Planning and Task Performance in a Second Language

The LL&LT monograph series publishes monographs as well as edited volumes on applied and methodological issues in the field of language pedagogy. The focus of the series is on subjects such as classroom discourse and interaction; language diversity in educational settings; bilingual education; language testing and language assessment; teaching methods and teaching performance; learning trajectories in second language acquisition; and written language learning in educational settings.

Planning and its role in task-based performance are of both theoretical interest to second language acquisition (SLA) researchers and of practical significance to language teachers. In the case of SLA researchers, planning is important because it links in with the current interest in the role of attention in language learning.

The purpose of this book is to bring together a series of articles on the nature of planning and its effects on task-based performance in laboratory, classroom and testing contexts. The idea for the book originated in a colloquium on this topic given at AILA Conference in Singapore in December 2002. Papers given by Bygate and Samuda, Elder and Iwashita, Ellis and Fanguan, and Sanguran were subsequently developed into chapters for this book.

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Expertise in Second Language Learning and Teaching

There is a sense in which almost any statement about language, language learning or language teaching may be said to hold implications for a view about language learning or teaching expertise. Thus an observation about the nature of language implies a view about what it is that an expert user of the language is able to do. Similarly, a statement about language learning is interpretable as an observation about the processes which an expert learner has successfully undertaken.

By now, at the start of the twenty-first century, expertise studies have been undertaken in a large number of domains (and Table 1.1 of Chapter 1 lists a number of them). Applied linguistics is a relative newcomer to the list, and this is in itself a major reason why the time is ripe for a volume looking at what has been done in other domains, as well as what is emerging in the areas of second language learning and teaching.

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Task-Based Language Teaching

The concept of ‘task’ has become an important element in syllabus design, classroom teaching and learner assessment. It underpins several significant research agendas, and it has influenced educational policymaking in both ESL and EFL settings.

This book began life as the second edition to Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. The original volume was written in the mid- 1980s, and was published in 1989. At that time, task-based language teaching was beginning to arouse attention. Although it was more than a distant prospect, it was far from a mainstream concept. As with the original book, this volume is aimed at practising teachers in ELT and applied linguists (teacher trainers, language planners, and materials writers), as well as teachers in preparation.

In addition to a complete revamping and updating of principles and ideas from Designing Tasks, four areas deserved their own chapter length treatment. These were:

• A model for task-based language teaching (TBLT) that articulated the

relationship between tasks and other curricular elements.

• The empirical basis for TBLT.

• The place of a focus on form in TBLT.

• Assessing TBLT.

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Understanding Language Teaching; From Method to Postmethod

“Break the pattern which connects the items of learning,” warned the celebrated anthropologist, Gregory Bateson, “and you necessarily destroy all quality” (1979, p. 8, italics in original). He issued this warning in a letter to his fellow regents of the University of California, complaining about American schools that teach the students “almost nothing of the pattern which connects” (p. 8). The pattern which connects. That’s what this book is all about. Not the so profound pattern that governs the evolution and ecology of all life on earth, but the more mundane pattern that connects the various elements of learning, teaching, and teacher education in the narrow field of teaching English to speakers of other languages. It may appear to be inappropriate or even anticlimactic, to link the concern for an understanding of the ecological macrocosm with the concern for an understanding of the pedagogical microcosm. But the whole point, if we follow the Batesonian argument, is that the elements constituting each are indeed interconnected in ways that may not be readily apparent.

The book is divided into three parts: (1) Language, Learning, and Teaching, (2) Language Teaching Methods, and (3) Postmethod Perspectives. I make it a point to highlight the underlying links within and between the parts in order to bring out the pattern which connects.

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Teaching English as a Foreign Language

This book is written for teachers of all backgrounds. Our aim is to discuss a wide range of teaching problems—from classroom techniques to school organization—in order to help practicing teachers in their daily tasks. We have adopted an eclectic approach, recognizing that the teaching of English must be principled without being dogmatic and systematic without being inflexible. We have tried to show how the underlying principles of successful foreign language teaching can provide teachers in a wide range of EFL situations with a basic level of competence which can be a springboard for their subsequent professional development. We gratefully record our debt to colleagues and students past and present at the London University Institute of Education, whose experience and thinking have helped shape our own. Particularly, we would like to thank our colleague John Norrish for compiling the bibliography.

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Beyond Methods

This book is about language teaching in a postmethod era. It reflects the heightened awareness that the L2 profession witnessed during the waning years of the twentieth century The book consists of thirteen chapters. The first deals with the concept of teaching in general and the second with the concept of postmethod pedagogy in particular. Thus, these two chapters lay the philosophical and conceptual foundation needed to make sense of what follows. The last chapter pulls together ideas from different chapters, and offers a classroom observational scheme that can be used by teachers to monitor how well they theorize what they practice, and to practice what they theorize. All the chapters have built-in reflective tasks that encourage readers to pause at crucial points along the text and think critically about the issues in light of their own personal as well as professional experience.

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