Below is the abstract of William Littlewood’s article “The task-based approach: some questions and suggestions,” published in ELT Journal, 58(4), 319–326 (2004). I share it because it raises key questions for anyone using tasks in the language classroom. Read more about the article here.
This article first addresses the question of what tasks are. It suggests that rather than accept the common ‘communicative’ definition, we should return to a broader definition and then focus on key dimensions that distinguish (from the learner’s perspective) different 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.
