Task Based Language Teaching is a topic discussed on all TEFL courses and, especially on the Cambridge DELTA course, we expect to see it in action, at least beyond the beginner level.
I have taken the liberty of copy-pasting the site introduction to the site which is not visible from the front page of the site below and encourage you to join, explore, use. adapt, pick and choose what you need or use it all as an experimental course; especially with beginners, it would be great to learn how the course has impacted language acquisition of adult beginners.
This site contains the famous Collins Cobuild course from the language education experts Jane and Dave Willis. The goal of this site is to make this highly effective and engaging language course available to everyone. The Collins Cobuild is perhaps the earliest of courses which incorporates insights from corpus data so it is worth reviewing in that light as well
Each unit contains communicative tasks for learners to do and recordings of the same tasks done by fluent speakers for learners to hear. The task transcripts (spontaneous spoken language written down) are used . later for language study. Guided by a variety of form-focussed exercises, learners analyse and then practise typical features of spoken interactions and written texts that they have heard or read during the task cycle.
In the task cycle (Task – Planning – Report), the task gives learners chances to speak freely and spontaneously, in the planning stage they improve and extend their language before reporting their findings to other learners. Teachers can help learners with their emergent language at the planning stage, then after discussing their reports, they move on to more detailed study of the language occurring in the tasks. Learners’ talk is meaning-focused throughout, when doing tasks and when talking about language.
These materials reduce the TBL teacher’s workload in two ways: the task recordings and transcripts are a time-saving resource, (learners love them and can use them on their own) and the range of language exercises encourage deeper processing of the most frequent words, phrases and grammar patterns of spoken and written English in a systematic way.
Jane Willis
To register please contact TBL administrator at moser@kanto-gakuin.ac.jp
Without registering, you can access the ‘maps’ (see below) for each course level which lists detailed information for each unit on: Tasks and Topics, Texts and Features, Writing, Reading and Referencing Skills, Social Language, Verbs/Tenses, Clause Patterns, Noun Phrases, Pronouns, Adjectives, Prepositions, Adverbial phrases, Sounds Intonation and Stress, Spoken and Written Discourse, Stories, Features, Games.