TESL 110 - Unit 4

Throughout the past few years of my working experience, I have been developing my own preferences for different plans and approaches to teaching information.  These experiences have convinced me that task-based education is my most prefered approach to teaching, however I recognize that it is important to include both skills based and present-practice-produce approaches to create a deep and rich learning experience for the learners.  I have discussed before my experiences with using task-based learning in my elementary school classroom so I would like to discuss in this post what I see as the benefits of task-based learning in adult classrooms. First, and foremost, I believe the use of task-based learning brings in real-life experiences and needs to allow the learner to not only learn English language concepts of grammar, vocabulary, and speaking but also allows learners to practice other aspects of their lives in the classroom.  This means the learner may be able to learn particular cultural concepts that may be present in Canada that they may not have known. It also may help people who are unaware of different technological or customer service oriented concepts a chance to experience these through things like role-playing exercises. Overall, I think the inclusion of task-based learning helps learners develop more skills and knowledge than just the English language topics that are being discussed in class. Secondly, I think it can be beneficial in helping keep adult learners’ attention as it may help teach concepts like grammar and vocabulary in a way that is not clearly defined as ‘learning’ and thus can help them internalize the knowledge better.  Internalizing the lesson through experiences and memories that go beyond just memorization of vocabulary makes task-based learning helpful in the long-term learning of English. While this is my prefered plan type, this does not mean that I do not use the others as well. I have just noticed that the learners seem more motivated and interested when they have a task to work on, especially because it always relates to their needs and their life.

Resources:

Harmer, J. (2001). Planning Lessons In Harmer, J. (Ed.), The practice of English language teaching (pp. 308-320). Essex, England: Longman.

ITTO Teaching English Abroad. (2014, September 5). Grammar Lesson Planning Tutorial for Teaching English as a Foreign Language [Video File]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNCKmdof6a0