Task in L2 teaching

(Essay for the course Teaching EFL/ESL Reading: A Task Based Approach by University of London – taken in 2021)

Task in L2 teaching

Tasks are very important for students, especially when they are focusing on learning a foreign language. For that reason, you will find valuable information about what a task is and how to work it with your students.

Task is an activity which students can practice what they have learnt as well as understand the main goal of the language: communication. The task includes a problem to be solved based on a real-world activity in an outcome production. As outcome we mean something produced by the students, such as a role-play or an essay. There are two types of tasks we can encounter in the course syllabus: a task-based teaching and task-supported teaching in each unit.

The task-based is language oriented, with specific activities involving the language feature target. The task-supported is based on students’ production after having language acquisition in the course unit, which can be any kind of work produced by the students with the mediation of the teacher.

There are ten types of tasks that must be considered when planning a lesson, which will be explained below with some examples that can be followed:

– Target task: it is a task that we accomplish in our everyday life, such as filling a form, writing an email, composing a poem, doing homework, making a shopping list, etc. For this kind of task, it is important student understand the concept of their reality before doing it.

– Pedagogical task: it is a task developed in class, based on the language features the students are learning, which they can use a target task as an example and then develop something similar. For example: the students can make a grocery shopping list and then write a note asking for the products. They do this kind of activity to each other.

– Open task: it has no correct answer. It is a task based on what the student has to deliver. For example: an essay about their favorite holiday.

– Closed task: it is an activity with a correct answer at the end of the task. For example: a role-play using a specific group of vocabulary.

– Convergent task: it is an activity which depends on the group agreement. For example, when they debate about which topic they are going to develop in a specific project. The group must come with one answer only.

– Divergent task: differently from convergent, the divergent task has no need on group agreement. Each group or each student can decide for their own subject to work with. For example, they can freely decide what kind of role-play they want to perform at an end of a course unit.

– Unfocused task: it has no specific language feature focus. It can be any kind of activity which demands language knowledge, but not a specific one.

– Focused task: in this one, the language feature taught is the target for doing the exercise.

– Output task: it is a speaking or writing production.

– Input task: it is a reading or listening task.

Planning each lesson is the best way to help our students acquire language skills.

My best,

Liz Fazzio

Language Teacher from Department of Education.