Implementing tasks in young learners’ language classrooms: A collaborative teacher education initiative through task evaluation

Abstract

Despite empirical evidence in support of the effectiveness of using tasks in young learners’ classrooms, task implementation has been repeatedly reported as a thorny problem. An essential but under-researched issue is how in-service teacher education programme can be conducted to facilitate teachers’ implementing tasks in their classrooms. This practitioner research article reports on a researcher and teacher educator’s action research study in which she worked with Lucille (pseudonym), a novice English language teacher, to design and implement two repeated task-based language teaching (TBLT) lessons for Grade 2 students at a Chinese primary school. During a six-week teacher education program consisting of two cycles of TBLT lesson planning, implementation, evaluation, and reflection, the teacher educator provided continuous support to guide and scaffold Lucille’s reflective endeavours at crafting TBLT practices in her classrooms. The teacher educator also conducted student-based, response-based, learning-based, and community-based task evaluations to facilitate the teacher’s reflective practices. The study illustrates how an in-service teacher education program, fuelled by on-going professional support and empirical evaluation, facilitated a practitioner’s task implementation in young learners’ foreign language classrooms.

The Role of Theory in Empirical L2 Research on Task-Based Language Teaching for Young L2 Learners

“…Playing yet another role, the theoretical entities vis-à-vis TBLT in Zhu (2020) are under the surface. Although the researcher acknowledged the empirical support TBLT had received from prior research, referred to "task-based language teaching (TBLT) principles" (p. 2), and warned of the "theory-practice disparity in TBLT-related teacher education" (p.4), Zhu did not identify which theoretical entities support TBLT nor did she conceptually engage with the theoretical basis underlying the pedagogy.…”

“…In terms of the lessons that Zhu (2020) and the teacher in her study collaboratively planned, vocabulary words from the traditional textbook are used as target words in the taskbased lesson, making the relevance and authenticity of the target forms questionable. Though traditional exercises were not part of the plan for the task-based lessons, during implementation the teacher included traditional exercises such as listening drills, an approach to language teaching that would likely rely on the assumption there is a strong interface between explicit and implicit knowledge.…”

“…In multiple studies, traditional pedagogy permeated task planning and/or implementation. For example, the task-based lessons in Newton and Bui (2017) and Zhu (2020) were based on lessons from traditional textbooks. Since the needs analysis, an essential procedural step for strong-form TBLT, was omitted in both studies, the relevance of the tasks and the learner-centeredness of the approaches come into question.…”

“…As will be shown in the following section, studies on TBLT, including those with young learners, demonstrate the differential role that theory plays in empirical SLA research. Specifically, the next section reviews three studies on TBLT for child L2 learners: Newton and Bui (2017), Zhu (2020), and Azkarai and Oliver (2019). This will be followed by a discussion of the role theory plays in empirical L2 research on TBLT for young learners.…”

“…To begin, the most relevant theoretical entities to TBLT will be introduced. This theoretical background will set the stage for the subsequent section--a review of three empirical studies on task-based learning with young L2 learners: Newton and Bui (2017), Zhu (2020), and Azkarai and Oliver (2019). Then, the three studies are discussed with regard to the role theory plays.…”