ISBN: 978-84-18507-31-1 (edición digital)
ISBN: 978-84-18507-32-8 (edición impresa)
Depósito legal: CA-434-2020
© Neus Montagud Marrahí
DOI: https://doi.org/10.58842/FCZH7554
Abstract
In this dissertation I will explore the affordances and features of Task Based Learning and how the use of tasks contributes to the creation of an appropriate context for the production of discourse that is similar to natural and spontaneous conversation. The main aim is to prove the benefits of using task in the second language classroom and how it contributes to the autonomous learning of the pupils. On the basis of a transcribed tandem conversation, I use Conversation Analysis to carry out a qualitative examination of a synchronous tandem between two secondary school students. Following a bottom-up perspective, I focus my attention on turn taking, adjacency pairs, hesitations, pauses, repair and topic shift to draw conclusions about how digression affects the fluency of the conversation and the success of the task regarding the creation of an appropriate context for a natural conversation. Finally, I hypothesis that tasks are an efficient way of helping the students to become more active in the leaning process and to gain conversational skills.
Keywords: language acquisition, second language, communication, Communicative Language Teaching, Communicative Approach, Task Based Learning, task, Discourse Analysis, Conversation Analysis.
Introduction
The new opportunities for communication that took place in Europe during the 19th Century brought about the questioning of the traditional grammar-centred methods for second language acquisition such as Audiolingualism and Situational Language Teaching. Some researchers started to see the necessity to find alternative methods that allowed the students to acquire a level of proficiency in the second language in order to maintain a natural and spontaneous conversation in real contexts. The method explored in this essay is the Communicative Method whose objective is the acquisition of communicative competence which takes into account not only grammar but also the speaker’s production of discourse, his capacity to adopt language to the context and the use of verbal and non-verbal strategies. One of the approaches derived from this method is the Communicative Language Teaching, also referred to as CLT. It is important to highlight that this approach provides a series of steps for its implementation in the educational area, but it does not include defined tasks. Tasks become the elements trough which CLT is executed. Tasks allow the creation of contexts for the production of a natural conversation and stablish a link between the classroom environment and the real world. New technologies can contribute to the appliance of tasks though the use of multimedia facilities in the classroom, which is the aim TILA project. The success of a task can be proved trough analysis of the interaction of the participants by using Discourse Analysis or, specifically, Conversation Analysis. The management of turns, the use of adjacency pairs, topic shift, hesitation, pauses and repair provide the bases for Conversational Analysis and enable the reach of conclusions regarding the success of the given task. I hypothesise that tasks are an efficient way of helping students to learn a language and to be more autonomous. my objective in this dissertation is to show how task-based learning allows students to gain conversational skills. I therefore turn to discourse analysis and, more specifically, conversation analysis, to highlight the affordances of this way of learning a language.
The first section of this essay aims to an examination of CLT and its features, followed by a description of the evolution from the traditional teaching methods towards the implementation of the Communicative Approach, and the areas of knowledge that the approach comprises. In the second section I will discuss how TLBL contributes to the creation of spontaneous conversation and the steps for the creation of the tasks. Next, I will briefly introduce how the use of new technologies, and especially TILA project, aim to the application of TBLT. Finally, the third section, I will analyse the transcription of a tandem by means of Conversation Analysis in order to get to a series of conclusions.
Review of Communicative Language Teaching
Definition and Features
CLT has been referred to by Richards as a
Set of principles about the goals of language teaching, how learners learn a language, the kind of classroom activities that best facilitate learning, and the roles of teachers and learners in the classroom
(Richards, 2006:2)
CLT is based on the Communicative Approach, Larse-Freeman (2000) explain that CLT
…aims broadly to apply the theoretical perspective of the Communicative Approach by making communicative competence the goal of language teaching and by acknowledging the interdependence of language and communication
(Larse-Freeman, 2000:121)
The main aim of this teaching method is to make the students acquire fluency in the different areas of language use in order to create meaningful sentences and to be able to communicate properly in real contexts. In other words, its aim is to help the students to acquire what has been named “communicative competence” (Hymes, 1972)
The concept of Communicative Competence was first coined by Hymes in 1972 in his work titled On Communicative Competence as a reaction to Chomsky’s definition of competence which Hymes considered to be too limited. Chomsky proposed that competence is mainly concerned with the knowledge of grammatical rules by the speaker, making it seem as a mechanical way of acquisition based on the knowledge of the grammatical rules without taking into account the socio-cultural aspect (Chomsky, 1965). He states that
Linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-hearer, in a completely homogeneous community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammaticality irrelevant conditions as memory limitations, distractions, shift of attention and interest, errors (random or characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance
(Chomsky, 1965:3)
We can observe, Chomsky does not only try to offer a definition of “competence” as “the speaker hearer’s knowledge of his language”, but also to generate a definition for “performance” which he describes as “the actual use of language in concrete situations” (Chomsky, 1965:4).
Due to the restrictive definition of competence provided by Chomsky, Hymes tried to establish a difference between “linguistic competence” and “communicative competence” by affirming that Chomsky’s definition of competence was nothing more than a direct reference to “linguistic competence”, equivalent to “grammatical competence”1, which refers to the knowledge of a number of grammatical rules and ignores the socio-cultural context of the exchange. However, Hyme’s “communicative competence” does not only include linguistic or grammatical competence, but also the knowledge of other competences necessary for efficient communication. Hymes defines communicative competence as “the interaction of grammatical, psycholinguistics, sociocultural and probabilistic systems of competence in which the users have the ability to use those rules in real contexts (Acar, 2005). Hymes acknowledged that it is necessary to consider the socio-cultural dimension of the acquisition of competency since the acquisition of rules of grammar become useless without rules of language use. In his work entitled On Communicative Competence (1972), Hymes declares that
The acquisition of such competency is of course fed by social experience, needs and motives, and issues in action that is itself renewed a soured of motives, needs, experience
(Hymes, 1972:278).
Index
INTRODUCTION
1. Review of Communicative Language Teaching
1.1 Definition and Features
1.2. From Situational Language Teaching to Communicative Language Teaching
1.3. CLT: Competence Areas and Language Skills.
1.4 The Threshold Level.
2. Review of Task-Based Learning
2.1 Description of TBL and its Relation with CLT
2.2. Task: Definitions, Continuum and Features
2.3. Meaning-Focused Tasks
2.4 Steps for Task Creation
3. The Use Of New Technologies In Tblt And Tila Project
4. Methodology, Analysis And Results
4.1 What is Discourse Analysis?
4.2 Approach to DA: Conversation Analysis
4.3. Analysis and Results
5. Conclusion
6. Bibliography
APPENDICES
Appendix 1. Task: Planning a Holiday
Appendex 2. Transcript
IMAGES
Image 1. Influence of the Communicative Method
Image 2. Areas of Communicative Competence
Image 3. Continuum from form to meaning
Image 4. Classroom Activities
Image 5. Steps for task creation
Image 6. Bottom-up and Top-down