TBLT（精选三篇）
TBLT 篇1
1 任务难度分析
任务难度是任务型语言教学首先要考虑的问题, 它是研究者、课程开发者、大纲设计者、教材编写者以及教师所关注的焦点, 却很难确定 (Nunan 2004:85) 。任务难度由多种因素决定, 人们的看法也不尽相同。有的学者认为任务的难度不仅存在于任务本身, 还受背景知识、语言、认知、时间等因素影响 (如Skehan 1998) ;有的学者认为任务的难与易是针对任务执行者而言, 任务难度在某种程度上是个体学习者本人对任务难易的认识, 个体差异因素如智力、语言能力、学习风格、记忆能力和学习动机都会在不同程度上影响任务难度 (如Ellis 2003) ;也有学者建议通过对注意力要求的高低来确定任务难度, 越难的任务对学习者注意力要求程度越高, 注意力消耗量越大 (如魏永红2004) 。下面主要根据Skehan (1998) 与Ellis (2003) 两位学者的研究成果, 分析影响任务难度的因素, 确定任务难易度的方法。
1.1 Skehan角度的难度因素
在影响任务难度因素研究中, Skehan (1998:99) 提供了一个较为完整的任务难度体系, 包括语码复杂度 (code complexity) 、认知复杂度 (cognitive complexity) 和交际压力 (communicative stress) 。语码复杂度包含语言复杂性和多样性、词汇密度和多样性、信息密集度。认知复杂度包含认知熟悉度和认知处理, 其中认知熟悉度包括对话题的熟悉度和可预测度、说话方式和对任务的熟悉度;认知处理包括信息处理、所需的认知操作量、信息的明晰程度和信息类型。
为了给学习任务分级, 除考虑语言难度和认知复杂度之外, Skehan认为还必须考虑交际方面的压力, 有六个因素可能对交际压力产生影响, 包括时间限制与压力、语速、参与人数、文本的长度、控制互动的机会等。时间限制是对完成任务的时间要求, 时间越短, 交际压力就会越大。控制互动的机会指学习者对任务、完成任务的方式可以施加影响的程度。
国内学者罗少茜 (2006) 通过对学生所陈述的影响任务难度的各因素、学生在实际完成任务时的表现, 支持了Skehan (1998) 的任务范畴及任务难度体系, 例如语言、信息、媒介、条件等。龚亚夫、罗少茜 (2006) 从学生和教师的角度分析影响任务难度的因素, 在Skehan (1998) 难度理论框架和Norris et al. (1998) 的语言行为测试原型任务难度框架的基础上, 对任务难度体系进行改进, 制定了自己的任务难度框架, 附加任务条件 (包括语言水平、语言能力、语言技巧、文化其它) 这一影响任务难度的因素。
1.2 Ellis角度的难度因素
根据Ellis (2003) , 任务难度受三方面因素的影响:任务本身属性、学习者和任务实际操作过程。
任务本身属性影响任务难度, 包括输入材料 (input) 、任务条件 (conditions) 、推理过程 (processes) 和任务结果 (outcomes) 。首先, 输入材料也就是任务本身, 常常会给学习者提供一些信息, 这些因素也会构成不同的复杂度, 比如, 媒介、语码复杂度、认知复杂度、信息熟悉度。对于输入材料, Nunan (2004:114) 指出最先考虑的影响因素为输入材料的复杂度, 其中语法最为重要。在其它因素相同的情况下, 当输入材料里简单句比复合句多时, 材料相对来说会容易些。文章的编排设计, 有标题、小标题或图示会容易些。文章的体裁, 叙述文、描写文要比摘要、论说文等表达观点和态度的文本要容易些。同时, 语言输入材料因素与学习者因素之间存在相互影响、相互依存的关系, 比如, 输入材料语法复杂度与学习者的语言知识之间存在互动。教师和教材编写者如果不了解学习者的语言知识水平和已有的背景知识, 就难以估计输入材料的难易度 (Nunan 2004) 。其次, 任务条件包括意义磋商条件、任务要求、任务要求的话语模式。Ellis (2003) 认为任务条件并没有受到足够的重视。最后, 任务结果包含以下方面内容: (1) 任务输出结果的媒介, 在任务输出结果的媒介中, 图示和写作比口语输出结果的方式简单, 对于初学者来说, 应该适当地使用相对简单的任务; (2) 范围, 任务输出结果的范围包括封闭式输出结果和开放式输出结果, 有固定答案的封闭式输出结果比有不同答案的开放式输出结果容易; (3) 话语域, 任务输出结果话语域, 如列举、描写、叙述、分类、指示、议论等。 (4) 结果的复杂度。
学习者因素亦影响任务难度。学习者是任务型课堂活动的主体, 活动的开展, 以学生的生活经验和兴趣为出发点, 确保学习者在课堂上积极参与。学习者自身的差异会使他们对同一任务的难度评估产生很大的差异, 包括语言能力、自信心、学习动机、学习风格、注意力集中程度等。因此, 学习者的个人因素与任务难度有关, 影响任务的完成。
最后, 任务实际操作过程影响任务难度。例如, 如果有效利用任务前活动, 开展词汇学习, 使学生提前学习任务所需词汇, 就为完成任务做好充分准备, 任务难度会随之降低。
2 任务分级
分级是对语言课程或教材内容的合理安排, 使之有利于学习。分级会影响单词、词义、时态、结构、主题、功能、技能等的排列顺序, 可以根据项目难度、在书面或口头英语中的使用频率, 或对学习者的重要程度进行分级 (Richards et al.1985) 。任务的简单与复杂并不是用传统的语言分级标准来定的, 而是根据任务本身某些变量, 比如, 完成任务所需步骤、任务有多少答案、涉及多少人、任务的时间空间有无改变, 所有这些只是一小部分目前已提出的潜在的分级和评价标准 (Long&Crookes1992) 。由此可见, 对进行任务分级排序相当复杂。
2.1 根据任务类型分级
Prabhu (1987:46-47) 提出聚焦于意义的三种任务类型:信息差活动 (information-gap activity) 、推理差活动 (reasoning-gap activity) 和观点差活动 (opinion-gap activity) 。信息差活动指在双方拥有信息不一致的情况下, 通过对话填补信息差来完成任务。例如, 对子活动 (pair work) , 会话双方只知道全部信息中的一部分, 双方通过交流, 帮助对方补全信息。推理差活动是学习者根据所给的有限信息、自身知识储备进行推理、演绎来获取新信息, 完成任务。例如, 根据学生课表绘制教师的时间表。观点差活动是学习者在已给出的情景范围内, 表明个人喜好、感受、态度, 进行交流的过程。例如, 补全故事、参与社会问题讨论。在这三种任务中, 信息差任务最简单, 可作为推理差任务的序曲;观点差任务最难, 它的答案是不定的。
2.2 根据影响任务难度因素分级
任务的分级和排序是根据学生的需求和学生对难度的意念来定的。因为各种因素的卷入和各种因素的相互影响, 难度的确定成为主要问题。当任务设计完毕, 就必须将它们标上级别, 这样可以将任务按难度排序, 列入教学大纲 (Nunan 1993、1989, 转引自龚亚夫等2006:311) 。
结合上述影响任务难度因素, 如输入材料、学习者、活动过程等, Nunan (2004) 主张通过调控活动过程的难度水平、而不是简化输入材料来控制任务难度, 大致从社会和人际关系语言、信息语言和情感表达三方面将任务分为初学者、初中级学习者和高中级学习者三个级别。此外, Nunan还从听、说、读、写四项微技能的角度, 将每项技能相应分为七个级别任务, 并对每个级别进行了详细的描述。
3 国内研究发展
国内关于任务难度研究起步较晚, 不过取得了较快的发展。从吴旭东 (1997) 对外语学习任务难易度确定原则的探讨开始, 国内开始了对任务难度的研究。之后, 何莲珍和王敏 (2003) 就任务难度、任务复杂度和语言水平对语言表达准确度的影响和它们之间的交互作用进行研究。以往研究中, 大部分学者将研究重心放在了理论层面, 较少学者 (如何莲珍、王敏2003;罗少茜2006;黄嫱2009) 进行了实证研究。国内任务难度研究可根据国外已形成的理论基础, 在此之上结合中国外语教学与外语学习的实际情况进行研究。当然, 要周密地考虑到所有因素是十分困难的, 国内关于任务难度的研究近些年有些发展, 但针对高校学生的任务难度框架仍然是一个难题, 目前还没有形成一个完善的、操作性强的难度评价体系。
陈慧媛、吴旭东 (1998) 的研究是国内最早关于写作任务难度分级的研究, 他们根据回忆性写作、归纳性写作和标题性写作这三种写作模式对每种任务的难度进行分析, 根据各项任务的认知负担大小对写作任务进行难度等级划分。由此得出结论:归纳性写作任务最难, 因为归纳性写作时, 学习者无法任意使用已有知识。标题性写作任务其次, 因为在写作中学习者可以自行决定写作内容, 根据自己的语言水平来表达相关内容。回忆性写作任务最容易, 由于写作所需的仅是对输入的记忆。此后, 一部分学者 (龚亚夫、罗少茜2006;黄泽锐2007) 对任务难度分级进行了定量与定性的研究。目前任务难度分级相对任务型语言教学的其它领域研究来说还比较薄弱, 因此仍存在许多值得进一步深入研究的问题, 例如, 把任务难度分级与听、说、读、写四个语言技能结合进行的系统研究还不多。
4 启示与展望
在任务难度成分的研究中, Skehan (1998) 的任务难度框架最具代表性, 它包含完成任务的内部和外部条件, 是目前较为全面的难度因素综合体。通过调整难度框架, 可以增加或减少任务的难度, 易于教师调控任务难度, 因材施教。在教学实践中, 任务的设计大多比较随意, 现阶段对任务难度的科学调控和相关研究极为缺乏, 要想有效地发挥任务型教学在课堂教学中的作用, 将学习任务科学分级, 首先需要深入了解任务难度。“没有确定任务难度的办法, 任务的排序以及组合就只能凭直觉” (Nunan 2004:85) 。任务难度与任务分级相互关联, 任务难度的确定是任务分级的基础, 两者共同构成有效实施任务型语言教学的中心环节。
TBLT 篇2
The four participants are four Chinese MA students from Newcastle University， whose language proficiency varies from B1-C1 based on CEFR. Considering their age， proficiency and can-do statement， a highly meaning focused topic as house renting in Newcastle is chosen. This topic links their real-world relationship， which means they have some schemata of this topic. The materials are authentic. Clips are from the property officer of the UK； written texts are extracted from the University websites； and the four accommodations are selected from house rental websites in Newcastle. The language skill is focused on speaking， unfocused open speaking and decision making. The communicative goals are expressing agreement and disagreement in different ways as well as give reasons. The linguistic goal is to use third person singular correctly.
Task Implementation
1. Pre-task
In this stage， the teacher role is to prime learners to focus on the topic， give precise instructions with a clear completion point， and introduce the vocabulary associated with the topic.
Firstly， the teacher showed three pictures induce students to guess what the task would involve. It helped the lesson procedure went on. After that the non-task preparation activity， brain-storming， activated learners’ schemata and successfully encouraged them to engage in participation. These two activities helped learners know what they were going to talk about and assist to formulate the language needed to express their ideas later
The video materials that involved the ‘tips before renting’ helped learners recalled and gained extra knowledge based on question and answer activity and information gap activities. Meanwhile， useful vocabularies are highlighted to draw learners’ attention. The tasks end up with a complete form filling of the house renting information. In this activity， learners were provided help on vocabulary comprehension and the teacher as a knowledge knower and facilitator to help them understand the instructions and implemented as planned. The last activity is the reasoning activities， in which learners are required to make an order from the most important and the least according to their own opinion. Through the two input activates， the last activity is a production phase.
2. Main Task
In this stage， students are required to come up with the best accommodation they want to live according to the previous ‘make order’ activity in the pre-task. This input retrieval process helps students to focus on language and go beyond the information provided. Finally， opinion gap activity that involved personal preference， feeling and attitude， could give response to the accommodation selection. It could be seen as a production process. It provided every student with plenty of opportunities to use language， to expose the third person singular when they describe the accommodations， and to show agreement and disagreement as well. For example， student A said ‘I don’t think house A is the best choice， because it takes 20 minutes to the university’. Finally， a short presentation was given with a clear decision as a communicative outcome.
3. Post-task
In this stage， learners are required to perform consciousness-raising and practice activities directed at the third person singular. The objective is to review the language form and help them to use it correctly.
Firstly， the teacher chose some sentences selected in the main-tasks with the wrong form to exam whether students could identify the mistakes. This could help learners not to be isolated for the form-focused activity. In this activity， the teacher found some way to facilitate learners to identify the language form by individuals or by group discussion. Teachers asked learners to read the sentence and then ask them if they can find the mistakes. Therefore， the noticing function could be achieved. Then， teacher made up relevant questions about the third person singular to help students to enhance their explicit knowledge. After that， plenty activities with the third person singular are provided them to do. The last activity is a production activity. Learners are required to introduce their current accommodation with the third person singular to their partners and then give some comments. This is the production part that provides learners with chances to use the third person singular.
TBLT 篇3
The recent search shows that the native-speakers of English are outnumbered by the non-native speakers (Crystal 2003;Graddol 2006) .Thus the English is escaping from the Anglophone hegemony of Angle-Saxon native speakers.To achieve economic, political and cultural communication goal, English is common to serve as the bridge between people of different mother tongue background.Its role as a value free means of international communication belonging equally to all who speak it as a first or second language now needs emphasizing.The concept of English as a lingua franca is thus proposed.
Because of the expanding international communication, great importance is attached to cultivating students’communicating ability.However, the classroom teaching is the major means for Chinese students to acquire the second language.In this way, students’chance to use language is restricted.To facilitate students’use of English, classroom is supposed to simulate a real world to let students immerse themselves in the authentic communicative situation.Task-based language teaching (TBLT) methods is to some extent committed to such expectations.
In most circumstances, L2 learners make the second language acquisition (SLA) process happen under the non-native circumstances.With this trend, it’s necessary to clarify the guiding role of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in the classroom teaching.ELF is dynamic and fluid, communicators use various strategies to compensate for the communicative defects.All these strategies are somewhat observable.In the TBLT process, precisely speaking, a simulating setting of real world or ELF performing stage for L2learners, learners are expected to finish the assigned part and to acquire the certain linguistic knowledge and communicative techniques.In this process, the L2 learners are actually fostering a concept of employing English as a Lingua Franca.
This paper explores the following questions:the concept of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in the task-based language teaching (TBLT) process;the nature of task-based language teaching;and the implication of English as a lingua franca for taskbased language teaching.
2 The Concept of English as a Lingua Franca
English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) is defined as the use of English as a contact language between or among.Samarin defines ELF as‘any lingual medium of communication between people of different mother tongues, for whom it is a second language’ (1987;371) .ELF is used in contexts which are not geographically located but can be virtual and transient in nature, and can also involve speakers from both the mother tongue and post-colonial contexts.ELF encounters can take place over the internet as well as an office in Beijing, a lecture in a university in London, a bar in Milan, a museum in Paris, and is spoken as a contact language by speakers from varying linguacultural backgrounds, where both the community of speakers and location can be changing.Therefore, communication involving the ELF can happen everywhere and are not restricted by any background of the speakers.Speakers can sheer themselves of the cultural baggage or the trepidation of non-native accent so as to focus on conveying meaning and achieving the free and smooth communication.
Firstly, ELF is not a monolithic or a single variety because cultural and linguistic resources are inevitably transformed as they are locally appropriated.Secondly, the ELF community of speakers is not clearly identifiable within the traditional parameters.It is not homogeneous, as it includes people with different linguacultural backgrounds, and is highly variable, as the speakers may change more or less frequently over time and space.
Research has found that speakers adapt and blend English innovatively and creatively in order to co-construct meaning and ensure understanding (cf.for example Cogo and Dewey 2012) .
The point is that the rapid development technology permits the frequent communication between people of different linguacultural grounds.Thus ELF is common in the international communication.
3 Nature of Task-based Language Teaching
3.1 Definition of task-based language teaching (TBLT)
By‘task’is meant the hundred and one things people do in everyday life, at work, at play, and in between.Long (1985:89) .In the pedagogical perspective, it means that the task-oriented classroom teaching should be appealing to the students, in which the students are learning by doing activities and all these activities are based on the daily life.Prabhu (1987:24) defines that a‘task’is an activity which requirs learners to arrive at an outcome from given information through some process of thought, and which allowed teachers to control and regulate process.This means that input is the start of the TBLT course and teachers to some degree control the whole process and required to regulate the operation of the task.Numan defined the communication task and pedagogical task.
Nunan believes a communication task is a piece of classroom work during which learners’attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form
A pedagogical task is a piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing, or interacting in the target language while their attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to express meaning and in which the attention is to convey meaning rather than to manipulate form..Nunan (2004:4) .
3.2 Features of task-Based language teaching
Task-based language teaching (TBLT) emphasizes on the use of authentic language material and on asking students to do meaningful tasks using the target language.All these tasks are simulating the real world happenings.Thus English functioning the communicative medium in the classroom is conceptualized as the English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) .The target of TBLT is to foster the students’awareness of how meaning can be conveyed efficiently.This makes TBLL especially popular for developing target language fluency and student confidence.Task-based language teaching incldes six phase.
In the pre-task, the teacher will present what will be expected of the students in the task phase.The instructor may also present a model of the task by either doing it themselves or by presenting picture, audio, or video demonstrating the task.
During the task phase, the students perform the task, typically in small groups, although this is dependent on the type of activity.And unless the teacher plays a particular role in the task, then the teacher's role is typically limited to one of an observer or counselor—thus the reason for it being a more student-centered methodology
Having completed the task, the students prepare either a written or oral report to present to the class.The instructor takes questions and otherwise simply monitors the students
The students then present this information to the rest of the class.Here the teacher may provide written or oral feedback, as appropriate, and the students observing may do the same.
Here the focus returns to the teacher who reviews what happened in the task, in regards to language.It may include language forms that the students were using, problems that students had.
The practice stage may be used to cover material mentioned by the teacher in the analysis stage.It is an opportunity for the teacher to emphasize key language.
Task-based learning is advantageous to allow students to use all the language they know and are learning, rather than just the'target language'of the lesson.Furthermore, as the tasks are likely to be familiar to the students, students are more likely to be engaged.
4 Implications of English as a Lingua Franca for TBLT
Rather than modeling the behaviors and expectations of a native English speaker, the classroom teaching should prepare the learners for ELF interactions.This would be doing students a great service by developing their strategic competence on the basis that they will come to each interaction without sharing with their interlocutor a common social grammar, that they should be encouraged to employ any means at their disposal to establish mutual intelligibility in negotiating that interaction successfully.Those means may involving departing from NS norms, adopting pre-emptive linguistic behaviors to avoid potential breakdowns in communication, code switching, and borrowing from other languages, however, these strategies should be regarded as the strengths that demonstrate developing competence as an ELF speakers.In this sense, ELF and TBLT share a common ground that language is for communicating meaning instead of focusing on the form.TBLT attempts to link classroom language learning with language activation outside the classroom.In the task-based language teaching classroom, the task must be drawn from the real world activities.In this way, in the process of completing the task, the learner’s attention is attracted to the cultivating of certain communicative techniques.
Formulaic speech consists of expressions which are learned as unanalyzable wholes and employed on particular situations’ (Lyons1968:177) .Ellis (1984) also suggests that formulaic speech can consist of entire scripts, such as greeting sequences, which the learner can memorize because they are more or less fixed and predicable Creative speech is the product of L2 rules.These are creative in Chomskian sense that they permit the L2 learners to produce entirely novel sentences.They are the rules that constitute the interlanguage system.It’s easy for learners to memorize the formulaic speech pattern, and this can be achieved through frequent repetition of certain speech sequences.However, the creative speech involves many unpredictable elements which can only be gradually internalized.Thus the post-task recollection is vital to the L2 learners.TBLT classroom teaching in most cases are group work or pairwork.The partner as the ELF user is an indispensable source for the L2 learners to drill the answers of the following questions: (1) what are the things that influence what we say and how we say it (the answer maybe:the persons we are talking to and our relation to them, the context where the real conversation is taking place, the feelings of our interlocutors, the impression or image we want to enact, our purposes in the conversation;our emotion at the talking moment) ; (2) how do things affect what we say and how we say it (the answers maybe:our way of saying it, directly or indirectly, our emotion towards the interlocutor;the amount of what we say;the formal or casuallanguage we use) ; (3) why are we sometimes indirect in way we say things (answers maybe:we don’t want to leave a bad impression;we may concern some political issues;they are taboos;we don’t know how much the interlocutor knows) ; (4) what happens when we don’t get an expression at disposal to express the intended meaning (answers maybe:to use gestures;toparaphrase;to replace it with ahypernym) .
TBLT focuses on the process rather than the product.In the task-completing process, all the questions here need discussing to derive from them the communicative competence.It will lay a foundation for the future ELF communicating by analyzing the dimensions underlying the task performance process and communication process.
Kirkpatrick (2007) believes that it’s the mutual understanding, cooperation and tolerance of variations’of different cultural group that allows them to communicate so well.Cultural sympathy is essential for the successful ELF communication.It’s necessary to foster the L2 learners’cultural sensitivity.In the task-based language teaching process, the following steps can be adopted:have students translate speech acts from their own language into English and discuss the pragmatic norms of different speech communities;guide discussion on how speech acts in learners’own languages, and encourage students to discover ways of recognizing, negotiating, and mitigating the possible fallout of different realizations of the same speech act;encourage learners to become their own ethnographers and observe how speech acts are realized by different L1 speakers in particular contexts of use and to contrast this with their L1;engage learners in discourse completion tasks based, where possible, on authentic ELF exchanges and presented as a problem-solving activity where learners are required to employ their strategic competence to work a solution to the discourse.
5 Conclusions
The emergence or English as a Lingua franca is a dominant phenomenon with the rapid expansion of international communication.For people from different countries tend to use English as the bridge to communicate.Traditional classroom teaching restricted to the prescribed textbooks can no longer satisfy the increasing requirement of fostering bilingual communicators to perform international affairs.With regarding to the fact that the L2 learners are non-native speakers and the goal of learning English is to use it as a medium to communicate with the foreigners, the concept of ELF is thus fostered.As the regulators of classroom task, the teacher is supposed to supplement the breakdowns of the communication and to develop consciously the students’communicative techniques and relive them the pressure of non-native oriented unsettlement by fostering in them the concept of using ELF.There are still few empirical studies of the ELF interaction in the TBLT classroom.Student-centered classroom teaching requires the self-monitoring mechanism.Student should be assessed by their cultural sensitivity and their ability to traverse the cultural differences in the ELF in-teraction.Tasks can achieve such expectations needs exploring.
摘要：Task-based language teaching (TBLT) methods to some extent counteract the dilemma of emphasis on authentic con text and the focus on non-native L2 learning circumstance.The notion of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) is much a product in formed the concept that language acquisition is a process of learning language and using language.This paper explores the con cept of English as a lingua franca (ELF) and the nature of task-based language teaching.ELF and TBLT share a common ground that the interlocutors aim to convey information and sheer themselves of the baggage of English hegemony.Thus the implications of ELF for TBLT are discussed.
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