FOCUS ON FORM IN TBLT: RESTRICTING OR EMPOWERING? Dave Willis & Jane Willis

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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… 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 1998:94)

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)

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)

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 month’s 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.

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 2005:179)

The focus on grammar should vary according to the kind of grammatical system.

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)

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.

Improvisation Learning processes Recognition System- building Exploration Consolidation Spontaneous use Empowering learners

When to work on language and focus on form? Priming & Preparation Availability of key lexis & useful phrases Task >> Planning >>>> Report of outcome Language extension >> Prestige language use Form focus Analysis & practice of language features from texts written or spoken that learners have read or heard

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

Design and implementation of tasks Short term task sequences Task framework (task > planning > 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

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?