4.1.7. Task-based learning

Many methodologists have concentrated not so much on the nature of language input, but on the learning tasks that students are involved in. There has been an arrangement that rather than pure rote learning or de-contextualised practice, language has to be acquired as a result of some deeper experience than the concentration on a grammar point.

In the 1970s the British applied linguist R. Allwright conducted an experiment which challenged traditional notions of language teaching. He theorised that ‘If the language teacher’s management activities are directed exclusively at involving the learners in solving communication problems in the target language, then language learning will take care of itself’ (1977).

In other words, there is no need for formal instruction, e.g., the teaching of a grammatical point. Instead, students are simply asked to perform communicative activities in which they have the foreign language. The more they do this, the better they become at using the foreign language.

R. Allwright’s experiment took place at the University of Essex where a number of foreign students were about to take their postgraduate courses. They were given activities that forced them to use English, but at no time did their teachers help them with the language or tell them anything about English grammar, etc. They refused to correct errors too. Thus the students played communication games or were sent to the library to find out how to use the card index system. In another example they had to interview one of the professors (who was unconnected with language teaching in any way) to find out certain information. The students were all at roughly intermediate level before they arrived at the university. Apparently the results were extremely satisfactory.

In 1979 in Bangalore, Southern India, N.S. Prabhu originated a long-running project, which used task-based learning in a very different context. Being dissatisfied with traditional methodology and grammatical syllabus, Prabhu suggested that if the emphasis in class were on meaning, the language would be learnt incidentally. The way this was to come about was through a series of tasks that had a problem-solving element. In solving the problems the students naturally came into contact with the language, but this contact happened because the students were actively involved in reaching solutions to tasks. In other words, Prabhu, like Allwright, theorised that students were just as likely to learn structures if they were thinking of something else, as they were if they were only concentrated on structures themselves.

Prabhu called the tasks which he and his colleagues prepared a procedural syllabus. Unlike other syllabuses, for example those based on lists of structures or functions, the Bangalore Project’s syllabuses comprised a list of tasks which consisted of things like finding your way on maps, interpreting timetables or answering questions about dialogues in which the students have to solve problems.

The main interaction in the classroom took place between the teacher and the students (generally between 45 and 60 in number). The class performed pre-tasks, which involved questions and vocabulary checking. Then students answered the questions with which they solved the problems that were set. E.g., students looked at a train timetable and discussed questions, such as: ‘When does the Brindavan Express leave Madras?’ or ‘When does the Brindavan Express arrive at Bangalore?’ The teacher helped the students through their difficulties with the answers. Next, the teacher handed out another timetable and after asking a few more questions, left the students to do the task individually.

The Bangalore Project is important not just because its originator had the courage to put his theories into large-scale practice, but because it is based on quite radical theories of language learning. Like Krashen, Prabhu believes in the importance of the development of comprehension before production. And like Allwright, Prabhu sees meaning and tasks as the focus where language learning can take care of itself.