University of Chicago Language Center Webinar: Task Based Language Teaching

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is sometimes seen as the latest bandwagon to jump on. Everyone talks about tasks; everyone uses tasks in their classrooms. In fact, TBLT has been an influential approach to second and foreign language education, and evidence for the impact of tasks on language learning is growing. Long (2015, 2016) states that it is probably the strongest empirically supported teaching approach.
However, looking closer at the actual teaching in second or foreign language classrooms a different picture emerges. For many instructors, TBLT is still an innovative approach that deviates from more familiar form-focused teaching methods or the omni-present Presentation-Practice-Production (PPP) paradigm. It can be hard for instructors to incorporate tasks and TBLT principles in the development of their lesson materials (Erlam, 2016) and in their teaching practices (Vandommele, Van den Branden & Van Gorp, 2018)…