Teachers Exploring Tasks in English Language Teaching

Corony Edwards is Lecturer in ELT at the Centre for English Language Studies, and Course Tutor for the Open Distance Learning MA in TEFL/TESL, at the University of Birmingham, UK. She has run teacher development workshops in Japan, Korea, UK, Hungary, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka and Argentina. Jane Willis is well known for her prizewinning books, including A Framework for Task-based Learning and English for Primary Teachers. She has taught English in West Africa, Cyprus and Iran and ran courses for teachers and trainers in South East Asia, South America, Europe and China. She has recently retired from Aston University, where she taught on the MA in TESOL/TESP Distance Learning programmes. She now lives in the Lake District, writing books and travelling widely as an ELT consultant.

'...High quality, extremely readable and accessible.. I anticipate that the volume will be extremely popular with classroom teachers. I found it refreshing, and even exciting, to read accounts of professional practice by people who have not hitherto been widely published. The volume will be useful, not only on MA courses but also on a wide range of in-service courses...an exciting and innovative project.' - Professor David Nunan, The English Centre, Hong Kong; 'A rich collection of tasks, used successfully by the chapter authors, that EFL teachers anywhere can use to increase their own repertoire - or to implement task-based learning for the first time in their own classrooms. ESL teachers in the United States and other English-speaking countries likewise can make effective use of every chapter in the book.' - Professor Betty Lou Leaver, Dean New York Institute of Technology in Amman, Jordan; 'Classroom teaching and learning ordinarily center on specific language tasks. Instruction becomes more effective when teachers understand the role of language tasks, recognize their students' needs, and apply both types of information in a sound, creative way. With better task-based instruction as a goal, current and future teachers will benefit from the enlightening explorations in this book. In addition, researchers will find that this book can inform and enrich many classroom investigations.' - Professor Rebecca Oxford, Department of Education, University of Maryland, USA

• About the Contributors List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements INTRODUCTION; Aims and Explorations into Tasks and Task-based Teaching; J.Willis Task-based Language Learning and Teaching: Theories and Applications; A.Shehadeh PART 1: IMPLEMENTING TASK-BASED LEARNING: CONTEXTS AND PURPOSES Developing from PPP to TBL: A Focused Grammar Task; L.Loumpourdi Integrating Task-based Learning Into a Business English Programme; P.Pullin-Stark Language as Topic: Learner-teacher Investigation of Concordances; R.Sheehan Storytelling with Low Level Learners: Developing Narrative Tasks; P.Kiernan Adding Tasks to Textbooks for Beginner Learners; T.Muller Using Language-focused Learning Journals on a Task-based Course; J.Moser PART 2: EXPLORING TASK INTERACTION: HELPING LEARNERS DO BETTER Exam-oriented Tasks: Transcripts, Turn-Taking and Backchanelling; M.Leedham Training Young Learners in Meaning Negotiation Skills: Does it Help?; S-M. Lee Task Repetition with 10-year-old Children; A.Pinter Collaborative Tasks for Cross-cultural Communication; D.Coulson PART 3: EXPLORING TASK LANGUAGE: LEXICAL PHRASES AND PATTERNS Interactive Lexical Phrases in Pair Interview Tasks; J.Hobbs Multi-word Chunks in Oral Tasks; M.Baigent Can We Predict Language Items for Open Tasks?; D.Cox PART 4: INVESTIGATING VARIABLES: TASK CONDITIONS AND TASK TYPES Fighting Fossilization: Language at the Task Versus Report Stages; C.Johnston Story-telling: Effects of Planning, Repetition and Context; W.Essig The Effect of Pre-task Planning Time on Task-based Performance; A.Djapoura Balancing Fluency, Accuracy and Complexity Through Task Characteristics; G.Birch Quality Interaction and Types of Negotiation in Problem-solving and Jigsaw Tasks; G.Poupore EPILOGUE: Teachers Exploring Research; C.Edwards References Index