Action Research on Choosing and Using Communication Tasks for Classroom Activity Design

中国人民大学附中  朱京力

【提要】长期以来教师们依靠语言课堂指导学生反复练习英语的语音、词汇、句子结构，让学生回答问题，以此来展示学生在教师指导下所学内容。然而被教师和研究者们所采用的这种方法可能不是一种和学生一起完成学习内容的最佳途径。当我们从不同角度来看当今的英语语言教学和学习时，交际任务的使用成为课堂语言学习的一个有效的支持。随着课堂内任务使用的增长，我们更应该全新的阐述一下作为教学和研究来使用的任务，而不是只给它附上定义。根据这个需要，这篇论文介绍了两个用来定义任务的特征──互动式活动和交际目标，并且从类型上加以扩展。我们可以在讨论交际性任务在达到教学和研究目的的作用中，对交际性任务加以认识、分类和比较。

【关键词】交际  任务  活动  互动

Abstract：For many years, teachers have relied on language lessons, directing students to repeat and practice English sounds, words and structures, or calling on them to answer questions and thereby display what they learned through instruction. Such approaches taken by teachers and researchers, however, may not be the most suitable means of teaching and helping with students. When viewed from the perspective of current English language teaching and learning, a more effective way to support language learning in the classroom is revealed through the use of communication tasks. The increasing use of tasks for classroom instruction has called for a fuller explication of task as a teaching and research construct than is offered by its current definitions. In light of this need, this paper has illustrated two features which have been used to define tasks──interactional activity and communication goal──and expanded them in a typology, through which communication tasks can be identified, classified, and compared with regard to their roles in meeting instructional and research purposes.

Key words: communication  task  activity  interactive

Introduction

How can teachers get language learners to talk? This is the typical and common question which has always been asked by most teachers and researchers in China.

For many years, teachers have relied on language lessons, directing students to repeat and practice English sounds, words and structures, or calling on them to answer questions and thereby display what they learned through instruction. Such approaches taken by teachers and researchers, however, may not be the most suitable means of carrying out their work with students. When viewed from the perspective of current English language teaching and learning, a more effective way to support language learning in the classroom is revealed through the use of communication tasks.

What is a task?

Task-based language teaching TBL has been extensively used in nowadays English language teaching.

Recently, many English teachers and researchers in China devote a great deal of their time and energy toward the TBL. The task-based language teaching aims at providing opportunities for the learners to experiment with and explore both spoken and written language through learning activities which are designed to engage learners in the authentic, practical and functional use of language for meaningful purposes.

First, let's get down to knowing what is a task? There are various definitions of tasks. Here is a list of some of them:

a. Long (1985: 89): A task is“a piece of work undertaken for oneself or for others, freely or for some reward. Thus, examples of tasks include painting a fence, dressing a child, filling out a form... and helping someone cross a road. In other words, by task is meant the hundred and one things people do in everyday life, at work, at play, and in between.”

b. Richards, Platt and Weber (1986: 289): A task is“an activity or action which is carried out as the result of processing or understanding language (i.e. as a response).”

c. Nunan (1989: 10): A communicative task is“a piece of classroom work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused on meaning rather than form. The task should also have a sense of completeness, being able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right.”

d. Skehan (1995): A task is“an activity in which meaning is primary；there is some sort of relationship to the real world; task completion has some priority；and the assessment of task performance is in terms of task outcome.”

The definitions and descriptions of task in both teaching and research methods literature focus on task in general and communication tasks in particular. Among scholars who have written extensively about task-based learning,‘task' has been characterized in a variety of ways (see, for example, Candlin, 1987；Crookes, 1986；Kumaravadivelu, 1993；Long, 1985；Nunan, 1989, 1993；Prabhu, 1987；Rost, 1990). Within these definitions of task which exist in the literature, two recurrent features stand out. The first is that tasks are oriented toward goals. Participants are expected to arrive at an outcome and to carry out a task with a sense of what they need to accomplish through their talk or action. The second feature of task is work or activity. What this feature suggests is that participants play an active role in carrying out a task, whether working alone or with other participants. In other words, a task is not an action carried out on task participants; rather, a task is an activity which participants, themselves, must carry out.

What is the communication task?

The term, communication task, therefore, is a type of the tasks mentioned in task-based language teaching which are already familiar to many teachers and researchers. The feature of communication tasks which distinguishes from the other tasks is that language is best learned and taught through interaction in task performances.

In interaction-based pedagogy, classroom opportunities to perceive, comprehend, and ultimately internalize English words, forms, and structures are believed to be most abundant during activities in which learners and their interlocutors, whether teachers or other learners, can exchange information and communicate ideas (Crookes & Gass). Such activities are structured so that students will talk, not for the sake of producing language as an end in itself, but as a means of sharing ideas and opinions, collaborating toward a single goal, or competing to achieve individual goals.

What features constitute a communication task and make it distinctive from other activities used in teaching and research, is exactly what needs to be discussed. Input and interaction theories of second language acquisition hold that language learning is assisted through the social interaction of learners and their partners, particularly when they negotiate toward mutual comprehension of each other's message meaning. (Hatch, 1978；Krashen, 1980；Long, 1980；Schachter, 1983, 1986) To accomplish this goal, learners request their partner's help in comprehending unclear or unfamiliar linguistic input, and obtain partner feedback on the comprehensibility of their own interlanguage form and content. Then they respond accordingly, through modification and manipulation of emergent and acquired L2 structures (Swain, 1985). So L2 acquisition provides a theoretical rationale for the use of communication tasks in English instruction and research. Based on the theory mentioned above, communication tasks can support teachers and researchers in their work with students and using them in language teaching can help students to build a good channel to acquire the English language.

How teachers and researchers can choose and use communication tasks effectively?

In task-based language teaching, the teacher must create an environment which is conducive to collaborative learning. In this free environment, students perform their best, assess their own growth, feel that their opinions, ideas, and responses carry weight. This allows the teacher to see a more authentic performance and provides the teacher with a more realistic picture of the students' capabilities (Glazer & Brown, 1993). So it is the teacher's responsibility to provide an appropriate setting in which tasks can be demonstrated effectively.

To be able to identify, create and employ communication tasks which can be used in the appropriate setting confidently and successfully, it seems important that teachers and researchers understand the unique contribution these tasks can make to their work with language learners and be able to distinguish them from the wide range of other activities and materials available for teaching and research.

I. Task Features presented through Activity and Goal

The features of activity and goal suggest that, in order to carry out and complete a task, language learners must take initiatives in seeking help with whatever they do not understand and in making themselves understood whenever their own message is unclear. In this way, they are provided with an opportunity to activate and apply comprehension and production processes.

Unfortunately, choosing tasks on the basis of activity and goal alone cannot guarantee that instruction or research will be carried out effectively. This is because the features of activity and goal can take many forms, not all of which are related to L2 learning. As a result, almost any activity-generating, goal-oriented experience, even a classroom lesson or structured elicitation device, can get mislabeled as a task. Misjudgements in task identification and selection can in turn lead teachers and researchers to have misguided expectations about what they can accomplish by using tasks in their work with language learners.

What seems to be needed, therefore, is greater explication of task as a teaching and research construct so that when teachers and researchers ask learners to talk in a classroom or research context, they can engage them in experiences that are not simply goal-oriented and activity-generating. Such experiences must also promote teachers' objectives for their students' efficient language learning and provide researchers with insight into the learning process.

II. The illustration of the communication task typology

It is necessary to present a communication task typology which can be used to differentiate tasks according to their contributions to language learning. The typology consists of five types of tasks, each with a different configuration of activity and goal. Examples of tasks which have already been used in teaching and research are provided for each task type, together with a critical discussion on their effectiveness in these contexts.

The jigsaw tasks presented in the activity from Harmer & Surguine (1987: 75) is particularly representative. Pairs of students are each given a partially completed chart giving different information about four people. Their task is to ask and answer questions regarding the person's home occupation and present location without looking at the partner's chart in order to complete the grid. Since both partners must request and supply missing information in order to come to one resolution, this activity fits the parameters of a jigsaw task.

An example of an information gap task is taken from Anger Etal.(1988: 94). Students are given a list of questions to use to conduct an interview with a classmate to gather information on the partner's birthplace, school, work and family background. In this task the flow of information is likely to be one way, unless the interviewer and interviewee exchange roles; participation of both interactants is required to reach the goal. The second part of the exercise asks students to write a paragraph giving similar information about themselves.

A typical example of a problem-solving task is the‘Hotel theft' activity in Jones & yon Baeyer (1983: 128). A guest staying at a hotel exits the bathroom to discover that all personal belongings, including clothing, are missing. It is early morning so the hotel staff is unavailable. One student takes the role of the guest who was robbed and must 'phone' the other students, who are guests at the same hotel to ask for help. Together, the stranded guest and the other guests must figure out how to get assistance and solve the problem. In this task information is expected to flow two ways and converge to one outcome; however, participation of all students is not necessary for successful completion of the exercise.

Decision-making tasks are in great abundance in textbooks for classroom use. An example from Rooks (1981: 31) fits the parameters for this type of task. In‘Who gets the heart', students are given information about six individuals who are in need of a heart transplant. Based on the circumstances described for each person, students must work together and choose which person will ultimately receive the one available donor heart. Again, a two-way exchange of information among students is expected, though not required；unlike the problem-solving task, more than one task outcome is possible.

Finally, an example of an opinion-exchange task is taken from Rost & Lance (1984: 62). At the end of each chapter-topics for small group discussion are listed. In this example, students are asked to give their advice to a teen and her parents who disagree on curfew time and to an elderly man who wants to be cared for by this daughter's family. Advice-giving exercises follow the themes which were developed in the preceding sections of the chapter through textual, audiotaped, and visual realia. Such discussion or opinion-exchange tasks are open-ended and do not require the participation of all students. There is also no expectation of convergence of opinions to any particular outcome.

There is, as stated above, no empirical research as to the effectiveness of these tasks for classroom language learning. However, based on the findings of research focusing on task types, it is expected that jigsaw and information-gap tasks (with exchange of information supplier and requester roles) would provide the greatest opportunity for students to interact in seeking comprehensible input and modify their output for communication. In contrast to the traditional classroom lesson where students have a limited amount of time to practice speaking while being drilled and evaluated on their production by the teacher, assigning tasks to pairs or small groups of students maximizes the amount of time each student has available to use the target language and creates a more authentic situation in which language is used for communication to reach a common goal.

It is hoped that researchers and classroom teachers themselves develop interactive tasks for their particular target language which can contribute to more effective language learning.

A Designed Framework of Classroom Activities by Choosing and Using Communication Tasks

Based on the above, the sample designed below (based on Senior English For China Book1 A Unit 9) will therefore provide a framework, through which communication tasks can be characterized and differentiated from other activities that are not tasks, as well as within their own sub-types.

Conclusion

The increasing use of tasks for classroom instruction has called for a fuller explication of task as a teaching and research construct than is offered by its current definitions. In light of this need, this paper has illustrated two features which have been used to define tasks──interactional activity and communication goal──and expanded them in a typology, through which communication tasks can be identified, classified, and compared with regard to their roles in meeting instructional and research purposes.

Five task types──information gap, jigsaw, problem-solving, decision-making and opinion exchange are listed and illustrated in the communication task typology. The resultant typology I think will help teachers and researchers to distinguish tasks from less efficient activities for their work with language learners and to differentiate among individual tasks and target them toward a variety of instructional and research purposes.

And it is hoped that the last part presented can illuminate the ideas how the teachers and researchers use the appropriate tasks to fit classroom setting and to accomplish the instructional and research purposes.

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(注：此论文为第四届中国英语教学国际研讨会宣读论文)