FOCUS%20ON%20FORM%20IN%20TBLT:

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• FOCUS ON FORM IN TBLT
• RESTRICTING
• OR
• EMPOWERING?
• Dave Willis Jane Willis
• www.willis-elt.co.uk

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Overview

• A bit of background
• Discussion
• Predictions about task language
• Language analysis data from texts and
  spontaneous task recordings
• Implications
• TBLT in practice short term and long term task
  sequences

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???? Burma Canada China Dubai Egypt Greece Holland
Japan Spain Thailand Turkey USA Other
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a conservative profession , out of touch with
language acquisition studies has for many years
transmitted essentially the same view of how
teaching should be organised and what teachers
should be like. (Skehan 199894)
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• The approach has an excellent relationship with
  teacher training and teachers feeling of
  professionalism.
• It lends itself very neatly to accountability.
  (Testing syllabus design)
• There is no clear alternative.
• (Skehan 1998 94)

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It is comfortable for teachers and teacher
educators, and for the writers and publishers of
teaching materials to maintain that there is a
direct relationship between teaching and
learning. For teachers and teacher educators this
belief offers security. It suggests that we know
exactly what we are doing and where we are going.
We can plan lessons and recommend methodologies
with confidence. For writers and publishers it
means that they can make clear, unqualified
claims in terms of teaching and learning for the
materials they produce. (D. Willis Forthcoming)
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The desert island game If you were cast away on
a desert island which four of the following items
would you choose to take with you? an axe a
gun an English dictionary a fifty metre length
of rope a months supply of tinned food fifty
boxes of matches a dozen candles a set of
kitchen knives a torch Making suggestions One
participant is asking for advice on travel and
tourism in South-east Asia. The other participant
has a lot of expertise in this area. Daily
routines Find out what time your partner has
breakfast lunch and dinner each day. Do not ask
any questions about meals, mealtimes or food.
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If learners feel it necessary to use should all
the time (for example at the production stage of
a PPP cycle where should has been presented),
they are confined to one wording and are missing
out on experimenting with other ways of
expressing a whole range of similar meanings.
Learners may wish to express their meanings less
forcefully than should suggests, so phrases like
I would say or I would recommend or Well, what
you could do is would be more appropriate. In a
PPP lesson learners are being unnaturally
constrained when they should be experiencing the
richness of meaning potential and practising
normal conversational skills (Cox 2005179)
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The focus on grammar should vary according to the
kind of grammatical system.
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Grammatical systems Structure Clause and phrase
structure Interrogative and negative
forms Relative clauses. Orientation Tense,
modality and aspect Determiners Information
organisation Pattern Systematic frames in
which words operate e.g. It BE ADJ.
to-infinitive the NOUN of
-ing (Willis, D. 2003)
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• We cannot teach the grammar of orientation by
  explaining, demonstrating or exemplifying.
• Learner dependence on teacher and on prescriptive
  input is restricting.
• Declarative knowledge is inadequate for
  orientation and pattern.
• We cannot rely on progression from declarative to
  procedural knowledge.

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Empowering learners
Learning processes Recognition System-building
Exploration
Spontaneous use
Improvisation
Consolidation
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When to work on language and focus on form?

• Priming Preparation
• Availability of key lexis useful phrases
• Task gtgt Planning gtgtgtgt Report of outcome
• Language extension
• gtgt Prestige language use
• Form focus
• Analysis practice
• of language features from
• texts written or spoken that learners have read
  or heard

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• Why should learners bother to commit themselves
  to grammatical complexity in the classroom?

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• Design and implementation of tasks
• Short term task sequences
• Task framework (task gt planning gt report)
• Data recordings of tasks, task reports and task
  related texts
• Language analysis (Skehan Language use and
  language learning. Johns and Davies (1983) Text
  as a vehicle for information (TAVI) and Text as
  a linguistic object (TALO)
• Long term task sequences based on topic or
  possibly on systemic/semantic analysis

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• Discussion
• A presentation based model is still the norm in
  the teaching profession. What can be done to
  convince teachers of the value of task-based
  approaches?
• Research?
• Training?
• Publications?
• Interaction with teachers?

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www.willis-elt.co.uk