33.2241, Review: Applied Linguistics: Erlam, Tolosa (2022)

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Subject: 33.2241, Review: Applied Linguistics: Erlam, Tolosa (2022)

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Date: Thu, 07 Jul 2022 21:00:34
From: Laura Callahan [Lcallahan at scu.edu]
Subject: Pedagogical Realities of Implementing Task-Based Language Teaching

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36808337


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/33/33-1126.html

AUTHOR: Rosemary  Erlam
AUTHOR: Constanza  Tolosa
TITLE: Pedagogical Realities of Implementing Task-Based Language Teaching
SERIES TITLE: Task-Based Language Teaching 14
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Laura M Callahan, Santa Clara University

SUMMARY

This book examines task-based language teaching (TBLT), more specifically how
language teachers learn about it and implement it in their classrooms. The
research site was New Zealand, and the participants were teachers who
completed a year-long professional development program on second language
acquisition (SLA) and TBLT. 

Chapter 1, “Researching the implementation of TBLT in the classroom”, serves
as the book’s introduction. Erlam and Tolosa indicate an overarching objective
to uncover how TBLT actually works in the classroom, as opposed to in a
laboratory setting. Their investigation fills a gap in existing research, in
which clinical studies with adult learners of English predominate. The present
study focuses instead on primary and secondary school classrooms with
beginning learners of Chinese, French, Japanese, and Spanish. 

This chapter outlines how TBLT can foster language acquisition, ways in which
it has or has not been incorporated into language instruction programs, and
the obstacles to greater incorporation. TBLT would seem to fit well with
curricular innovations in New Zealand, which resulted in greater emphasis on
developing students’ abilities to engage in oral interaction. To support these
changes, a year-long professional development program was offered to language
teachers.

Part 1, “Learning about TBLT and tasks, comprises Chapters 2, 3, and 4. In the
Introduction to Part 1, Erlam and Tolosa tell us about the fourteen teachers
who participated in the present study during and immediately after their
enrollment in the professional development program.

Chapter 2, “Teachers learning about TBLT and tasks”, reports on these
teachers’ assignments and reflections. Journal entries written in response to
readings on TBLT were analyzed. The teachers’ narratives and descriptions of
teaching practices give clues as to their comprehension of and willingness to
use TBLT.

Chapter 3, “Teacher learning through inquiry into TBLT”, examines the products
of a learning inquiry assignment. Each teacher chose a focus for their
inquiry, such as, for example, “Compare lesson structures: TBLT and PPP
[Presentation, Practice, and Production]” or “Students’ motivation as a result
of using tasks” (p. 64, Table 7). To determine what qualifies as a task, Erlam
and Tolosa used four criteria, from Ellis and Shintani (2014, p. 135): A
primary focus on meaning; some kind of gap; learners’ reliance on their own
resources; and “a clearly defined outcome other than the use of language” (pp.
68-69). 

The final chapter in Part 1 is Chapter 4, “From learning about TBLT to
implementing TBLT”. The investigators report on data gathered from a subset of
the fourteen teachers in the year immediately following their completion of
the professional development program. This data consisted of interviews,
classroom observations, and student questionnaires. The aim was to see what,
as relates to TBLT, the teachers took with them to “the real world of
practice” (p. 85). The interviews yielded evidence that the teachers had
indeed made changes. Factors that enable or constrain the implementation of
TBLT were also identified. 

Part 2, “Tasks in the classroom”, comprises Chapters 5, 6, and 7. In the
Introduction to Part 2, Erlam and Tolosa present a different set of study
participants. The eight teachers in this group completed an earlier iteration
of the same professional development program from which the authors’ Part 1
cohort came. The analysis now shifts to teachers’ practices a few years after
finishing the professional development program.

Chapter 5, “Voices from the classroom”, focuses on the tasks observed in the
lessons given by six of the aforementioned eight teachers. These six teachers
had completed the professional development program an average of four years
prior. The overarching question was how the tasks created learning
opportunities. Data for this chapter includes transcripts of recorded teacher
and student classroom discourse, documents (e.g. worksheets, PowerPoints,
etc.), classroom observation notes taken by one of the investigators, and
student questionnaire responses. We are reminded that communicative teaching
does not preclude attention to form (see, for example, Long 1991). Erlam and
Tolosa considered instances in which students requested form information to be
evidence of a gap in learner knowledge. Hence, these instances were considered
to have fulfilled at least one of the four criteria for an activity to be
classified as a task (p. 133).

Chapter 6, “An evaluation of the use of tasks in the classroom”, reports on an
examination of all of the activities and tasks from this second cohort of
teachers. The purpose was to see “[t]o what extent there was evidence that
their practice was consistent with Long’s (2015) principles of TBLT”, with the
ultimate objective being to discover how “teachers use the task as a pedagogic
tool” (p. 179). One of Long’s (2015) principles is focus on form, but this
focus is supposed to be reactive and incidental and arising in the context of
communication. Erlam and Tolosa note that although a focus on form was not
lacking, there were probably more instances in which the focus was: “on formS.
This was where learner attention was drawn to language BEFORE this language
was encountered in the context of communication (where the students worked
more with language as an object than as language users)” (p. 195).

Chapter 7, “The teachers’ perspectives”, is devoted to data gathered in the
authors’ interviews with the eight teachers from Part 2. Again, these teachers
had completed the professional development program an average of four years
prior to their participation in the present investigation. The goal of this
stage of the study was to discover:

-the priority and importance the teachers accorded to learning about TBLT
-their understanding of tasks and TBLT
-the role they saw for tasks and TBLT in their classroom practice
-factors that either facilitated or constrained the use of tasks and
implementation of TBLT in their classroom practice (p. 203) 

Chapter 8, “Conclusion”, provides a recapitulation of the issues and findings
that arose from Erlam and Tolosa’s investigation, as well as some
recommendations for researchers, teachers, and teacher trainers.

EVALUATION 

This book contains a cogent and accessible exposition of what TBLT is and the
claims made relative to TBLT and SLA. The acquisition-poor contexts described
herein, in which learners engage with the language for just a few hours per
week, will resonate with many readers, especially in countries where
language-learning is undervalued. The book is written in clear and lucid
prose. Short summaries and previews appear at multiple junctures to inform
readers of what they have just read, what they are about to read, and what
they will read further on. At times this can seem repetitive, but overall it
contributes to coherence. This feature will also facilitate the use of
isolated chapters, in, for example, a graduate level teaching methods course. 

As the authors acknowledge, the number of participants for some of the
analyses was rather small. Investigators encounter considerable difficulty in
recruiting New Zealand teachers to allow  access to their classrooms, due to
the extra work this entails for the teacher, who must obtain consent from the
school principal, parents, and students. And as Erlam and Tolosa also mention,
those teachers who did volunteer to be interviewed and observed may have been
predisposed to a more positive view of TBLT. These limitations
notwithstanding, the data in this book offers important insights into
teachers’ uptake of a professional development program and valuable glimpses
into real-life teacher practices and contexts. 

A major obstacle to getting teachers to use TBLT is the imposition of a
structural syllabus, and in some cases, external assessment in which students
must demonstrate knowledge of specific vocabulary or grammar structures. To
give an example from Spanish, beginning or intermediate students will not have
internalized accurate subjunctive use, though they may be able to memorize it
for controlled tasks. Students at this level can nevertheless make themselves
understood and thus successfully execute a task in which a highly proficient
speaker might spontaneously use a subjunctive form. But if they will not be
judged successful unless they use the “correct” subjunctive form, their only
choice will be to drill and memorize the form. And such students would thus
not be truly engaged in a task.

The authors take pains to show the difference between a task and an activity.
This type of distinction is vital, as imprecision in the use of professional
jargon can lead to misunderstandings between colleagues, and in particular
false beliefs as to what language instructors’ actual aims and
responsibilities are.

Chapter 6 closes with a consideration of how closely the teachers’ tasks
aligned with Long’s (2015) methodological principles. Long “argues against a
covert grammatical syllabus” (p. 193); nonetheless Erlam and Tolosa find “no
evidence of teachers following a syllabus defined by task” (p. 193). Still, at
least one of the teachers in the study seemed to have found a close
compromise, wherein she “started with the task and looked at what language
would fit within the task” (p. 193). This teacher concluded that “the task was
a way for students to learn specific language within the curriculum” (p. 193).

However, there was at least one encouraging finding related to the teaching of
grammar. As Erlam and Tolosa report, in their interviews with the teachers,
“it would seem that these teachers had moved from focus on formS, where the
initial focus on language was decontextualised, to a focus-on-form approach,
where a focus on language form arose out of a context where the initial
attention was on meaning” (p. 214). Here again, though, the numbers were very
low, and not without qualifications. As the authors note, referring to three
of the eight teachers in Part 2 of their study, these teachers “had moved from
a focus on form, in a decontextualised context, to one where the attention to
form arose out of a focus on meaning and where students were encouraged to
induce or discover patterns for themselves. However, there was evidence also
that there continued to be some ambiguity in the way that this was implemented
in classroom practice” (p. 215). 

How to teach grammar is one of the issues on which language teachers and the
people to whom they report hold the most entrenched, and sometimes opposing,
beliefs. Students sometimes subscribe to outmoded or ill-informed views about
what it means to know a language, and on the role of grammar in using a
language. In other cases, students who have little desire to learn a second
language to begin with may be loathe to engage in tasks that require speaking
and interacting with peers (p. 222).

The authors’ finding that no teacher seemed to have a task-based syllabus (p.
193) is therefore unsurprising. To this can be added the fact that at least
some if not many institutions, colleagues or administrators who have authority
over language teachers are not themselves conversant with the basic principles
of communicative teaching, let alone TBLT.

When all is said and done, the authors acknowledge that it may be unrealistic
to expect teachers to completely relinquish a (primary) focus on forms. This
is especially the case “where both teachers and students have traditionally
seen language as an object to be studied rather than as a tool for
communication” (p. 228). Still, compromise does seem possible. As Erlam and
Tolosa observe, “some teachers appeared to work with both task and language in
parallel focus during their planning. We have suggested that the tension in
some of the literature (e.g., Long, 2015) on whether the primary focus, in
task design, is the task or the text (i.e., language) is unhelpful and that a
more complementary view of both levels working in parallel may be more
reflective of the realities of practice” (p. 226). 

In sum, Pedagogical Realities of Implementing Task-Based Language Teaching is
a valuable contribution to the literature on second language acquisition and
second language instruction. It will be of interest to researchers, language
teacher trainers, and language teachers at any level and stage of their
career. Pre-service teachers in particular might benefit, but veteran teachers
looking to refresh their pedagogical approaches to situations similar to those
described by Erlam and Tolosa will also find this book compelling.

REFERENCES 

Ellis, Rod & Natsuko Shintani. 2014. Exploring Language Pedagogy through
Second Language Acquisition Research. New York, NY: Routledge.

Long, Michael H. 1991. Focus on form: a design feature in language teaching
methodology. In Foreign language research in cross-cultural perspective, eds.
K. de Bot, R. Ginsberg & C. Kramsch. 39-52. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Long, Michael H. 2015. Second Language Acquisition and Task-Based Language
Teaching. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Laura Callahan has taught courses in Spanish language and linguistics in the
public university systems of California, Michigan, and New York. She is
currently a Lecturer in the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures at
Santa Clara University, where she regularly teaches beginning and intermediate
level language learners. Her principal area of research is Spanish in the
United States. Her most recent publication is From Downtown to the Eastside:
Languages other than English in a commercial linguistic landscape in
California. International Journal of the Linguistic Association of the
Southwest. 2021, 35-1: 51-75.





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