The article discusses ELF-aware pedagogy as a possible way to integrate English as a lingua franca (ELF) in English language classrooms and explores the extent to which task-based language teaching (TBLT) could contribute to this end. ELF-aware pedagogy involves enriching teaching practices with appropriate metalinguistic and reflective activities…

The English as a foreign language classroom is a plurilingual setting par excellence since it involves at least two languages. However, plurilingual practices such as code-switching and translation have been consistently discouraged in formal learning contexts, based on the belief that keeping languages compartmentalized helps learning, and…

In this article, I examine some of the ideas about task-based language teaching (TBLT) which have emerged over the 17 years of the current editorship of ELTJ, focusing in particular on grammar and vocabulary, and enquiring to what degree these ideas take adequate account of classroom context. Over this period, TBLT scholars have built up a…

Focused tasks engage learners in using language for communication and in addition have a specific predetermined linguistic focus in mind. The difficulty in designing focused tasks is that many meanings can be articulated using more than one language form, making it difficult to design tasks which induce learner use of a specific target form. This…

Student self-transcription can greatly enhance the power of tasks to promote language learning, for it allows students to re-examine their experience freed from the pressure of performing the task itself, so they can notice and reflect on the language used and encountered. This is a powerful step in language development because it allows for…

Tasks provide a framework for communicative performance. Underlying each task is a set of learning opportunities--potential activities for learning. Not all of these opportunities are exploited for learning by teachers or learners. It is proposed that, when using tasks, the range of such learning opportunities needs to be identified and modelled…

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…

This paper describes an approach to task evaluation that emerged out of the process of the negotiated development of a course between two co-teachers. The course was co-taught by one ELT specialist and a specialist in a subject area. The teachers were equal partners in this self-contained course. While teaching a new class, the teaching partners…

This article introduces an approach to planning sequences of communication tasks that require learners to become personally involved in their learning. By drawing on their own ideas and experiences, as a product of earlier tasks in a given sequence, learners generate the content and resource material on which subsequent tasks operate. The article…

This paper reports on a study that was carried out to determine learners' attitudes to learning grammar through the use of two types of consciousness-raising tasks. A deductive task provided explicit explanations of a grammar structure, while an inductive task required learners to discover the grammar rules for themselves. The study investigated…

This paper describes an action research project undertaken to look into the effectiveness of tasks designed to raise learner awareness of conversational strategies. The goal was to test whether tasks and direct instruction aimed at promoting learner awareness of conversational language at the discourse-level had any impact on the students'…

Examines language in an initial teacher training course and shows how trainees' awareness can be raised by looking at samples of the way they use it themselves. (five references) (Author/CK)

Analyzes tasks designed for teaching and shows how the analysis can be used to develop tasks for teacher training. The ideas presented are derived from observations and recordings from an in-service teacher development project in elementary classrooms in Malta and Norway and in secondary classrooms in Britain. (eight references) (Author/CK)