Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T15:49:40.987Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Task-Based Syllabus Design

from Part III - Pedagogical Perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 October 2019

Rod Ellis
Affiliation:
University of Auckland
Peter Skehan
Affiliation:
Birkbeck College, University of London
Shaofeng Li
Affiliation:
Florida State University
Natsuko Shintani
Affiliation:
Kansai University, Osaka
Craig Lambert
Affiliation:
Curtin University, Perth
Get access

Summary

This chapter examines four different proposals for designing a task-based course. In Prabhu’s Communicational Language Teaching Project, the syllabus has low internal structure, leaving implementation issues to be decided by teachers. In Long’s syllabus, tasks have a training function. Target tasks are identified by a needs analysis and then restructured into pedagogic tasks. Robinson’s is the most ambitious proposal as he proposes a syllabus that takes into account the cognitive complexity of tasks, their propensity for promoting the kinds of interaction that facilitate acquisition, and the cognitive abilities and affective dispositions of individual learners. Finally, Ellis identifies a range of factors that influence task complexity but suggests that sequencing tasks is largely a matter of intuition that can be guided only roughly by these factors. In Ellis’s proposal there is room for a more traditional, structural module to fit alongside a task-based module in a complete course.

Type
Chapter
Information
Task-Based Language Teaching
Theory and Practice
, pp. 179 - 207
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×