Exploratory task 1.5 Match the following tasks with the theories of learning.
Learning task |
Theories of learning |
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A/ Behaviourism
B/ Cognitivism
C/ Mentalism
D/ Nativism
E/ Environmentalism
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Teaching is organised with tasks for the learners. A task is an activity with an objective of fulfilment, procedures towards the objective and the outcome open for evaluation. A task can be text based (a text can be a dialogue, a monologue or just a sentence). Text-based teaching is organised along specific stages of the learning process: presentation, practice and production This framework has become fairly popular and is widely known as the three-phase (PPP) framework used in teaching. Presentation of the material is presentation of the language to be learned in various ways. Practice can be based on drills in the form of the repetition, substitution or transformation form. Meaningful drills can employ guessing, imagination, elicitation from pictures and texts, open-ended discussions, making suggestions, drawing inferences. Production is demonstration of the knowledge(After Byrne, D. 1996. Teaching Oral English. Longman). An alternative to the text-based teaching is a task-based approach. Tasks can be closed (highly structured and controlled) and open (loosely structured with a less specific outcome. They can include listing and mind-mapping, ordering and sorting, comparing and contrasting, problem solving, sharing personal experience, creative projects etc. (After Willis, J. 1996. A Framework for Task-Based Learning. Longman)
Exploratory task 1.6 Represent the following task as a task cycle and complete the right-hand column
Task |
Task cycle |
In this task you will have to fill in one word in each space. The missing words are all meaningful words essential for the topic under discussion. It is important to have a general understanding of the whole text first before you start the task. |
Pre-task introduction:
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Task performance:
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Language focus:
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Warming-up discussion
List the most typical English learner errors
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The process of learning a language is never error free. The term error is employed to mean regular deviations in the learner language from the rules of morphology and syntax, stemming from the acquired competence. The term mistake is used to refer to language inaccuracies, which unlike errors stem from lack of competence in morphology or syntax and occur in the very process of speech production, i.e. during performance. The term slip is mentioned in the context of this paper to denote occasional inaccuracies caused by language processing failures. (Ellis R.1994.P. 47-68). There are several theories, explaining the occurrence of errors in learner language performance (D.Larsen-Freeman and M.Long 1991. R.Ellis 1994). They include exposure to the language environment filled with errors (faulty language of the teacher and peers), negative transfer from the native language, developmental sequences and the stage of language acquisition. Slip causing factors are processing failures such as blends ( two identical in meaning words form one in an utterance as in "torrible = terrible and horrible") (Garman, M. 1994. Psycholinguistics. CUP). A typical learner error phenomenon is "error persistence". The errors once corrected do not necessarily disappear for the learners' speech. A good amount of errors persist and the learners continue to "make errors" no matter how hard the teachers try to eradicate them. The graph shows the relationship between the errors made, repeated and improved:
Number of errors
Made Repeated Improved.