Designing Language Teaching Tasks

Designing Language Teaching Tasks

Also by Keith Johnson APPROACHES (with K. Morrow) COMMUNICATE IN WRITING COMMUNICATE 1 AND 2 (with K. Morrow) COMMUNICATION IN THE CLASSROOM (edited, with K. Morrow) THE COMMUNICATIVE APPROACH TO LANGUAGE TEACHING (edited, with C. J. Brumfit) COMMUNICATIVE SYLLABUS DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY ENCYCLOPEDIC DICTIONARY OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS: A Handbook for Language Teaching (edited, with H. Johnson) AN INTRODUCTION TO FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING LANGUAGE TEACHING AND SKILL LEARNING NOW FOR ENGLISH 1 3 PERSPECTIVES IN COMMUNICATIVE LANGUAGE TEACHING (edited, with D. Porter)

Designing Language Teaching Tasks Keith Johnson

Keith Johnson 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. I S B N 9 7 8-0 - 3 3 3-9 8 4 8 6-4 I S B N 9 7 8-0 - 2 3 0-5 9 6 6 7-2 ( e B o o k ) D O I 1 0. 1 0 5 7 / 9 7 8 0 2 3 0 5 9 6 6 7 2 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Johnson, Keith, 1944 Designing language teaching tasks / Keith Johnson. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Language and languages Study and teaching. 2. Task analysis in education. I. Title. P53.82.J64 2002 418.0071 dc21 2002075464 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03

For Helen and Hugh

Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements ix x 1 Why Study Task Design? 1 1.1 Designing language teaching tasks: an expertise study and a procedural analysis 1 1.2 Applied linguistic expertise studies: a sparsely populated terrain 2 1.3 Tasks and activities 4 1.4 The need for applied linguistic expertise studies 6 1.5 The ESRC project 7 1.6 The Leverhulme project 9 1.7 Plan of the book 9 1.8 Troublesome pronouns 10 2 Some Studies in Expertise 11 2.1 Studies into the general nature of expertise 11 2.2 Specific expertise studies of particular relevance 17 2.3 Conclusion 27 3 Studying Task Designers at Work 28 3.1 The design brief 28 3.2 Concurrent verbalisation 33 3.3 Alternative data collection methods 40 3.4 Coding the data 42 3.5 Development of TADECS 50 4 A Look at Two Designers 56 4.1 An S designer s protocol (D1 George) 57 4.2 An NS/T designer s protocol (D12 Colin) 65 4.3 George and Colin: a salient difference 70 5 Designing Language Teaching Tasks: Beginnings 73 5.1 What happens at Read brief and Analyse 73 5.2 Analyse exemplified: a major difference between S and NS/T designers 75 5.3 Questioning and commenting on the brief 77 vii

viii Contents 5.4 Reviewing the brief 80 5.5 Identifying perspectives, frameworks and important considerations 82 5.6 What decisions are made 85 5.7 Do designers do what they say they will do? 89 5.8 What designers in fact do 92 5.9 The emerging picture 95 6 Designing Language Teaching Tasks: Middles and Ends 96 6.1 Middles: the Explore macrostage 96 6.2 Ends: the Instantiate, Write TN and Write WS macrostages 109 7 The Good Task Designer: Some Hypotheses 126 7.1 A general characterisation 126 7.2 Characteristics of the good task designer 128 7.3 Are the experts expert? By nature or nurture? 137 8 Evaluating and Teaching Task Design 138 8.1 How expert are the experts? 138 8.2 Teaching task design 143 8.3 Envoy 145 Appendix 1: TADECS Codes with Working Definitions and Notes 146 Appendix 2: Example of ATLAS.ti Coding 161 Appendix 3: Example of an Action Box Sequence 162 Appendix 4: Decisions Made by the End of Analyse 164 Appendix 5: Some Designers Philosophise 167 Appendix 6: The Designers Tasks 174 Notes 185 References 188 Index 193

List of Figures 1.1 Some definitions of task 5 2.1 Some examples of heuristics 19 2.2 Pólya s problem-solving stages 19 2.3 Schoenfeld s managerial behaviours 21 2.4 Task elements 23 3.1 The design brief given to subjects 29 3.2 The TADECS macrostages 52 3.3 The action box template 54 3.4 An example action box 55 4.1 Action box summary of George s Read brief and Analyse stages 59 4.2 Action box summary of George s Explore stage 61 4.3 Colin s macro- and microstages 71 5.1 Action boxes for D7 s Analyse 76 5.2 Distribution of question brief codes 77 5.3 Perspectives, frameworks and important considerations raised at the Analyse stage 83 5.4 Number of times the procedures and characteristics in Figure 5.3 are mentioned 84 5.5 Some decisions made by end of Analyse 85 6.1 Summary of an S designer s Explore action boxes (pilot data) 97 6.2 Action box summaries of D8 s Write TN and Write WS 106 6.3 Summary of some action boxes from D5 s Instantiate 110 6.4 Occurrences of selected task content codes in S and NS/T designer protocols 117 8.1 Overall ranking: most preferred tasks/least preferred tasks 140 8.2 Percentages of total nominations for most/least preferred tasks, in terms of S and NS/T designer groups 141 8.3 Criteria used by evaluators (evaluation categories) in relation to their five most preferred tasks, and total number of comments 143 ix

Acknowledgements This book has been made possible through the generosity of the Leverhulme Trust, whose award of a Research Fellowship provided the time and resources necessary for me to analyse the data and write about it. Their generosity is much appreciated. The data themselves were collected as part of an ESRC-funded project (entitled Capturing expertise in task design for instruction and assessment part of their Cognitive Engineering Initiative). The ESRC s role in this work is gratefully acknowledged, as is the work of the other researchers involved in that project: Jim Ridgway, Tom Ormerod, Catherine Fritz and Virginia Samuda. The opinions expressed in this book are not necessarily communal ones. Two individuals have contributed particularly to this work. One is Virginia Samuda, who is largely responsible for the evaluative work described in Chapter 8 (and whose contribution was also made possible by the Leverhulme Trust). Virginia also provided highly useful feedback on a draft version of Chapter 8. The other person is Jayanti Banerjee who helped put the action box codes into ATLAS.ti format, and who made a number of useful suggestions regarding this coding. I would also like to thank Keith Richards, together with an anonymous reviewer, for many insightful and useful comments on drafts of the book. My wife Helen is to be thanked for her support which has, as always, been substantial. Not the smallest part of Hugh s contribution lies in the hours when the home computer was unavailable for CD-ROM games, because Dad was using it to write. My greatest debt is to the 16 designers who put their necks on the block, and thought aloud as they did so. They made this book, and it is about them. x