The document discusses the key dimensions and principles of task design for language teaching, including making tasks as authentic as possible by using real-world examples, making relationships between form and function transparent, and sequencing tasks from simple to more complex. It provides examples of task-based activities and considerations for designing a sequence of tasks to build on each other pedagogically.

1. Prepared by:
Jane Charity A. Estrada
MA-ELT1
Misamis University

2. What is a “task”?
A.Real – world tasks
B.Pedagogical tasks

4. How should
we design a
task?

5. Key Dimensions of Task
• Language (pedagogical goals)
• Procedure
• Roles of teachers and learners
– TEACHER : selector & sequencer of tasks,
evaluator
– LEARNER: innovator, risk-taker, active participant
• Setting

6. What are the principles of Task
Design?

7. The Authenticity
Principle
• “Learners should be fed as rich a diet of
authentic data”
• Authentic data – samples of spoken and
written language that have not been
specifically written for the purposes of
teaching language
– Examples …

8. • Learners encounter
target language
items in the kinds of
contexts where they
naturally occur.
WHY?WHY?

9. The Form-Function
Principle
• In language teaching, make form and function
relationships transparent.
• Design tasks that require learners to use
inductive and deductive reasoning to develop
their own understanding of the relationship
between form and function.

10. The Task Dependency
Principle
• “Each succeeding task in the instructional
sequence flows out of, and is dependent on,
the one that precedes it.”
• Series of tasks in a lesson
= pedagogical ladder
• Sequence tasks from reception – production.

11. • “Arrange an instructional sequence so that
reproductive tasks precede creative tasks.”
– Reproductive tasks – the student reproduces
language provided by the teacher, textbook, tape
– Creative tasks – require learners to come up with
language with novel combinations of familiar
elements from earlier tasks

12. Designing a Sequence of Task
• CONSIDER:
– Pedagogical goals
– learning strategies
– Experiential and inductive learning
– Extent to which learners share their feelings,
ideas, attitudes
– Learners’ role (active)
– Opportunities they have to make choices

14. • Prior tasks provide learners with the language
models and experiential content that they will
need to carry out the tasks that follow.
– Each task builds on the one that goes before.

15. Task
Work with three other students. You are on a ship that
is sinking. You have to swim to a nearby island. You
have a waterproof container, but can only carry 20 kilos
of items in it. Decide which of the following items you
will take. (Remember, you can’t take more than 20
kilos with you.)

16. • Waterproof sheets of fabric (3 kilos each.)
• Notebook computer (3.5 kilos)
• Rope (6 kilos).
• Fire lighting kits (500 grams each)
• Portable CD player and CDs (4 kilos.)
• Short-wave radio (12 kilos)
• Medical kit (2 kilos.)
• Bottles of water (1.5 kilos each)
• Packets of sugar, flour, rice, powdered milk, coffee, tea.
(Each packet weighs 500 grams)
• Cans of food (500 grams each)
• Box of novels and magazines (3 kilos)
• Axe (8 kilos)