How do you like your syllabus – synthetic or analytical?

This post takes a look back to the early days of task-based language teaching (TBLT) to consider how and why tasks-based approaches differ from the traditional – synthetic – grammatical syllabus. The references are to a 1992 article in TESOL Quarterly by Long and Crookes.

Photo by Iker Urteaga on Unsplash

Summary of synthetic versus analytical syllabuses

The first distinguishing feature of TBLT syllabuses is that

their rationale derives from what is known about human learning in general and/or second language learning in particular rather than, as is the case with lexical, structural, notional, functional, and relational syllabuses, primarily from an analysis of language or language use

Secondly, task-based syllabuses

reject linguistic elements (such as word, structure, notion, or function) as the unit of analysis and opt instead for some conception of task

Long and Crookes consider Wilkins’ (1976) synthetic versus analytical syllabus dichotomy, and suggest the two perspectives are better seen as points on a continuum rather than in binary opposition.

Here is Wilkins’ original distinction revisited by Long and Crookes:

Synthetic syllabuses segment the target language into discrete linguistic items for presentation one at a time:

Different parts of language are taught separately and step by step so that acquisition is a process of gradual accumulation of parts until the whole structure of language has been built up. . . . At any one time the learner is being exposed to a deliberately limited sample of language. (Wilkins, 1976,p. 2)

Synthetic, that is, refers to the learner’s role:

The learner’s task is to re-synthesize the language that has been broken down into a large number of small pieces with the aim of making his [sic] learning task easier. (Wilkins, 1976, p. 2)

The synthetic syllabus relies on learners’ assumed ability to learn a language in parts (e.g., structures and functions) which are independent of one another, and also to integrate, or synthesize, the pieces when the time comes to use them for communicative purposes. Lexical, structural, notional, and functional syllabuses are synthetic.

In contrast

Analytic syllabuses offer the learner target language samples which, while they may have been modified in other ways, have not been controlled for structure or lexis in the traditional manner. Users maintain that

prior analysis of the total language system into a set of discrete pieces of language that is a necessary precondition for the adoption of a synthetic approach is largely superfluous. . . . Analytic approaches . . . are organised in terms of the purposes for which people are learning language and the kinds of language performance that are necessary to meet those purposes. (Wilkins, 1976, p. 13)

Analytic, that is, again refers not to what the syllabus designer does, but to the operations required of the learner. Wilkins (1976) writes:

since we are inviting the learner, directly or indirectly, to recognize the linguistic components of the language behavior he [sic] is acquiring, we are in effect basing our approach on the learner’s analytic capabilities.
(p. 14)

Updating Wilkins’ definition a little, analytic syllabuses are those which present the target language whole chunks at a time, without linguistic interference or control. They rely on (a) the learners’ assumed ability to perceive regularities in the input and to induce rules (or to form new neural networks underlying what looks like rule-governed behavior), and/or (b) the continued availability to learners of innate knowledge of linguistic universals and the ways language can vary, knowledge which can be reactivated by exposure to natural samples of the L2. Procedural, process, and task syllabuses are all examples of the analytic syllabus type.

Crookes and Long go on to compare Wilkins’ synthetic/analytic distinction with a similar contrast described by R.V. White (1988) who uses the labels Type A and Type B. (As in Friedman and Rosenman’s (1959) study of personality, Type A is the one to avoid, though perhaps not as a harbinger of coronary heart disease.)

Type A syllabuses focus on what is to be learned: the L2. They are interventionist. Someone preselects and predigests the language to be taught, dividing it up into small pieces, and determining learning objectives in advance of any consideration of who the learners may be or of how languages are learned. Type A syllabuses, White points out, are thus external to the learner, other-directed, determined by authority, set the teacher as decision maker, treat the subject matter of instruction as important, and assess success and failure in terms of achievement or mastery.

Compare Type B:

Type B syllabuses, on the other hand, focus on how the language is to be learned. They are noninterventionist. They involve no artificial preselection or arrangement of items and allow objectives to be determined by a process of negotiation between teacher and learners after they meet, as a course evolves. They are thus internal to the learner, negotiated between learners and teacher as joint decision makers, emphasize the process of learning rather than the subject matter, and assess accomplishment in relationship to learners’ criteria for success.

Long and Crookes go on to situate TBLT in the analytic/Type B purview. To clear the way for this (then) new approach, they attack the traditional, synthetic/Type A syllabus. These traditional syllabuses are flawed, they claim, because

• they lack authenticity; some purport to be task-based but
  • “seed dialogues and texts with the linguistic items of the day”
  • use tasks as “carriers” for traditional syllabus items to “elicit particular structures”
• they assume a model of language acquisition unsupported by research findings on language learning in or out of classrooms […] research shows that people do not learn isolated items in the L2 one at a time, in additive, linear fashion, but as parts of complex mappings of groups of form-function relationships
• attempt to elicit immediate targetlike mastery of those forms. Where syntax is concerned, research has demonstrated that learners rarely, if ever, move from zero to targetlike mastery of new items in one step.
• the analysis is conducted on an idealized native-speaker version of that language. SLA research offers no evidence to suggest that nativelike exemplars of any of these synthetic units are meaningful acquisition units that they are (or even can be) acquired separately, singly, in linear fashion, or that they can be learned prior to and separate from language use.

And Long and Crookes conclude their argument thus:

SLA is sufficiently difficult that most learners’ attempts end in at least partial failure. Whatever the relative merits of one unit compared to another, therefore, the psychological processes involved in learning would seem to have priority over arguments concerning alternative ways of analysing the ideal, but rarely attained, product. While it also involves the acquisition of social and cultural knowledge, language learning is a psycholinguistic process, not a linguistic one, yet synthetic syllabuses consistently leave the learner out of the equation.

Reaction

We see that Long and Crookes follow Wilkins in taking the learner perspective. In a synthetic syllabus, the work of analysing the target language has been taken care of by teachers and/or materials writers. It is used to identify and sequence discrete language elements which the learners are then responsible for putting back together in L2 communication.

Put like this, the synthetic syllabus does seem to foreground structured input to the learner at the expense of support for language production in meaningful contexts. It begs the question why linguistic input needs to be deconstructed in this manner at all. Or as Cobb (2006) suggests, if such ‘grappling’ is called for, let it be the learner who grapples (Whyte, 2015: 16)

Communicative and task-based methodologies […] owe more to constructivist learning theory. In this view, grammatical analysis is at least partially the responsibility of the learner. Constructivist linguist Thomas Cobb claims that

learning is more effective when it is the learner who reflects on the language and struggles to formulate rules, rather than the teacher: representations constructed from grappling with raw data, as opposed to representations resulting from someone else’s having grappled, are not just generally ‘better’ in some vague way but specifically are more successfully transferred to novel contexts and form a better preparation for further independent learning. (Cobb, 2006)

With an analytical syllabus, such prior linguistic analysis by teachers or materials writers is considered “largely superfluous” (Wilkins 1976: 13) since language learning is viewed as a product (or indeed process) of at least partially subconscious recognition of chunks and patterns in comprehensible target language input. (The article is of its time in its reference to Chomsky’s universal grammar (see Cook & Newson 2007) and Krashen’s (1982, 1985) input hypothesis.) As noted above, this approach is so different from the synthetic syllabus that writers and teachers find it hard to abandon structural principles and instead disguise them with a patina of task-based terminology.

If we take a teacher perspective, we can see the attraction of the synthetic syllabus. It provides information about linguistic elements and structures, which learners often expect and want, and teachers sometimes struggle to provide (third conditional? middle voice? secondary stress?). It also gives structure to a lesson or a course without going to all the trouble of conducting needs analysis (particular in school contexts where students are numerous and their needs often nebulous).

While the natural approach of the early days of CLT seemed at first to free teachers from the structuralist yoke, the analytical syllabus represented by task-based approaches brings its own set of difficulties. Not least among them is understanding the difference between tasks and pedagogical exercises. Adopting a task-based approach is also difficult in educational contexts organised on synthetic principles: can Type B teachers flourish in a Type A world?

I leave it to the reader to decide; in the meantime, Long and Crookes (1992) may be worth revisiting.

References

• Cobb, T. (2006). Constructivism. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics.

  Cook, V., & Newson, M. (2007). Chomsky’s universal grammar. New York: Wiley.

• Friedman, M. & Rosenman, R. (1959). Association of specific overt behaviour pattern with blood and cardiovascular findings. Journal of the American Medical Association. 169: 1286–1296. doi:10.1001/jama.1959.03000290012005.
• Krashen, S. D. (1985). The input hypothesis. London: Longman.
• Krashen, S. D. (1982). Principles and practice in second language acquisition. Oxford: Pergamon Press.
• Long, M. H., & Crookes, G. (1992). Three approaches to task‐based syllabus design. TESOL Quarterly, 26(1), 27-56. PDF
• White, R. V. (1988). The ELT curriculum. Design, innovation and management. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
• Whyte, S. (2015). Implementing and researching technological innovation in language teaching: the case of interactive whiteboards for EFL in French schools. Palgrave.
• Wilkins, D. A. (1976). Notional syllabuses. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

An audio-visual corpus of technology-mediated classroom language teaching: two CALL OER projects

Teaching and Language Corpora (TaLC) Conference
University of Cambridge, 18-21 July 2018

An audio-visual corpus of technology-mediated classroom language teaching: creating an open repository for CALL teacher education

Abstract

Historically, corpora have often been developed with an eye on practical applications, and as Boulton and Tyne (2014: 301) remind us, “in many cases, these applications were pedagogical in nature.” Cheng (2010) detects a shift in recent years from teaching to learning, with more attention given to tools and training for teachers to support learner use of corpora via data-driven learning. This goal of encouraging greater learner autonomy is mirrored in teacher education in what Farr (2010a: 621) calls “a cocoon of post-transmissive and post-directive approaches” which favour “independent and self-directed learning, and critical and reflective engagement.” A useful tool for teacher education in this respect is offered by teaching corpora, which O’Keefe, McCarthy and Carter (2007: 220) view as a unique application of corpus linguistics, since they focus not on “what we can learn about language use from a corpus” but rather on “what corpora can tell us about our own teaching.”

O’Keeffe and colleagues have used transcriptions from audio-visual teaching corpora to raise language awareness (O’Keeffe & Farr, 2003; O’Keeffe & Walsh 2012) and to support pedagogical development among trainee teachers (Farr 2010a, 2010b), using both discourse analysis and conversation analysis frameworks. Research in computer-assisted language learning (CALL) research has also investigated teacher corpora, using multimodal corpora to explore the semiotic dimensions of online language teaching, such as multimodal interactions via webcam (Cohen & Guichon 2016; Guichon & Wigham 2016; Holt, Tellier & Guichon, 2015). To date, however, little research has considered video corpora in CALL teacher education.

Our research in this area is built on two funded European projects supporting language teacher integration of classroom technologies. A first project collected short video clips of actual classroom practice with interactive technologies in a range of target languages at different age/proficiency levels. These practice examples were tagged for a variety of language, pedagogical, and technological features to create a searchable open repository for teacher education (Whyte, Cutrim Schmid, van Hazebrouck Thompson & Oberhofer 2014). A follow-up project was designed to address techno-pedagogical concerns identified in the first corpus (Whyte 2015), this time adopting a specific pedagogical approach (task-based language teaching; TBLT), a wider range of technologies (mobile devices and videoconferencing), and longer videos showing edited teaching sequences.

This presentation analyses this second teaching corpus, ITILT 2, constituted by 117 video examples of learning activities prepared by 28 pre- and in-service teachers in 15 schools and universities in 5 European countries. The poster shows the background to the project and an overview of the teaching corpus created. The videos are analysed in comparison with the original corpus in terms of language, pedagogical, and technological features, as well as with respect to the new dimension (TBLT sequences). Secondary data on teachers and learner perspectives provides additional insight on this open learning project and the opportunities for teacher development afforded by this kind of teaching corpus.

Poster presentation

Background: ITILT 1 and ITILT 2, teacher education in classroom technologies

ITILT  2 data: fewer practice examples, languages, (more young beginners) in second project. 76 videos from 31 tasks by 23 teachers of 4 languages in 5 countries at 3 educational levels.

First project findings: the effect of IWB on interactivity, learner engagement in interaction, and task-oriented teaching was somewhat limited.

ITILT 2: there was more group work compared to teacher-fronted activities, technologies were used for learner action rather than L2 input, and activities focused on listening and speaking rather than grammar or culture. More communicative activities as opposed to drill and display were presented, though display was still common with young learners.

Task-based language teaching: practice examples show more TBLT criteria were met, and no increase with proficiency.

Discussion: new corpus suggests mobile technologies allowed greater interactivity, interactional engagement and task orientation across languages and educational levels. Practice examples included activities without technology and some gratuitous uses. IWB coding system adapted to mobile devices.

Previous work

ITILT open educational resources: http://www.itilt2.eu

References

Boulton, A., & Tyne, H. (2014). Corpus-based study of language and teacher education. The Routledge handbook of educational linguistics, 301-312.
Cheng, W. (2010). What can a corpus tell us about language teaching. The Routledge handbook of corpus linguistics, 319-332.
Cohen, C., & Guichon, N. (2016). Analysing multimodal resources in pedagogical online exchanges. Language-Learner Computer Interactions: Theory, methodology and CALL applications, 2, 187.
Farr, F. (2010a). How can corpora be used in teacher education. Routledge Handbook of Corpus Linguistics, London and New York: Routledge, 620-632.
Farr, F. (2010b). The discourse of teaching practice feedback: A corpus-based investigation of spoken and written modes. Routledge.
Guichon, N., & Wigham, C. R. (2016). A semiotic perspective on webconferencing-supported language teaching. ReCALL, 28(1), 62-82.
Holt, B., Tellier, M., & Guichon, N. (2015). The use of teaching gestures in an online multimodal environment: the case of incomprehension sequences. In Gesture and Speech in Interaction 4th Edition.
ITILT, Interactive Teaching in Languages with Technology, http://itilt2.eu
O’Keeffe, A., & Farr, F. (2003). Using language corpora in initial teacher education: Pedagogic issues and practical applications. Tesol Quarterly, 37(3), 389-418.
O’Keeffe, A., McCarthy, M., & Carter, R. (2007). From corpus to classroom: Language use and language teaching. Cambridge University Press.
O’Keeffe, A., & Walsh, S. (2012). Applying corpus linguistics and conversation analysis in the investigation of small group teaching in higher education. Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, 8(1), 159-181.
Whyte, S. (2015). Implementing and Researching Technological Innovation in Language Teaching: The Case of Interactive Whiteboards for EFL in French Schools. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan

Whyte, S., & Alexander, J. (2014). Implementing tasks with interactive technologies in classroom CALL: towards a developmental framework. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 40 (1), 1-26. PDF

Whyte, S., Beauchamp, G., & Alexander, J. (2014). Researching interactive whiteboard use from primary school to university settings across Europe: an analytical framework for foreign language teaching. University of Wales Journal of Education, 17, 30-52. [link]

Whyte, S., Cutrim Schmid, E., & Beauchamp, G. (2014). Second language interaction with interactive technologies: the IWB in state school foreign language classrooms. AILA, Brisbane.
Whyte, S., Cutrim Schmid, E., van Hazebrouck, S., & Oberhofer, M. (2014). Open educational resources for CALL teacher education: the iTILT interactive whiteboard project. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 27 (2), 122-148 doi: 10.1080/09588221.2013.818558

Topics

Teacher education and language corpora
Developing resources for language learning and teaching

Peer filming in task-based language teacher education

This is a series of three short videos on the topic of peer filming in language teacher education. They were made in connection with the Video in Language Teacher Education (ViLTE) project at Warwick University which showcases different uses of this medium to support new teachers of English as a second or foreign language (ESL/EFL).

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

My contribution is based on an activity I designed for first year students in our Masters in Teaching English programme at the University of Nice. It involves peer filming, where student teachers watch each other teach an activity in a secondary school EFL class and make video recordings using their smartphones. They then select an episode for discussion in their university class, and write up their analysis in a reflective paper.

Part 1: background to peer filming in language teacher education

Here I look at three types of teacher education: one of my first experiences, which involved temporary EFL instructors in our English department; a second primary school initiative on video-conferencing in tandem exchanges; and two European projects where we used short video clips to illustrate different types of technology integration in the language classroom. This provides some background on video-stimulated recall and peer observation/discussion, both techniques which proved helpful in overcoming difficulties these teachers experienced in making pedagogical changes.

Whyte, S. (2011). Learning to teach with videoconferencing in primary foreign language classrooms. ReCALL 23(3): 271–293. doi.org/10.1017/S0958344011000188

Whyte, S., & Cutrim Schmid, E. (2014). A task-based approach to video communication with the IWB: a French-German primary EFL class exchange. In Cutrim Schmid, E., & Whyte, S. (Eds.) Teaching languages with technology: communicative approaches to interactive whiteboard use. London: Bloomsbury.

Whyte, S. (2015). Implementing and Researching Technological Innovation in Language Teaching: The Case of Interactive Whiteboards for EFL in French Schools. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Part 2:  Peer filming in the secondary EFL classroom in France

Building on the background of task-based language teaching (TBLT), video-stimulated recall (VSR), and peer discussion described in the previous film, here we show the advantages of peer filming in bridging the gap between school and university during the school placements organised for our Masters in Teaching English students at the University of Nice (UNS). This video sets out the five steps involved in peer filming, where the students

1. design tasks in groups
2. teach and observe the activity in school
3. film the activity on their smartphones
4. share critical incidents at university
5. write a reflective paper on the experience

In the film we discuss

• the example of a driving instructor task designed for lower secondary EFL,
• excerpts from class activities filmed on students’ phones, and
• feedback from a student teacher who is now a practising teacher. We end with some practical advice for implementing this procedure in initial teacher education, and a link to the next video which offers two possibilities for exploiting peer films for teacher development.

Whyte, S. (2015). Taking to task(s): Exploring task design by novice language teachers in technology-mediated and non-technological activities. XVII International CALL research conference proceedings, 30-36.

Part 3: Design briefs and critical incidents: preparing tasks and exploiting peer films

This video builds on the three main stages of peer filming: a) the use of a design brief to create classroom tasks, b) the recording of a ‘quick and dirty’ record of the activity in progress, and c) the discussion of critical incidents to consolidate student teacher learning from the process. It then focuses on the first and last dimensions by presenting two frameworks for discussing peer films with student teachers. The first involves criteria for assessing language tasks from a TBLT perspective (Erlam 2013, 2015), while the second takes a more inclusive perspective, focusing on critical incidents (Breen et al 2001). We conclude with some recommendations for this aspect of peer filming in language teacher education.

Breen, M. P., Hird, B., Milton, M., Oliver, R., & Thwaite, A. (2001). Making sense of language teaching: Teachers’ principles and classroom practices. Applied linguistics, 22(4), 470-501.

Erlam, R. (2015). ‘I’m still not sure what a task is’: Teachers designing language tasks. Language Teaching Research.

Erlam, R. (2013). Listing and comparing tasks in the language classroom: Examples of Willis and Willis’s (2007) taxonomy in practice. The New Zealand Language Teacher, 39,7-14.

Samuda, V. 2005. Expertise in second language pedagogic task design. In Johnson, K. Expertise in language teaching. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan

Whyte, S. (2015). Taking to task(s): Exploring task design by novice language teachers in technology-mediated and non-technological activities. XVII International CALL research conference proceedings, 30-36.

Overview texts

1 Background
2 Peer Film
3 Design Briefs and Critical Incidents

ViLT resources

Mackay, J. (2018). IATEFL conference presentation on ViLTE project by Steve Mann

ViLTE project seminar, February 2018

ViLT YouTube channel

 

Is task-based language teaching just a variation on presentation-practice-production?

Many language teachers are interested in the question of what makes a task a task. Pre-service teachers are often under pressure to conform to some see as the hegemony of task-based language teaching (TBLT) which they feel is imposed on teachers by the Common European Reference framework (CER). They want to know whether their textbook which claim to follow CER principles offer genuinely task-based teaching activities. Or they wonder how the demands of “authentic” language use associated with TBLT can be squared with the seemingly artificial language used in the foreign language classroom where everyone shares a native language.

Teacher educators, too, struggle with strong versions of a task-based approach, as opposed to weaker, task-supported incarnations, which often seem to overlap with the production phase of the PPP approach, where structures are Presented and Practiced with the teacher before learners are encourage to Produce their own contributions. Does this seem a reasonable compromise, or does it mean abandoning the principles of TBLT?

In the slides above I summarise two articles, one by Jason Anderson in defence of PPP, and another by Rod Ellis, one of the main proponents of TBLT. Anderson argues that PPP has admirably stood the test of time and is suited to a wider range of teaching contexts than TBLT. Ellis, on the other hand, defends TBLT against a number of misconceptions about this approach, and to my mind invalidates many of Anderson’s points. My own view is that TBLT is quite different from PPP, and that there are good reasons, related to how languages are learned, to favour TBLT (see Jordan for instance).

Update January 2019: For further critiques of PPP see also How do you like your syllabus? and posts by other ELT teachers and trainers Geoff Jordan Does PPP really make perfect sense? and Neil McMillan Why PPP is a political issue.

References

Anderson, J. (2016). Why practice makes perfect sense: the past, present and potential future of the PPP paradigm in language teacher education. Practice, 19.

Ellis, R. (2013). Task-based language teaching: Responding to the critics. University of Sydney Papers in TESOL, 8(1), 1-27.

Jordan, G. (2018). Does PPP really make perfect sense? applingtesol.wordpress.com

McMillan, N. (2019). Why PPP is a political issue. animalisingelt.wordpress.com

Teaching languages with technology: 2 reviews

Two reviews of our edited volume on communicative language teaching with the interactive whiteboard (IWB):

Davidson Devall, K. (2015). Review of the book Teaching Languages with Technology: Communicative Approaches to Whiteboard Use. The Modern Language Journal, 99(4).

Guichon, N., & Merlet, E. (2016). Critique : Teaching Languages with Technology: Communicative Approaches to Whiteboard Use. Canadian Modern Language Review / Revue Canadienne des Langues Vivantes, 72, 1, 284–286 doi:10.3138/cmlr.72.1.284

Preview on Google Books

These reviews focus on different aspects of this collection of case studies from the iTILT project on the integration of the IWB in classroom foreign language teaching. Both pick up on Colpaert’s reminder in his foreword to the book that technology is only one aspect of the learning environment, and go on to highlight the pedagogical dimension of technology integration, and from there to teacher education concerns. Davidson Devall sees the potential of the volume to inform action research in IWB-supported language teaching, and for language teacher education with technologies other than the IWB, while Guichon and Merlet underline the importance of progressive appropriation of the technological and pedagogical affordances of digital tools.

This post offers some short quotations from each review, followed by a summary of some of our recommendations for teacher development given in the final chapter of the book.

Davidson Devall (2015)

This review in the Modern Language Journal considers its implications for teacher education “even in contexts different from those in the book,” that is, beyond the primary school classroom which is the focus of several chapters, and beyond the IWB itself.

As Colpaert states in his Foreword, “What makes IWBs [interactive whiteboards] very interesting is their unique position in the technological spectrum: on the one hand they feature a specific set of limitations and affordances, but on the other hand they easily fit within many learning environments as one piece of the puzzle” (p. xii). The editors of this volume seek to encourage further research and material development efforts for the interactive whiteboard by presenting specific applications and opening a dialogue for discovery learning amongst instructors and students.
[…]
As evident from the title, the book is intended for teacher education and development. The overview of the development of technology- enhanced language learning as well as pre- and post-reading reflective questions for each chapter provide excellent support for implementation in a pedagogical methods course.
[…]
the criteria for designing materials structured by Cutrim Schmid and Whyte could be helpful for use with other interactive technologies as they touch on “methodological principles,” “pedagogical activities,” “learner engagement,” “tools and features,” and practical considerations” (pp. 245–248).

Guichon & Merlet (2016)

This review is in French and appears in the Canadian Modern Language Review. It notes that the book aims to suggest avenues for pedagogical exploitation of the IWB based on research rather than simply promote this tool, and that one of the most interesting aspects of the volume lies in the recommendations in the final chapter for the training of teacher educators.

D’emblée, que ce soit par le biais de l’avant-propos de Jozef Colpaert qui déclare que « no technology, not even the [Interactive Whiteboard] , carries an inherent, direct, measurable and generalizable effect » (p. xii) ou dans l’introduction de Shona Whyte qui prend le soin d’ancrer la réflexion dans l’approche par tâches, le lecteur est assuré que l’objectif de cet ouvrage n’est pas de faire la promotion d’un outil, mais de proposer des pistes d’exploitation pédagogique d’une manière critique et informée par la recherche et les données empiriques.
[…]
L’un des aspects les plus intéressants de cet ouvrage est qu’il fournit des axes pour guider la formation de formateurs à l’utilisation du TNI dans la classe de langue (c’est d’ailleurs l’orientation du dernier chapitre). L’enseignant, dont le rôle primordial est rappelé, est invité à s’engager dans une réflexion pédagogique, cherchant à impliquer réellement ses apprenants dans les interactions. Est ainsi souligné avec acuité l’importance du processus de l’appropriation de l’outil qui ne peut se faire qu’en se donnant le temps de l’expérience et en mettant en place des projets de formation par étapes. Le processus de formation gagne à inclure des phases de réflexion, personnelle ou collective, à partir de pratiques de classe contextualisées et répondant aux besoins et à la réalité des enseignants désireux de s’approprier le TNI comme un nouvel élément de leur environnement et de leur répertoire pédagogiques.

Supporting teacher education for technology integration

In Chapter 8, our conclusion to this edited collection, we propose the following principles for teacher education.

Principles and guidelines for IWB-supported language teaching practice

In work on teacher professional development elsewhere, we suggest a number of principles for the design and implementation of IWB training (Cutrim Schmid & Schimmack, 2009; Cutrim Schmid & Whyte, 2012; Whyte et al., 2013). This section will review these recommendations in light of the findings presented in this book. The present volume includes studies of IWB teacher training courses in Belgium and Turkey, which revealed interesting aspects of the challenges and complexities involved in such endeavors. Other chapters have also dealt with this topic indirectly, since all studies contained an element of reflective practice, a component of continuing professional development in both informal and institutional settings.

Although most of these principles apply to the majority of technology professional development contexts, the examples given to exemplify the guidelines are drawn from IWB-based studies. This will help readers understand how these principles can be applied to their specific context. We suggest five key principles to inform the design and implementation of IWB training programmes.

4.1 Pedagogical framework based on theoretical foundation

IWB training programmes should have a sound theoretical basis and a clear pedagogical framework.

All chapters have emphasized the value of IWB professional development rooted in established language learning theory. From this perspective, the affordances of the technology with respect to teaching goals constitute the best starting point for an attempt to understand the potential of the IWB. The first question teachers should ask is not “What can I do with an IWB in my language lesson?” but rather “How can I use the IWB to support language learning?”

4.2 Contextually embedded professional development

IWB training programmes should focus on teachers’ immediate pedagogical needs and be embedded in the work teachers actually do.

In most chapters, the participating teachers reflected on IWB use that was embedded in their own practice. The pre-service teachers in chapters 3 (Kegenhof) and 4 (Sailer) worked in tandem with practicing teachers, but their reflection is based on the materials they developed and the lessons they designed and implemented in this collaborative context. This approach allowed teachers to experiment with ways the IWB could support and enhance teaching, thereby gaining a better understanding of the strengths and limitations of this technology.

4.3 Reflective practice

IWB training courses should create opportunities for teachers to reflect on their practice.

All studies presented in this book include an element of reflective practice, since participating teachers and teacher researchers were involved in critical reflection
through various means. The insightful discussions and recommendations provided by the participating teachers and teacher researchers in this volume underline the value of reflective practice as a powerful impetus for professional development, confirming much earlier work in this area (e.g. Mcniff, 1988; Bartlett, 1990; Wallace, 1998; Allwright &
Lenzuen, 1997).

4.4 Professional collaboration

IWB training courses should create opportunities to establish professional contacts and undertake collaborative projects.

Several chapters in this volume have dealt with the relationship between collaboration and professional development. Chapters 3 and 4 report on research projects within a larger professional development program for pre-service EFL teachers involving school-based research projects where pre-service teachers design, implement, and evaluate technology-enhanced EFL lessons in collaboration with in-service teachers (Cutrim Schmid & Hegelheimer, 2014). This type of professional collaboration has been widely recommended in the CALL literature to encourage the all-important integration of theoretical with procedural knowledge (e.g., Meskill et al., 2006).

4.5 Ongoing support for professional development

IWB teacher training courses should provide teachers with enough opportunities for gradual accumulation of knowledge and experience within their constraints of time and energy.

Although the majority of studies described in this volume do not have a longitudinal design, several authors emphasize the importance of providing teachers with the opportunity to construct knowledge gradually with the support of peers or trainers. In the area of materials design, we propose a list of 38 criteria for IWB-mediated teaching resources, organized in five main areas, which may be useful for teachers and trainers in developing and evaluating their own teaching materials.

Regarding classroom interaction, we suggest and illustrate a four-level interaction/interactivity framework which can inform the analysis of IWB-supported language teaching.

We believe that the language teacher plays a primordial role in effectively integrating IWB use in the language classroom, hence the priority given to high quality teacher education. Similarly, without attention to interactional opportunities both as these arise in instruction and through the careful planning of teaching materials, much effort devoted to IWB integration simply goes to waste. As Colpaert notes in his foreword,

“IWBs cannot generate a learning effect on their own, but they are indispensable cornerstones for creating powerful learning environments.”

We hope our contributions in this final chapter, together with the rich and varied classroom case studies in this volume, can inform and inspire language teachers throughout the world to make the most of this potential.

 

References

Allwright, D. and Lenzuen, R. (1997), ‘Exploratory practice: Work at the cultura inglesa, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil’, Language Teaching Research, 1, 73-79.

Bartlett, L. (1990), ‘Teacher development through reflective teaching’, in J.C. Richards and D. Nunan (eds.), Second Language Teacher Education. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Cutrim Schmid, E. and Hegelheimer, V. (2014), ‘Collaborative research projects in the technology-enhanced language classroom: Pre-service and in-service teachers exchange knowledge about technology’. ReCALL, 26(03), 315-332

Cutrim Schmid, E. and Schimmack, E. (2010), ‘First Steps towards a model of interactive whiteboard training for language teachers’, in Thomas, M. and Cutrim Schmid, E. (eds.), Interactive Whiteboards: Theory, Research and Practice. Hershey, PA: IGI Global, pp. 197-214.

Cutrim Schmid, E., and Whyte, S. (2012), ‘Interactive whiteboards in state school settings: Teacher responses to socio-constructivist hegemonies’, Language Learning and Technology, 16, (2), 65-86.

McNiff, J. (1988), Action Research: Principles and Practice. London: Routledge.

Meskill, C., Anthony, N., Hilliker, S., Tseng, C. and You, J. (2006), ‘Expert-novice teacher mentoring in language learning technology’, in P. Hubbard and M. Levy (eds.), Teacher Education in CALL. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 283-298.

Whyte, S., Cutrim Schmid, E., van Hazebrouck Thompson, S. and Oberhofer, M. (2013), ‘Open educational resources for CALL teacher education: the iTILT interactive whiteboard project’, Computer Assisted Language Learning, (ahead-of-print), 1-27.

Wallace, M. (1998), Action Research for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Materials design: criteria for IWB-supported language teaching

Criteria for IWB-supported language teaching

There appears to be a clear need for a design framework that focuses specifically on IWB materials for language teaching. In response to this need, we have developed a set of criteria for the design and evaluation of IWB-based language learning materials.

These criteria were developed during the teacher training and data collection phases of the iTILT EU project, and refined during the analysis and interpretation of the findings. These guidelines are intended to support teachers in their use of the IWB as an effective tool to integrate digital technology in the regular language classroom and in particular to
a) enable the visualization and apprehension of concepts
b) facilitate engagement with and understanding of complex notions, and
c) enhance interaction and collaboration among learners.

Our materials design criteria for effective IWB-supported language teaching are divided into five key areas: methodological principles, pedagogical activities, learner engagement, tools and features, and practical considerations.

METHODOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES

1. Activities involve a communicative purpose, as opposed to decontextualised language practice
2. Materials promote learning by doing as opposed to lecture content
3. Grammar materials promote focus on form (learning in a communicative context) rather than abstract rules
4. Materials create opportunities for learners to assess their own performance without teacher intervention
5. Materials allow learners to demonstrate understanding and help teachers to evaluate learning
6. Materials include opportunities for teachers to provide feedback on learners’ production
7. Materials promote learner interaction and cooperative and/or collaborative learning activities

PEDAGOGICAL ACTIVITIES

1. Activities have a clear language learning objective; they are not only designed for enjoyment
2. Activities are designed around genuine or potentially real-life contexts which have meaning for learners
3. Materials include task-like activities such as exchanging information or solving problems and have a clearly defined outcome.
4. Materials provide linguistic and/or cognitive support to help learners understand input
5. Materials provide linguistic and/or cognitive support to maximise learners’ language production
6. Materials include resources which offer rich input for language learning
7. Some activities may allow for learner differentiation and individual choice
8. Some activities create opportunities for negotiation of meaning (e.g., information gap)

LEARNER ENGAGEMENT

1. Materials include topics and activities which are likely to motivate learners
2. Opportunities are provided for learners to make their own contributions to activities
3. Learners’ class contributions can have an impact on how the lesson unfolds
4. Materials allow adequate space for learner experimentation and discovery, or inductive learning
5. Some activities provide space for displaying and/or discussing learners’ work
6. Some activities include links to external learning resources or other ICT tools which learners can access outside class
7. Some activities model effective learning strategies which learners can use in other contexts
8. Activities are appropriate to the age and language proficiency of learners

TOOLS & FEATURES

1. The materials include audio, visual and/or tactile input to support teaching and learning
2. Pages and files are not overloaded with too much information or too many different stimuli which may overwhelm learners
3. IWB tools (e.g., spotlight) and features (e.g., drag and drop) are used to support physical interactivity with the IWB
4. IWB tools and features are used to support cognitive interactivity with learning content
5. IWB tools and features are used to support social interactivity between the teacher and learner(s) or between learners
6. IWB tool and feature use allows the teacher to make complex input comprehensible to learners
7. Fonts, images, colours and other elements are easily readable and esthetically pleasing
8. An appropriate balance between objects embedded in the file before class and actions required of learners during class is respected

PRACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS

1. The materials represent an efficient use of teacher time in terms of preparation versus classroom use
2. Instructions are included which allow other teachers to quickly understand the intended learner level, objectives, and implementation of activities
3. Only resources which are free from copyright restrictions are included in the materials
4. Files load correctly and all links and interactive elements work as intended
5. The level of technological sophistication of the materials is appropriate to the technology available in class (connectivity, equipment, software)
6. Materials include some low-tech alternatives for use in case of technical problems (e.g., connectivity)
7. The use of the IWB brings a clear added value to the activities proposed and all activities cannot easily be carried out without an IWB.

Adapted from Cutrim Schmid, E., & Whyte, S. (Eds.). (2014). Teaching Languages with Technology: Communicative Approaches to Interactive Whiteboard Use. London & New York: Bloomsbury Publishing. Chapter 8.

Promoting interaction in the EFL classroom: Dutch-French telecollaboration

Conference presentation, S. Whyte & L. Gijsen
New Directions in Telecollaborative Research and Practice:
The Second Conference on Telecollaboration in University Education
Dublin, April 2016

In a recent keynote at this year’s EuroCALL conference, O’Dowd (2015) looked back on nearly 20 years of telecollaborative experience, or online intercultural exchange, and charted its development from niche activity to mainstay of the foreign language classroom, at least as far as higher education is concerned.

Like most researchers, O’Dowd identifies two purposes for telecollaborative exchange, that is:

1. “to engage learners in ‘authentic’ interaction with native speakers or with learners from other countries” and also
2. “to give them first-hand experience of ‘real’ intercultural communication.”

The bulk of discussion in this paper, as in the literature in general, focuses on the second objective. Telecollaborative research has focused on

• learning about the target language culture (Kramsch, 2014),
• understanding those from other cultures as a window on one’s own culture (Guth & Helm, 2010), and even
• the mediating role of technology itself (Kern, 2014).

Comparatively few studies focus specifically on language learning per se, and those that do often underline difficulties in promoting productive learner-learner exchanges which involve genuine negotiation of meaning or effective peer feedback, for example (Belz & Reinhardt, 2004).

Moreover, research in telecollaboration also frequently highlights the limitations and drawbacks of online communication, due to

• technical constraints and problems,
• a predominance of what some see as artificial exchanges which are limited to personal registers (Hanna & de Nooy, 2009), and
• related concerns with unchallenging task design which fails to engage participants in genuine collaboration (Ware & O’Dowd, 2009).

If past approaches to telecollaborative exchange have been found wanting in these respects, then a new direction for this form of exchange might take the form of a focus on language to the exclusion of cultural and intercultural concerns, and on creating space for learner interaction over other affordances of telecollaborative tools. Second language research has established a number of recommendations for effective instruction, including the need for purposeful interaction in a communicative context with interlocutors outside the classroom (Lee & VanPatten, 2003; de Bot). All of these requirements can be addressed through telecollaboration.

The present study reports on a telecollaborative exchange involving EFL learners in classes taught by some thirty secondary school student-teachers in France and the Netherlands. The student-teachers were enrolled in courses on technology for language education in their respective institutions, and they collaborated in a virtual environment to:

• share information about their learners,
• devise learning tasks involving interaction between learners in different countries, and
• document instances of target language communication and learning.

Data include

• student-teacher contributions during the course (video presentations and classroom clips,
• synchronous and asychronous group exchanges in the virtual environment),
• the teaching and learning materials they designed and published as open educational resources, and
• reflection on the implementation of activities from a task-based language teaching perspective.

Additional information is provided by participant attitude questionnaires on language teaching and learning, the role of technology, and their views of course outcomes.

References

Belz, J. A., & Reinhardt, J. (2004). Aspects of advanced foreign language proficiency: Internet‐mediated German language play. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 14(3), 324-362.

De Bot, K. (2007). Language teaching in a changing world. Modern Language Journal, 274-276.

Guth, S. and Helm, F. (2010) (eds.) Telecollaboration 2.0: Language, Literacy and Intercultural Learning in the 21st Century. Bern: Peter Lang.

Hanna, B. & de Nooy, J. (2009). Learning language and culture via public internet discussion forums. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Kern, R. (2014). Technology as pharmakon: The promise and perils of the Internet for foreign language education. The Modern Language Journal, 98(1), 340-357.

Kramsch, C. (2014). Teaching foreign languages in an era of globalization: Introduction. The Modern Language Journal, 98(1), 296-311.

Lee, J. F., & VanPatten, B. (1995). Making Communicative Language Teaching Happen. Volume 1: Directions for Language Learning and Teaching. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.

Lightbown, P. M. and Spada, N.(2000). How languages are learned. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

O’Dowd, R. (in press). Learning from the Past and Looking to the Future of Online Intercultural Exchange.

O’Dowd, R. & Ware, P. (2009). Critical issues in telecollaborative task design. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 22(2), 173–188.

Skehan, P. (2009). Modelling second language performance: Integrating complexity, accuracy, fluency, and lexis. Applied Linguistics, 30(4), 510-532.. PDF

Stolz, C. (2014). Are these 17 statements about language acquisition true? TPRS Questions and answer.

Other

EXMARaLDA http://www.exmaralda.org/en/

iTILT training: French participants

An iTILT teacher training session at a primary school in Antibes, near Nice, this month involved primary teachers and teacher trainers involved with language education and technology training, as well as newly-qualified secondary EFL teachers.

Training materials included

• the pilot version of the iTILT training manual, with its focus on task-based language teaching (TBLT)
• the iTILT website, with
  
  • practice examples (video clip, description, participant commentaries, related clips, tags)
  • quick/advanced search functions, manuals in several languages, and sample IWB teaching resources
• new video training materials developed in collaboration with our German iTILT partners in Schwäbisch-Gmünd.

We explained that this second iTILT project uses the same approach to teacher education, involving class films, learning focus group interviews, and video-stimulated recall session with participating teachers.  However, based on the first project’s results, we now have a focus on a new objective:

• How can we encourage more interactivity and interaction in the foreign language classroom?

The goal is thus to consider not tools, but rather pedagogical factors.

During our review of the first iTILT project activities and findings, we examined two video examples in particular: the magic schoolbag (primary EFL, FR), hotel furniture (vocational French, DE).

The new project involves a teacher who was also part of the first one: here we see her in the same classroom at the same board as she used in iTILT 1.

The French project teachers are working on video communication in English as a lingua franca using class sets of iPads (primary) and iPods (secondary) to exchange short videos with partner classes abroad, as well as some live videoconference sessions.

In keeping with our goal of developing TBLT approaches, the focus is on developing activities which include

• emphasis on making meaning and exchanging messages
• an information gap or other cognitively challenging premise
  
• the opportunity for learners to use their own linguistic resources
• a particular outcome for each task.

Taking to task(s): Task design and CALL

Taking to task(s): Exploring task design by novice language teachers in technology-mediated and non-technological activities

XVII International CALL research conference. Tarragona, Spain, 6-8 July 2015.

Conference proceedings PDF

This paper examines language teaching and learning activities in EFL classes in the French secondary school context with the aim of understanding factors affecting the design and implementation of such tasks. Participants are pre-service teachers in a university Masters in Teaching English programme with a practical component involving classroom observation and teaching. These student teachers designed communicative activities following a common design brief which leaves the technological component open (Samuda, 2005). Data include teaching materials and activity descriptions, reflective writing, questionnaire data, semi-structured individual and group interviews, and practitioner analysis of learner language. Analysis combines coding of the resulting tasks (Erlam, 2015) with qualitative analysis of questionnaire, interview and reflective writing data. Results suggest wide variation in proposed teaching and learning activities, in the design process, and in reflection on classroom implementation in both technology-mediated and non-technological tasks.

Task design & language learning and teaching

The design of language teaching and learning activities as defined broadly with the terms “task” and “exercise” in the theme of the conference has recently emerged as an important issue in second language teaching research. Viewed as an element of materials development alongside implementation, evaluation, and analysis of materials (Tomlinson, 2012), task design has long been considered a practical activity which is “still largely a practitioner-led practice, not always informed by theories of learning” (Reinders & White, 2010). Task-based and task-oriented teaching have however begun to attract increasing research interest both in technology-mediated contexts (Doughty & Long, 2003; Thomas & Reinders, 2010; Van den Branden et al., 2007) and in non-technological environments (Bygate et al., 2001; Ellis, 2003, 2009; Johnson, 2003; Samuda, 2005).  Indeed, pedagogy and design, as opposed to the integration of technologies per se, have recently been identified by leading CALL figures as both current areas of interest and priorities for ongoing research in our field (Colpaert, 2013; Levy et al., 2015). The academic study of task design offers the chance to improve our understanding of language learning opportunities in the (physical and virtual) language classroom and our models of professional development for language teachers.

Practitioner involvement via action research (Burns, 2005), for instance, or teacher engagement with research more generally, can contribute both to this research enterprise directly and to continuing teacher development.  In recent reviews of research in this area, Borg (2010, 2013) highlights the role of teacher research engagement in helping teachers reflect on their planning and decision-making processes, and thus in promoting “new ways of thinking.” Research in task planning has examined one aspect of this process using think-aloud protocols to study communicative activities developed by expert practitioners and materials writers using the same prompt or “design brief” (Johnson, 2003; Samuda, 2005).  These researchers call for further work to include both more diverse contexts (beyond the commonly studied university or private adult ESL class) and data on the actual implementation of the tasks designed by participants.

The present study seeks to address this gap in the literature by investigating task design and implementation in state school settings and by looking at new teachers rather than expert task designers.  It constitutes a partial replication of the Johnson and Samuda studies to investigate how novice EFL teachers design and implement tasks with their learners and the technological opportunities and constraints of their own classrooms.  By avoiding a specific focus on technology in the design brief, data can be collected on both technological and non-technological tasks and information gathered on the impact of technological considerations on the task design process. In this way, the study sheds light on how new teachers take to tasks in the process of becoming ELT professionals.

Baralt, M., Gilabert, R. & Robinson, P. (2014) (Eds.), Task Sequencing and Instructed Second Language Learning, (pp. 1-34). London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Bonnet, G. (2007). The CEFR and education policies in Europe. The Modern Language Journal, 91(4), 669-672.

Borg, S. (2013). Teacher research in language teaching: A critical analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Borg, S. (2010). Language teacher research engagement. Language Teacher, 43(4), 391–429.

Breen, M. P. (1987). Learner contributions to task design. In C. N. Candlin, & D. Murphy (Eds.), Language learning tasks. Lancaster Practical Papers in English Language Education, Vol. 7 (pp. 23-46). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall International.

Breen, M. P., Hird, B., Milton, M., Oliver, R., & Thwaite, A. (2001). Making sense of language teaching: Teachers’ principles and classroom practices. Applied linguistics, 22(4), 470-501.

Burns, A. (2005). Action research: An evolving paradigm? Language Teaching, 38(2), 57–74.

Butler, Y. G. (2011). The implementation of communicative and task-based language teaching in the Asia-Pacific region. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 31, 36-57.

Bygate, M., Skehan, P and Swain, M. (Eds.) (2001). Researching pedagogical tasks: second language learning, teaching, and assessment. London: Pearson.

Byrnes, H. (2007). Perspectives. The Modern Language Journal, 91(4), 641-5.

Carless, D. (2009). Revisiting the TBLT versus PPP debate: Voices from Hong Kong. Asian Journal of English Language Teaching, 19(1), 49-66.

Colpaert, J. (2013). Sustainability and research challenges in CALL. WorldCALL Glasgow.

Cutrim Schmid, E. & Whyte, S. (2012). Interactive Whiteboards in School Settings: Teacher Responses to Socio-constructivist Hegemonies.  Language Learning and Technology 16 (2), 65-86.

Doughty, C., & Long. M.(2003). Optimal psycholinguistic environments for distance foreign language learning. Language Learning and Technology, 7(3), 50-75.

Ellis, R. (2009). Task-based language teaching: sorting out the misunderstandings. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 19(3), 221-246.

Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Erlam, R. (2015). ‘I’m still not sure what a task is’: Teachers designing language tasks. Language Teaching Research.

Erlam, R. (2013). Listing and comparing tasks in the language classroom: Examples of Willis and Willis’s (2007) taxonomy in practice. The New Zealand Language Teacher, 39,7-14.

Gurzynski-Weiss, L. (2015). Spanish instructors’ operationalisation of task complexity and task sequencing in foreign language lessons. The Language Learning Journal, (ahead-of-print), 1-20.

Johnson, K. (2003). Designing Language Teaching Tasks. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Krahnke, K. (1987). Approaches to Syllabus Design for Foreign Language Teaching. Language in Education: Theory and Practice. New York: Prentice-Hall.

Lee, J. (2000). Tasks and Communicating in Language Classrooms. Boston: McGraw-Hill.

Levy, M., Hubbard, P., Stockwell, G., & Colpaert, J. (2015). Research challenges in CALL. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 28(1), 1-6.

Little, D. (2006). The Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Content, purpose, origin, reception and impact. Language Teaching, 39(3), 167-190.

Littlewood, W. (2004). The task-based approach: Some questions and suggestions. ELT journal, 58(4), 319-326.

Long, M. H. (1985). A role for instruction in second language acquisition: Task-based language teaching. Modelling and assessing second language acquisition. In Hyltenstam, K., & Pienemann, M. (Eds.). (1985). Modelling and assessing second language acquisition. (pp. 77-99). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Narcy-Combes, J.-P. (2006). Deux modes de fonctionnement mémoriel en production langagière et tâches d’apprentissage des langues. Cahiers de l’APLIUT, 25(2), 77-87.

Nunan, D. (2004). Task-Based Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Reinders, H. & White, C. (2010). The theory and practice of technology in materials development and task design. In: Harwood, N. (Ed.). Materials in ELT: Theory and Practice (p. 58-80). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Samuda, V. (2007). Tasks, design, and the architecture of pedagogic spaces. Unpublished plenary presented at the Second International Conference on Task-Based Language Teaching, University of Hawai’i. Available at: http://www.hawaii.edu/tblt2007/PP/presentations.htm.

Samuda, V. (2005). Expertise in pedagogic task design. In K. Johnson (ed.), Expertise in second language learning and teaching. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 230–254.

Skehan, P. (1998). A Cognitive Approach to Language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Thomas, M. & Reinders, H. (Eds.) 2010. Task-Based Language Teaching and Technology. New York: Continuum.

Tomlinson, B. (2012). Materials development for language learning and teaching. Language Teaching, 45(2), 143-179.

Van den Branden, K. (2009). Diffusion and implementation of innovations. In M. Long & C. Doughty (Eds.), The handbook of language teaching (pp. 659–72). Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Van den Branden, K. (2006). Introduction: task-based language teaching in a nutshell? In K. Van den Branden (Ed.), Task-based language education: From theory to practice. (1-16). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Van den Branden, K., Van Gorp, K., & Verhelst, M. (Eds.) (2007), Tasks in action: Task-based language education from a classroom-based perspective. Cambridge Scholars.

Whyte, S., & Alexander, J. (2014). Implementing tasks with interactive technologies in classroom CALL: towards a developmental framework. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, 40 (1), 1-26.

Willis, J. (1996). A Framework for Task-based learning. Harlow: Longman.

Bio data

Shona Whyte is associate professor of English at the University of Nice where she teaches EFL and TEFL and researches classroom interaction, interactive technologies, and teacher education. Recent work focuses on the integration of the interactive whiteboard by language teachers (Implementing and Researching Technological Innovation in Language Teaching, Palgrave Macmillan; Teaching languages with technology, Bloomsbury).

CrowdWish lesson plan (Rachael Roberts)

A great example of a communicative lesson plan, using authentic resources to stimulate discussion. There is a grammar focus, but it comes from the topic and activities, rather than constituting the starting point of the lesson. Link to video and transcript provided, CC licence – what more could we ask?

elt-resourceful

A free downloadable lesson, about a new online service, CrowdWish, which invites people to post their wishes on their website. Every day people vote on the most popular wish, and CrowdWish will grant it!  Students start by discussing some wishes taken from the site, then read a short text about what the site aims to do (so don’t tell them at the start of the lesson!)  There is then a focus on some useful idioms, before going on to watch a video in which the founder of the site, ‘pitches’ his idea. Students then look at the grammar used with ‘wish’, particularly at the use of ‘would’ when you want someone else to change their behaviour. Finally the students come up with their own wishes and vote on them, like on the site. You could even try and grant the top wish if you’re feeling creative..

The lesson would be…

View original post 34 more words