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Try - Speaking activities - Task-based speaking - planning a night out
- Present Practice Produce
- The problems with PPP
- A Task-based approach
- The advantages of TBL
- Conclusion
Present Practice Produce (PPP)
During an initial teacher training course, most teachers become familiar with the PPP paradigm. A PPP lesson would proceed in the following manner.
- First, the teacher presents an item of language in a clear context to get across its meaning. This could be done in a variety of ways: through a text, a situation build, a dialogue etc.
- Students are then asked to complete a controlled practice stage, where they may have to repeat target items through choral and individual drilling, fill gaps or match halves of sentences. All of this practice demands that the student uses the language correctly and helps them to become more comfortable with it.
- Finally, they move on to the production stage, sometimes called the 'free practice' stage. Students are given a communication task such as a role play and are expected to produce the target language and use any other language that has already been learnt and is suitable for completing it.
The problems with PPP
It all sounds quite logical but teachers who use this method will soon identify problems with it:
- Students can give the impression that they are comfortable with the new language as they are producing it accurately in the class. Often though a few lessons later, students will either not be able to produce the language correctly or even won't produce it at all.
- Students will often produce the language but overuse the target structure so that it sounds completely unnatural.
- Students may not produce the target language during the free practice stage because they find they are able to use existing language resources to complete the task.
A Task-based approach
Task -based learning offers an alternative for language teachers. In a task-based lesson the teacher doesn't pre-determine what language will be studied, the lesson is based around the completion of a central task and the language studied is determined by what happens as the students complete it. The lesson follows certain stages.
Pre-task
The teacher introduces the topic and gives the students clear instructions on what they will have to do at the task stage and might help the students to recall some language that may be useful for the task. The pre-task stage can also often include playing a recording of people doing the task. This gives the students a clear model of what will be expected of them. The students can take notes and spend time preparing for the task.
Task
The students complete a task in pairs or groups using the language resources that they have as the teacher monitors and offers encouragement.
Planning
Students prepare a short oral or written report to tell the class what happened during their task. They then practise what they are going to say in their groups. Meanwhile the teacher is available for the students to ask for advice to clear up any language questions they may have.
Report
Students then report back to the class orally or read the written report. The teacher chooses the order of when students will present their reports and may give the students some quick feedback on the content. At this stage the teacher may also play a recording of others doing the same task for the students to compare.
Analysis
The teacher then highlights relevant parts from the text of the recording for the students to analyse. They may ask students to notice interesting features within this text. The teacher can also highlight the language that the students used during the report phase for analysis.
Practice
Finally, the teacher selects language areas to practise based upon the needs of the students and what emerged from the task and report phases. The students then do practice activities to increase their confidence and make a note of useful language.
The advantages of TBL
Task-based learning has some clear advantages
- Unlike a PPP approach, the students are free of language control. In all three stages they must use all their language resources rather than just practising one pre-selected item.
- A natural context is developed from the students' experiences with the language that is personalised and relevant to them. With PPP it is necessary to create contexts in which to present the language and sometimes they can be very unnatural.
- The students will have a much more varied exposure to language with TBL. They will be exposed to a whole range of lexical phrases, collocations and patterns as well as language forms.
- The language explored arises from the students' needs. This need dictates what will be covered in the lesson rather than a decision made by the teacher or the coursebook.
- It is a strong communicative approach where students spend a lot of time communicating. PPP lessons seem very teacher-centred by comparison. Just watch how much time the students spend communicating during a task-based lesson.
- It is enjoyable and motivating.
Conclusion
PPP offers a very simplified approach to language learning. It is based upon the idea that you can present language in neat little blocks, adding from one lesson to the next. However, research shows us that we cannot predict or guarantee what the students will learn and that ultimately a wide exposure to language is the best way of ensuring that students will acquire it effectively. Restricting their experience to single pieces of target language is unnatural.
For more information see 'A Framework for Task-Based Learning' by Jane Wills, Longman; 'Doing Task-Based Teaching' by Dave and Jane Willis, OUP 2007.
Also see www.willis-elt.co.uk
Richard Frost, British Council, Turkey
Comments
WHAT ABOUT GRAMMAR
I personally consider that task-based learning can be more effective than the PPP model. However, my main question is: In TBL, at which stage do teachers teach grammar? In my opinion, grammar is an essential part of any target language.
TBL and grammar
Hi Flavi
In TBL there is no pre-determined "language focus" - but that doesn't mean that teachers don't teach any grammar. The grammar taught will depend on what language comes out of the task - for example, if the students make lots of mistakes with the future tenses when doing a task around planning a trip, the teacher would focus on that grammar at the most appropriate time for the students.
Cath
TeachingEnglish team
Grammar in PBL
If the lesson´s objective is not a grammatical structure, grammar is seen as a means to improve communication in real life situations. Grammatical focus is not longer a method to lead to communicative competence.
TB approach
Hi Khanh
A task-based approach means that there is no pre-determined language aim, whereas activities will usually be designed to practice a particular language point, like in a PPP lesson described above. An activity and a task can be similar though.
Hope that helps,
Cath
TeachingEnglish team
TBL Fan
One observation
TBL/TBI and Motivation
These are not mutually exclusive
TBL vs PPP
TBL vs PPP
topic for our thesis
TBL(Task Based Learning)
to gain more english words
Teaching grammar
Can u please tell me that whether TBL can be used for teaching enlgish grammar for Secondary school students.
Some background reading on TBLL
Task-based Approach
There have been criticisms that task-based learning is not appropriate for beginning students; that is, teachers question its usefulness at lower levels. Others claim that in TBL, there is a danger that students may develop fluency at the expense of accuracy. Moreover, it is believed that such an approach will not help the teacher to be systematic in their teaching process. That is to say, this approach requires teachers to interact with their students in an unsystematic way. Further, Learners who are used to a more traditional grammatical syllabus may find this approach difficult to come to terms with. This is so because of the apparent randomness in TBL. In addition, Littlewood, W. (1999) notes that one of the features of TBL that worries teachers is that it seems to have no place for the teaching of grammar. Nevertheless, we have seen that in TBL, there is a close attention paid to the grammar of the language being leant at the last stage (language focus stage). To summarise, TBL does not, or rather should not, mean 'forget the grammar'. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Task-based_language_learning)
As far as I am concerned, these arguments levelled against TBL seem to be far-fetching and lack adequate evidence, though there is a degree of truth in them. Actually, TBL is complete within itself. I am not implying here, however, that it is a perfect teaching methodology. Nothing goes without problems, especially in this field of language learning and teaching. Assuming that TBL is deficient unless it covers everything would be a serious mistake. All in all, TBL has so far proved to be an adequate teaching approach and talking about its ineffectiveness will be valid only when a more effective approach is introduced.
A TASK BASED APPROACH.
This is a good approach but it is not posssible to show a recorded activity in all the classes.It is not possible unadvanced countries like India.It may be possible in some corporate schools.
I need resources please
Hi everybody, my name is Paola. I live in Ayacucho. I'm from Peru and I'm an English teacher. Now, I'm working in a research about this approach to improve the speaking in students in basic level. I haven't got many resources in my country and I would to ask if you could provide me some material.
I would greatly appreciate, I hope so.
i have another question, thank you very much!
I want to ask about characteristics of the task-based approach realized in textbooks?
Can you give me some examples for illustration, please?
Thank you very much!
PPP or TBL?
I use both methods. It sometimes depends on the stage of learning, sometimes on the age of students. Those who are older prefer being taught via PPP, younger learners enjoy TBL.
Questions about TBL
I guess I need to read your book(s) but I'm intrigued by your ideas. In attempting to work with tasks, I've found that in a monolingual classroom, the students consistently use their L1 instead of the L2 when working in pairs or groups, thus not benefiting from the opportunities to practice the L1. What can I do to improve this? Is the task too difficult? Is their proficiency too low for attempting to problem-solve in the L2? The students are so concerned with getting the "right" answer that they forget about using/learning the L2.
Thanks for your suggestions.
DT
PPP can be a more structured technique on planning a lesson than TBL. TBL can result in time consuming.