Second Language Acquisition and Task-Based Language Teaching E-Book

Mike Long

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 1145

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

This book offers an in-depth explanation of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and the methods necessary to implement it in the language classroom successfully. * Combines a survey of theory and research in instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) with insights from language teaching and the philosophy of education * Details best practice for TBLT programs, including discussion of learner needs and means analysis; syllabus design; materials writing; choice of methodological principles and pedagogic procedures; criterion-referenced, task-based performance assessment; and program evaluation * Written by an esteemed scholar of second language acquisition with over 30 years of research and classroom experience * Considers diffusion of innovation in education and the potential impact of TBLT on foreign and second language learning

Leseprobe

This edition first published 2015

© 2015 John Wiley and Sons, Inc.

Registered Office

John Wiley & Sons Ltd, The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

Editorial Offices

350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148-5020, USA

9600 Garsington Road, Oxford, OX4 2DQ, UK

The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester, West Sussex, PO19 8SQ, UK

For details of our global editorial offices, for customer services, and for information about how to apply for permission to reuse the copyright material in this book please see our website at www.wiley.com/wiley-blackwell.

The right of Mike Long to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Designations used by companies to distinguish their products are often claimed as trademarks. All brand names and product names used in this book are trade names, service marks, trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. The publisher is not associated with any product or vendor mentioned in this book.

Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. It is sold on the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in rendering professional services and neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for damages arising herefrom. If professional advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional should be sought.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Long, Michael H.

    Second language acquisition and task-based language teaching / Mike Long. – First Edition.

        pages cm

    Includes index.

    ISBN 978-0-470-65893-2 (hardback) – ISBN 978-0-470-65894-9 (paper)    1.  Second language acquisition–Study and teaching.    2.  Language and languages–Study and teaching.    3.  Task analysis in education.    I.  Title.

    P118.2.L668 2015

    418.0071–dc23

                                                        2014015377

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover image: Liubov Popova, Painterly Architectonic (detail), gouache and watercolor, 1918. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of the Estate of Katherine S. Dreier, 1953.6.92

Preface and Acknowledgments

Language teaching (LT) is notorious for methodological pendulum swings, amply documented in published histories of the field. Currently, “task-based” learning and teaching are increasingly fashionable, and many of the very same textbook writers and commercial publishers who made large sums of money out of the structural, notional, functional, topical, and lexical movements of the past 30 years are now repeating the performance with tasks. Most of what they are selling is task-based in name only, however. Miscellaneous “communication tasks” of various kinds, many not very communicative at all, and use of which pre-dates current ideas about task-based learning and teaching, have replaced exercises or activities, but, like their predecessors, are still used to deliver a pre-planned, overt or covert linguistic syllabus of one sort or another. Tasks are carriers of target structures and vocabulary items, in other words, not themselves the content of a genuine task syllabus. Their role lies in task-supported, not task-based, LT. Alternatively, such tasks figure as one strand in a so-called hybrid syllabus in textbooks whose authors and publishers claim to combine some or all of grammatical, lexical, notional, functional, topical, situational, and task syllabi under one visually attractive cover, seemingly untroubled by, or in some cases unaware of, their incompatible psycholinguistic underpinnings.

Such materials may or may not have merit, aside from their earning power – certainly, many students around the world have learned languages through (or despite?) their use, some to high levels, for a long time – but they are not what I mean by task-based LT, and I will not be spending much time on them in this book. Instead, I will focus on one of the few genuinely task-based approaches. It is not the only one, not necessarily the best one – an empirical question, after all, to which none of us has the final answer – and may ultimately turn out to have all sorts of weaknesses, but it is the one I have been developing over the past 30 years, with growing, and increasingly valuable, participation by a number of other researchers and classroom practitioners in many parts of the world, and so the one with which I am most familiar. Unlike synthetic linguistic syllabi, it is broadly consistent with what second language acquisition (SLA) research has shown about how learners acquire second and foreign languages and has been implemented in a variety of settings. From the beginning, back in 1980, I have referred to it as (uppercase) Task-Based Language Teaching (‘TBLT,’ not to be confused with ‘BLT,’ the sandwich).

The purpose of this book, however, is not to “convert” readers to TBLT; many will feel they have achieved positive results without it. Some may find it attractive, some may find parts of it worth including in different kinds of programs but reject other parts, and some may consider the whole thing an abomination. Nor is the purpose to provide a survey of the field of LT and applied linguistics, with equal time for all the many proposals out there. LT is a dynamic field, featuring a wide range of views on how best to carry it out, many of which conflict, and not all of which could possibly be correct. This book is intended as a contribution to the debate. My aim is to offer what I believe to be a rational argument for a particular approach, with supporting evidence from theory, research, and classroom experience, followed by a step-by-step description of how to implement TBLT for those interested in doing so. I am especially keen to show the linkage between theory and research findings in SLA, the process LT is designed to facilitate, and TBLT. I will make the case as explicitly as possible and as strongly as I feel warranted. The strength of an argument draws attention to an idea and simultaneously makes it easier for critics to focus on what it is about it that they find objectionable. Explicitness helps remove ambiguities, facilitates testing of ideas, and speeds up identification of flaws. That way lies progress, and faster progress.

I first outlined a primitive rationale for TBLT in courses at the University of Pennsylvania from 1980 to 1982 and sketched the ideas publicly in a plenary address to the Inter-Agency Language Roundtable at Georgetown in 1983, a presentation that appeared in print two years later (Long 1985a). Expanded and modified considerably ever since in response to theoretical developments, the results of empirical studies, and classroom experience, TBLT remains a work in progress. Motivated by research findings in educational psychology, curriculum and instruction, SLA, an embryonic theory of instructed second language acquisition (ISLA; see Chapter 3), and principles from the philosophy of education (see Chapter 4), it has gradually evolved into a comprehensive approach to course design, implementation, and evaluation. First and foremost, it remains an attempt to respond to the growing demand for accountable communicative LT programs designed for learners with real-world needs for functional L2 abilities.

In the first four chapters, which make up Part One of this book, ‘Theory and Research,’ I review TBLT's rationale, including its psycholinguistic and philosophical underpinnings. In Part Two, ‘Design and Implementation,’ I devote seven more practically oriented chapters to describing and illustrating procedures, and in some cases problems, in each of the six basic stages in designing, implementing, and evaluating a TBLT program: needs and means analysis, syllabus design, materials development, choice of methodological principles and pedagogic procedures, student assessment, and program evaluation. Finally, in a single chapter that constitutes Part Three, ‘The Road Ahead,’ I discuss TBLT's prospects and potential shelf-life and identify some issues in need of further research. An appendix lists abbreviations used.

Many people have influenced the ideas in this book, including numerous researchers in SLA and applied linguistics, and many students in my courses and seminars on TBLT at the Universities of Pennsylvania, Hawaii, and Maryland, and summer courses overseas. They are acknowledged and their work referenced in the main text. While I was writing it, several individuals graciously agreed to read and comment on sections, or in some cases, a whole chapter. Others provided additional information on their work when I asked, chased down recalcitrant missing references, gave me permission to include data and examples from their materials development projects, or joined with me in needs analyses and TBLT teacher education sessions and in implementing some of the ideas in the classroom. I am very grateful to the following for their assistance with one or more of these tasks: Nick Ellis, Karen Watson-Gegeo, John Norris, Carmen Munoz, Peter Robinson, Catherine Doughty, David Ellis, Kris Van den Branden, Helen Marriot, Malcolm Johnston, the late, sorely missed, Torsten Schlak, Gloria Bosch Roig, Gisela Granena, Nicky Bartlett, Stephen O'Connell, Susan Benson, Sarah Epling, Hana Jan, Graham Crookes, Howard Nicholas, Megan Masters, Goretti Prieto Botana, Katie Nielson, Marta Gonzalez-Lloret, Assma Al-Thowaini, Buthainah Al-Thowaini, Martha Pennington, Rhonda Oliver, Payman Vafaee, Jiyong Lee, Jaemyung Goo, and Nicole Ziegler. I am also very grateful to the three anonymous reviewers of the final manuscript; their expert comments were very helpful and led me to make a number of changes. Needless to say, none of these people necessarily agrees with everything that follows or is responsible for any errors it may contain. Last, but not least, I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Julia Kirk, Danielle Descoteaux, and Elizabeth Saucier at Wiley-Blackwell. Without their patience and encouragement, the book would never have seen the light of day.

Second Language Acquisition and Task-Based Language Teaching is dedicated to my wonderful son, Jordi Nicholas Long.

Mike Long

University of Maryland

June 2014

Part OneTheory and Research

Chapter 1Why TBLT?

1.1. The importance of second language learning and teaching in the twenty-first century

1.2. TBLT and the meaning of ‘task’

1.3. A rationale for TBLT

1.3.1. Consistency with SLA theory and research findings

1.3.2. Basis in philosophy of education

1.3.3. Accountability

1.3.4. Relevance

1.3.5. Avoidance of known problems with existing approaches

1.3.6. Learner-centeredness

1.3.7. Functionality

1.4. Summary

1.5. Suggested readings

1.1.  The Importance of Second Language Learning and Teaching in the Twenty-First Century

Second language learning and teaching are more important in the twenty-first century than ever before and are more important than even many language teachers appreciate. Most of us are familiar with traditional student populations: captive school children required to “pass” a foreign language (often for no obvious reason), college students satisfying a language requirement or working toward a BA in literature, young adults headed overseas for university courses, as missionaries or to serve as volunteers in the Peace Corps and similar organizations, and adults needing a L2 for vocational training or occupational purposes in the business world, aid organizations, the military, federal and state government, or the diplomatic and intelligence services. Typically, these students are literate, well educated, relatively affluent, learning a major world language, and, the school children aside, doing so voluntarily.

Less visible to many of us, but often with even more urgent linguistic needs, are the steadily increasing numbers of involuntary language learners of all ages. Each year, millions of people are forced to cross linguistic borders to escape wars, despotic regimes, disease, drought, famine, religious persecution, ethnic cleansing, abject poverty, and climate change. Many of these learners are poor, illiterate, uneducated, and faced with acquiring less powerful, often unwritten, rarely taught languages. In some instances, for example, migrant workers in Western Europe, the United States, and parts of the Arab world, the target language is an economically and politically powerful one, such as French, Spanish, German, English, or Arabic. Instruction is available for those with money and time to pursue it, but many such learners lack either. Worse, marginalized and living in a linguistic ghetto, they frequently have little or no access to target language speakers, interaction with whom could serve as the basis for naturalistic second language acquisition (SLA). In some cases, involuntary learners are not created by people moving into new linguistic zones but by powerful languages coming to them. When imperialist nation states use military force to annex territory, they typically oblige the inhabitants to learn the language of the occupier if they hope to have access to education, economic opportunity, or political power, often while relegating local languages to second-class status or even making their use illegal.1

The overall picture is unlikely to change anytime soon. Advanced proficiency in a foreign or second language will remain a critical factor in determining the educational and economic life chances of all these groups, from college students and middle-class professionals, through humanitarian aid workers and government and military personnel, to migrant workers, their school-age children, and the victims of occupations and colonization. Moreover, if the obvious utilitarian reasons were not important enough, for millions of learners, especially the non-volunteers, acquiring a new language is inextricably bound up with creating a new identity and acculturating into the receiving community. Occasionally, SLA is a path to resistance for them (“Know thine enemy's language”), but in all too many cases, it is simply necessary for survival. For all these reasons, and given the obvious political implications of a few major world languages being taught to speakers of so many less powerful ones, a responsible course of action, it seems to me, as with education in general, is to make sure that language teaching (LT) and learning are as socially progressive as possible. LT alone will never compensate for the ills that create so many language learners, but at the very least, it should strive not to make matters worse.