Pedagogical Realities of Implementing Task-Based Language Teaching

Book excerpt: This book documents how teachers, working in school foreign language learning contexts and teaching beginner learners of languages other than English, learn about and use tasks. It first presents a pedagogically researched account of how teachers learn about, design and evaluate tasks, after being introduced to TBLT during an in-service programme. The authors then go into classrooms to explore ways in which teachers continue to use tasks, as part of their regular ongoing classroom language programmes, following their in-service education. The book documents how the teachers use tasks to open up opportunities for language learning for students and investigates how teachers understand and position tasks and TBLT as relevant and of value to their teaching contexts. The challenges that teachers face in incorporating TBLT into their practice are also explored. The book suggests how the use of the task as a pedagogic tool may contribute to ongoing understanding about TBLT.