Task-Based Language Learning and Teaching

Task-based Language Learning and Teaching1 by Rod Ellis Oxford University Press 2003 0-19-442159-7

Reviewed by Andrea Mattos

Rod Ellis is one of the best-known authors in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and Language Pedagogy. As such, in this recently launched book – Task-based Language Learning and Teaching – he writes with expertise about a wide variety of topics in an accessible and reader-friendly style, offering an updated view of this important area of language teaching and research. For those who are not well-acquainted with task-based teaching, the book brings a glossary and a warning: “this is not a ‘how to’ book”. On the contrary, the book attempts to answer a number of key questions in the field, looking at the problems as well as the advantages offered by the approach. The book contains ten chapters, each of which has a specific objective. The first chapter, for example, offers a framework for describing tasks and provides an overview of the key issues through the examination of tasks from the perspective of both SLA research and language pedagogy. The author concludes the chapter with a short but inspiring discussion of the relationship between researching and teaching tasks which touches on the half-century-old question of the gap between SLA research and language pedagogy. The other chapters of the book can be divided into two main areas that correspond to the areas presented in the title, that is, Language Learning (Chapters 2 to 6) and Language Teaching (Chapters 7 to 10). Chapter 2 deals with the relationship between listening comprehension and language learning, and how listening tasks can contribute to both the teaching and research of this skill. Chapter 3 deals with interaction tasks, which are said to have a potential relationship with language acquisition. The author discusses how tasks are carried out in interaction, focusing on three major areas of importance to the relationship between task and language use: negotiation of meaning, communicative strategies and communicative effectiveness. Chapters 4 and 5 deal with tasks in relation to learner output, that is, how tasks affect the learners’ overall fluency, accuracy and language complexity. While chapter 4 is concerned with the production that results from unfocused tasks, chapter 5 considers learners’ output in focused tasks. Still concerned with language learning, chapter 6 adopts an alternative view based on the Sociocultural Theory of Mind (SCT). First, the author provides a short but consistent outline of the main tenants of SCT and then reviews a number of task-based research which draw on this theory and its constructs. Chapters 7, 8 and 9 are concerned with Language Teaching and, therefore, with more practical issues for those teachers who want to adopt the task-based approach. Chapter 7 deals with the design of task-based syllabuses and Chapter 8 with the methodology of task-based teaching. The use of task-based approach for language assessment – a topic that could not be missing from such a comprehensive volume – is dealt with in chapter 9. Finally, in the last chapter, the author discusses why task-based approach has not been very much used as the basis for language pedagogy, although it has clearly proved itself as an effective tool for language learning. He also tries to address several theoretical criticism that have been posed on task-based teaching and suggests that teacher training programs can help to make task-based teaching methodology better-known to teachers and thus help to spread the approach in language pedagogy. Certainly, a highly recommended book. 1

Publicado na Revista English Teaching Professional, n. 38, p. 46, May 2005.