form
• As learners communicate, attention is drawn to the specific
linguistic features that learners need to comprehend or to produce
in pursuit of achieving the outcome of the task.
• The teacher can prime the learner with the language they will need
to perform a task or he/she can feed this language into the actual
performance of the task by responding to their efforts to
communicate
• attention to form is contextualized in learners’ own attempts to
make meaning.
• it helps learners to see how form is mapped onto the meanings
that are important to them as they perform a task

18. Task-supported language teaching
• tasks serve as a means of providing opportunities for
practising pre-determined linguistic items.
• tasks will by necessity be of the ‘focused’ kind.
• rather than serving as stand-alone activities they fit into
the ‘production’ phase of a traditional present-practice-
produce (PPP) methodology

19. input versus output-based tasks
• input tasks: listening or reading
• output (production) tasks: speaking or writing
since TBLT constitutes a
radical departure from
traditional approaches to
language teaching based
on a linguistic syllabus, it
has aroused considerable
criticism

20. Misconceptions
about TBLT
• it is not suited to beginners
• it neglects grammatical
accuracy
• it requires extensive use of
groupwork
• it requires avoidance of L1 and
is not suited to foreign
language contexts (i.e.,
learning English in France)
tasks can be used at
low levels of proficiency,
for grammar, without
group work, and with
L1 use

21. Potential problems
• teachers do not always have a clear understanding of what a ‘task’ is and as a
result the tasks end up as ‘practice’ rather than affording opportunities for
genuine communication
• there may be tension between the need to get the students talking and the
need to maintain class discipline
• teachers’ lack of confidence in their own L2 oral ability and the fear that
TBLT places too much emphasis on oral communication
• teachers are also wary of adopting TBLT in situations where they need to
prepare students for high-stakes tests that emphasize grammatical accuracy
rather than communicative effectiveness
• TBLT threatens the established role of teachers by re-positioning them as
co-communicators rather than as sources of knowledge about the L2

22. PPP versus TBLT
• What are the main differences in the two approaches?
• What is your view of the arguments presented in favour
of each?
• What do you see around you in your school - more PPP
or more TBLT?

23. • Anderson, J. (2016). Why practice makes perfect sense:
The past, present and future potential of the PPP paradigm
in language teacher education. ELTED, 19: 14-21.
• Edwards, C., & Willis, J. R. (Eds.). (2005). Teachers
exploring tasks in English language teaching. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
• Ellis, R. (2013). Task-based language teaching:
Responding to the critics. University of Sydney Papers in
TESOL, 8(1), 1-27.
• Ellis, R., & Shintani, N. (2013). Exploring language
pedagogy through second language acquisition research.
Routledge.