The task-based approach: some

questions and suggestions

William Littlewood
This article >rst addresses the question of what tasks are. It suggests that rather
than accept the common communicative de>nition, we should return to a
broader de>nition and then focus on key dimensions that distinguish (from the
learners perspective) di=erent types of task, notably degrees of task-
involvement and degrees of focus on form or meaning. This approach helps us
to conceptualize the complementary roles of form-focused and meaning-
focused tasks in our methodology. It also shows the continuity between task-
based language teaching and the broader communicative approach within
which it is a development. Finally the article asks whether task-based
approach is really the most appropriate term at all for describing these
developments in language pedagogy.
Introduction According to the Cambridge International Dictionary of English (1995), a
task is a piece of work to be done, esp. one done regularly, unwillingly or
with di;culty. The compilers of the 1989 edition of the Oxford English
Dictionary seem even less enthusiastic about the term: for them, a task is
a piece of work imposed, exacted, or undertaken as a duty or the like, or
a portion of study imposed by a teacher. At first sight, then, task seems
an unlikely candidate to form the basis of a learner-centred pedagogy
which aims to motivate lifelong learning.
When I first engaged in discussions of task-based pedagogy in Hong
Kong in the early 1990s, the term task held for me the same
associations of unwillingness and imposition that one finds in these
dictionary definitions, and for a long time I had an intuitive reluctance to
use it. In current pedagogical discussions, however, it is as di;cult to
avoid the term task as it once was to avoid the term communicative.
The task-based approach has achieved something of the status of a new
orthodoxy: teachers in a wide range of settings are being told by
curriculum leaders that this is how they should teach, and publishers
almost everywhere are describing their new textbooks as task-based.
Clearly, whatever a task-based approach means, it is a good thing.
As earlier with the communicative approach, however, teachers and
others are often not at all certain as to what a task-based approach really
does mean. For example, does it mean that everything they do in the
classroom should be a task? If so, what exactly is a task? Can teaching and
learning grammar be described as a task, and if not, should teachers feel
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guilty when they teach grammar? What is the di=erence, in any case,
between a task-based approach and the communicative approach that
they were told they should use not so many years ago? Some of this lack
of certainty emerges from the articles by Bruton (2002) and Skehan
(2002), to which the present article is partly a response. Bruton, for
example, discusses tasks for eight pages, but admits (Note 1, p. 288) that
the reader does not really know what he has been discussing, since the
definition of task is an issue in itself, and therefore outside the scope of
his article. Not ideal conditions for a meaningful discussion, one might
think, but Bruton negotiates them valiantly! As a second example:
Skehan describes task-based learning (p. 294) as partly a reaction to the
outmoded view that any aspect of language can be presented to the
entire group of learners in a class. But one of the key examples of task-
based learning that he himself presents involves precisely this: in
Samudas (2001) study, after a pre-focus group-work phase, there
follows a language focus stage in which a teacher introduces (first
implicitly and then explicitly) new ways of expressing modality to an
entire group of learners.
The initial problem is one of definition, and in this article I wish to
suggest that matters may become clearer if we return to the everyday,
non-specialist definition of task that is reflected in the dictionaries.
Within this definition, we can then focus on particular key dimensions of
tasks which are relevant to language teaching, such as di=erent degrees
of task involvement and di=erent degrees of focus on meaning. This will
make it easier to conceptualize the complementary roles of form-focused
and meaning-focused tasks in our methodology. It will also show more
clearly the continuity between task-based language teaching and the
broader communicative approach of which it is a development. We may
then need to question whether the term task is really such a useful part
of our vocabulary for talking about language pedagogy at all.
What does task Definitions of task range along a continuum according to the extent to
mean? which they insist on communicative purpose as an essential criterion.
Here are three points along the continuum:
For some writers, communicative purpose is not an essential criterion
at all. Williams and Burden (1997: 168), for example, define a task as
any activity that learners engage in to further the process of learning a
language. Breen too, in his seminal article of 1987 (p. 23), included in
his concept of task a range of learning activities from the simple and
brief exercise type to more complex and lengthy activities such as
group problem-solving or simulations and decision-making. Estaire
and Zanon (1994: 1320) work with this broad definition but
distinguish two main categories of task within it: communication
tasks, in which the learners attention is focused on meaning rather
than form, and enabling tasks, in which the main focus is on
linguistic aspects (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, functions, and
discourse).
Moving along the continuum, some writers do not go so far as to
define tasks only in communicative terms but clearly think of them
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primarily as involving communication. Thus Stern (1992: 19596)
associates tasks with realistic language use when he writes that
communicative exercises provide opportunities for relatively
realistic language use, focusing the learners attention on a task,
problem, activity, or topic, and not on a particular language point.
Moving still further along the continuum, many writers see the
category of task as comprising only activities that involve
communication. This is the position of Willis (1996: 23), in whose
book tasks are always activities where the target language is used by
the learner for a communicative purpose (goal) in order to achieve an
outcome. Ellis (2000: 195) believes that this communicative definition
now represents a broad consensus among researchers and educators.
Ellis is one of several writers who adopt the term exercise for any activity
in which the learners have no communicative purpose. Thus Elliss
exercises (in contrast to tasks) would correspond to Estaire and Zanons
enabling tasks (in contrast to communication tasks).
Whether or not the more restricted communicative definition now
represents a consensus, this consensus does not extend into the details
of what the term does or does not mean. For example, in order to
accommodate teachers intuitions that learning can take place
successfully when there is no assigned task, and students simply engage
freely in discussion, the term task may be extended to include such free
discussion. Alternatively, in order to support the claim that task-based
learning mirrors natural learning conditions, it has been claimed that it
is through engaging in tasks that infants develop their mother tongue.
But to many, extending the term to include spontaneous conversation
and infants at play would imply that the concept itself has no limits, and
therefore little meaning.
Two dimensions Some of the di;culties just described may be avoided if we withdraw
of tasks from the consensus mentioned above, returning to the broader
definition of the term and thinking then in terms of dimensions within
tasks. Here I will consider two dimensions that are crucial to
understanding tasks (now broadly defined). The first dimension is the
continuum from focus on forms to focus on meaning, which underlies
the definitions mentioned in the previous section. The second is the
degree of learner-involvement that a task elicits.
Focus on forms and It is along this dimension that we di=erentiate between tasks which
focus on meaning focus on language forms and tasks which focus on the meanings that are
communicated. This is not a dichotomy, however, but a continuum along
which students may operate with di=ering degrees of focus on form and
meaning. In the diagram below, this dimension is divided into five
sections. The labels across the top describe the categories with reference
to how they relate to the goal of language teaching, namely,
communication.
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The activities described in Figure 1 are familiar, and the diagram requires
little elaboration. At the extreme left of the diagram, non-communicative
learning involves the strongest focus on forms. It includes, for example,
uncontextualized grammar exercises, substitution drills, and
pronunciation drills. As we move to the right into column 2, pre-
communicative language practice still focuses primarily on formal features,
but is also oriented towards meaning. An example of this is the familiar
question-and-answer practice, in which the teacher asks questions to
which everyone knows the answer (Who is sitting next to John? and so
on) but the student cannot answer without paying attention to the
meaning of the words. With communicative language practice we come to
activities in which learners still work with a predictable range of language
but use it to convey information. These would include, for example,
activities in which learners use recently taught language in order to
conduct a survey amongst their classmates, or ask a partner for
information in order to complete a table or picture. In structured
communication, the main focus moves to the communication of
meanings, but the teacher has carefully structured the situation to ensure
that the learners can cope with it with their existing resources, including
perhaps what they have recently used in more form-focused work. This
category includes more complex information-exchange activities or
structured role-playing tasks. Finally, at the extreme right of the
continuum, authentic communication comprises activities in which there
is the strongest focus on the communication of messages, and in which
the language forms are correspondingly unpredictable, such as using
language for discussion, problem-solving, and content-based tasks. Such
tasks may develop into larger scale projects which contribute to students
personal and interpersonal development, as illustrated for example by the
three generations of tasks discussed by Rib and Vidal (1993).
In terms of the twofold distinctions mentioned above, the five categories
correspond to a progression from clearly defined exercises (or enabling
tasks) to clearly defined tasks (or communicative tasks), passing though
Focus on forms Focus on meaning
Non-communicative
learning
Pre-communicative
language practice
Communicative
language practice
Structured
communication
Authentic
communication
Focusing on the
structures of
language, how they
are formed and
what they mean,
e.g. substitution
exercises,
discovery and
awareness-raising
activities
Practising language
with some attention
to meaning but not
communicating new
messages to others,
e.g. question-and-
answer practice
Practising pre-taught
language in a context
where it
communicates new
information, e.g.
information-gap
activities or
personalized
questions
Using language to
communicate in
situations which
elicit pre-learnt
language, but with
some
unpredictability, e.g.
structured role-play
and simple problem-
solving
Using language to
communicate in
situations where
the meanings are
unpredictable, e.g.
creative role-play,
more complex
problem-solving
and discussion
Exercises (Ellis) Tasks
Enabling tasks (Estaire and Zanon)
322 William Littlewood
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Communicative tasks
figure 1
The continuum from
focus on forms to focus
on meaning
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middle categories which possess features of both. Of course, since this is
a continuum, the categories shade into each other, and five is merely a
convenient numberwe could distinguish fewer or more, according to
our purpose. The distinction between tasks and exercises, for example,
uses just two categories. Or we could create even more than five
categories by, say, further dividing authentic communication along the
lines suggested by Rib and Vidal, according to whether the tasks aim to
promote not only communicative development but also cognitive and
personality development.
Task involvement The second dimension is the learners active personal involvement with
the task, whatever the nature of that task may be. This is what Prabhu
(1987) referred to as mind-engagement, and is implicit in Williams and
Burdens words any activity that learners engage in (my emphasis). It is
of course a basic condition for all education that learners should be
engaged (how else can they learn?) and this dimension is not specific to
language learning. Accordingly, we can draw on a large body of general
educational and psychological wisdom in exploring the conditions that
stimulate it. In the field of language teaching, much work has been
devoted in recent years to understanding more about motivation to learn
(e.g. Drnyei 2001) and the e=ects on this of, for example, a=ective
climate, teacher response, task characteristics, and group dynamics.
This dimension is unproblematic in the sense that we know we should
aim at as high a level of task involvement as possible. However, as every
teacher knows, it becomes a major challenge as soon as we try to achieve
that aim in the heterogeneous classroom situation.
The two In Figure 2 the two dimensions are combined into one framework for
dimensions characterizing the nature of tasks. The horizontal axis represents, from
combined left to right, the continuum from focus on form to focus on meaning that
was described in Figure 1. As we move upwards, the vertical axis
represents increasing degrees of involvement (mind-engagement) in a
task. Thus learners may contribute a high degree of involvement to a
form-focused language exercise (top left corner) as well as to a role-play
or discussion (top right). On the other hand, an inappropriate exercise
may produce only minimal involvement (bottom left), as may also an
uninteresting discussion or role-play (bottom right).
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Although these dimensions are presented in Figure 2 as if they were
properties of the tasks themselves, it would be more exact to say that they
are properties of the learners as they engage in the tasks. For example,
even though a teacher may plan and conduct a communicative language
practice task with the intention of stimulating learners to work with a
balanced focus on form and meaning (centre top in the diagram), some
learners may focus almost entirely on the forms they are attempting to
produce (top left), whilst others may focus entirely on getting their
meanings across (top right). Some learners may lack involvement
altogether, and be somewhere in the bottom section, towards the left or
right, depending on how their limited amount of attention is distributed
between form and meaning.
Task-based learning The continuum from focus on forms to focus on meaning (Figure 1)
and the could equally well be taken as representing task-types in task-based
communicative learning or activity-types within the communicative approach. In this
approach respect task-based learning can be seen as a development within the
communicative approach. The essential feature of this development is
that the categories of activity on the right of the diagram (structured and
authentic communication activities or tasks) take on a more central role.
In a task-based approach (as usually conceived) they serve not only as
major components of the methodology but also as units around which a
course may be organized. These units provide a link between outside-
classroom reality and inside-classroom pedagogy. At the interface with
outside-classroom reality, communication tasks enable the course to be
organized around chunks of communication which reflect students
needs, interests, and experiences. At the interface with inside-classroom
pedagogy, they provide an organizing focus for the individual
components of language (structures, vocabulary, and so on) that students
have to learn in order to communicate.
Take, for example, the task Qualities of a good friend described in the
Hong Kong Syllabus for English Language (Primary 1 to 6) (Curriculum
Development Institute 1997):
Qualities of a good friend
Learners are required to think and talk about qualities and
characteristics a good friend should have. On a list of characteristics
given to them, learners number 5 of them in order of importance. Each
T
a
s
k
High task involvement High task involvement
Low focus on meaning High focus on meaning
(High focus on form) (Low focus on form)
I
n
v
o
l
v
e
m
e
n
t
Low task involvement
Low task involvement
Low focus on meaning
High focus on meaning
(High focus on form)
(Low focus on form)
Focus on form Focus on meaning
324 William Littlewood
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figure 2
Two dimensions in task-
based foreign language
learning
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learner then writes a poem to his/her good friend in class based on the
chosen items on the list.
This task is part of a unit about Friends, which in turn forms part of a
module about Relationships. The hierarchy from module unit
task provides the interface with students experience. At the classroom
interface, the syllabus suggests (under the label objectives) a range of
elements that students will need to learn in order to participate e=ectively
in the communication, including vocabulary (Words describing
character and personality) and grammatical structures (Use adjectives
to describe people, e.g. She is friendly; Use the simple present tense to
talk about present states, e.g. She cares for others). These elements could
be taught before the students are asked to carry out the task, thus
mirroring the familiar sequence of presentation practice
production, or the students could first carry out the task and, as Skehan
(2002: 292) puts it, themselves, because of the way they do the task,
nominate the meanings they want to express and therefore the forms
they need to learn. Of course, this reversal of the standard presentation
practice production sequence is also an option within other
versions of the communicative approach (for example, it is suggested in
Littlewood 1981: 87) but the use of tasks as units around which learning
is organized makes the option more salient.
Is the term task- If the task-based approach can be conceived as a development within the
based approach communicative approach, and the definition of a task is fraught with
really useful? problems, and the term itself is unlikely to arouse enthusiasm outside
language-teaching circles, we may ask why we use the term at all.
So far as the usefulness of the term is concerned, the situation with
regard to the task-based approach is similar to the situation with regard
to the communicative approach. As human beings, we feel a need to
make sense of our world, and this process of making sense includes
attaching descriptive labels to what we see and do. In the days of fixed
methods, this raised no problemswhen we used labels like
audiolingual method or direct method, these corresponded to easily
identifiable bodies of principles and procedures. But now that the search
for the right fixed method has largely given way to the search for a more
flexible framework of principles and procedures (Littlewood 1999: 664),
there is no clearly defined entity to describe. Indeed, the act of describing
may itself be misleading, since it may lead people to assume that the
description captures a fixed set of meaningsperhaps even a prescribed
set of proceduresthat simply do not exist. The label communicative
approach has frequently misled people in this way, and there are signs
that task-based approach may do the same.
The logical step might be to dispense with labels altogether, but this
would not satisfy our need to describe our world. So, amongst all the
variability and flexibility, we must seek a common denominator and base
our label on that, whilst doing our best to ensure that this label does not
carry misleading prescriptive messages. Since the main common
denominator of communicative and task-based approaches in their
various forms is that, even when they use form-focused procedures, they
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are always oriented towards communication, my own preferred working
label (to cover both communicative and task-based language teaching) is
communication-oriented language teaching, orco-incidentally
identical to the well-known classroom observation schemeCOLT.
Final version received July 2003
326 William Littlewood
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References
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Bruton, A. 2002. From tasking purposes to
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Education Department.
Drnyei, Z. 2001. Teaching and Researching
Motivation. London: Longman.
Ellis, R. 2000. Task-based research and language
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Prabhu, N. 1987. Second Language Pedagogy.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rib, R. and N. Vidal. 1993. Project Work: Step by
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Samuda, V. 2001. Guiding relationships between
form and meaning during task performance: the
role of the teacher in M. Bygate, P. Skehan, and
M. Swain (eds.). Researching Pedagogic Tasks.
London: Longman.
Skehan, P. 2002. A non-marginal role for tasks.
ELT Journal 56/3: 28995.
Stern, H. H. 1992. Issues and Options in Language
Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Williams, M. and R. L. Burden. 1997. Psychology for
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Willis, J. 1996. A Framework for Task-Based
Learning. London: Longman.
The author
William Littlewood was involved in language
teaching and teacher education in the United
Kingdom for many years before moving to Hong
Kong in 1991. He has published mainly in the
areas of language teaching methodology and
language learning. Until August 2004 he was
Professor for TESOL and Applied Linguistics in
the Language Centre, Hong Kong Baptist
University and is currently Visiting Scholar at the
Hong Kong Institute of Education, Tai Po, Hong
Kong.
Email: blittle@hkbu.edu.hk
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