What is Task-based learning?

January 19, 2018

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Andreia Zakime

TBL (Task-based learning), or TBLT (Task-based language teaching) is an approach in which

learning revolves around the completion of meaningful tasks. In the TBL approach, the main
focus is the authentic use of language for genuine communication. In this post, we'll talk about
what defines a task, the possible phases of a TBL lesson and give you an example of a TBL
lesson.

Defining tasks
In order for us to understand TBL, we need to define what a task is. According to Willis, tasks
can be real-life situations or have a pedagogical purpose. In both cases, a task should:

- provide opportunities for students to exchange information with a focus on meaning, not a
specific form or pattern/structure;

- have a clear purpose: learners should know the outcome they are expected to produce when
they finish performing the task. The outcome may vary. It might be making a YouTube video
tutorial, finding a solution for a problem or writing an email requesting information;

- result in an outcome that can be shared with more people;

- relate to real world activities.

Phases of a TBL lesson

The framework of a TBL lesson may vary. It is usually composed of the following phases:

- Pre-task
- Task (which can be sub-divided in different stages)
- Post-task

Pre-task:

The pre-task phase of a TBL lesson is the moment when the teacher sets the task,
contextualises the topic of the lesson, raises students’ interest and prepares learners to
perform the task. When preparing students to perform a task, teachers might need to help
students with both content and language. This can be done by activating students’ general
knowledge on a certain topic and by helping students anticipate the type of language they will
need to perform the task proposed. It is extremely important that students understand the
objectives of the task during this phase.

Task:
In this stage of the TBL lesson, learners perform the task proposed. They are supposed to
perform the task in small groups or pairs, and use their existing knowledge of language to
express themselves in a spontaneous way. As the focus is communication, the teacher is not
supposed to carry out extensive error correction at this stage, but should monitor and provide
support.

When students finish performing the task, they need to plan how they are going to report it to
the rest of the class or to other groups. They may rehearse and research the language
necessary in order to share the outcome of what they had done.

Finally, students report the outcome of the task to other students.

Post-task:
The post-task stage is when students evaluate their performance. This might be done by
comparing the outcome of their task to that of a proficient user of the language. It can also
involve feedback provided by the teacher and subsequent practice of language items that
emerged from the task. It is important to stress that form-focused language work should be in
response to students’ production. That means that the teacher will not teach a grammar lesson
and expect that learners use that specific structure while performing the task, neither should
the teacher work on a pre-selected language item in this phase of the lesson. This makes the
role of the teacher as a monitor extremely important in TBL.

The lesson below is a TBL lesson that I used with one of my Intermediate (CEFR B1) students.
In this lesson plan, I’m describing the rationale behind my choices, the outcomes of the
different phases of the lesson and how they might differ with other groups of students. You’ll
notice that the breakdown of every phase is very detailed – “organising” and managing the
completion of the task is an important role for the teacher in TBLT. If the teacher just sets a
task and let students do it, they might not understand why they are doing what they are doing,
feel lack of support and not perceive that they are learning.

A TBL lesson plan

TASK: Recommending places in São Paulo to a friend via a What’s App audio message
PRE-TASK
In the pre-task stage, students learned about the task and were asked to talk about popular
places tourists could visit in their city, São Paulo. In order to generate interest and prepare
students for the upcoming task, and depending on your group profile, you may give
suggestions, use prompts to provide support to learners, ask students to carry out research, or
even provide an input task to help students generate ideas. However, in the pre-task stage,
the teacher is not supposed to pre-teach vocabulary or structures to students.

In order to help students carry out this task, you may ask them to:
- Create a mind map containing interesting places to be visited
- Suggest places and ask learners to share what they know about them / carry out research

TASK
In this phase of the lesson, students carry out the task. In this lesson, learners worked in
groups of three during this stage. In order for the task to be completed successfully, it is the
teacher’s role to break down the task and help learners get organised.

In this lesson, the task was delivered in three different phases:

Assessing: students were asked to go back to the list of places they had brainstormed and
discuss how appealing they were. They were asked to list characteristics of these places and
share why they might be appealing (or not) to tourists. Students were allowed to search online
to gather as much information as possible.

Selecting: students were asked to compare the places and select the ones not to be missed
by someone visiting São Paulo for the first time. They were expected to come up with a list of
three places.

Recording the audio message: Students were asked to plan, rehearse and record an audio
message suggesting places in the city.

Reporting: Students shared their audio messages with other groups and compare their
recommendations.

POST-TASK
Apart from giving instructions for the completion of the task, an important role the teacher
should play during the task is to monitor learners’ production. In the post-task phase, I gave
feedback on content and language that emerged during the task. Some aspects dealt with
during feedback were:

- adjectives to describe places

- language to make comparisons
- language to make recommendations

In the post-task phase, it is important to provide students with the chance to practice the
language that had emerged from the task.

The lesson described shows that, in TBL, tasks are a way to promote the use of authentic and
genuine language with a focus on meaning and communication. When employing this
approach to teaching, thus, teachers need to be prepared to design relevant and meaningful
tasks, adopt a number of roles in the classroom and possess the linguistic competence to deal
with emergent language and provide students with useful feedback and practice.

References:

Richards, J. C. and Rodgers, T. (2015). Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 3rd edition.

Willis, D. and Willis, J. Doing task-based teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.