Tasks, Supports, and CL

Tasks, Support, and CL

Dr Jacobs and Vicky have mentioned that the complexity of tasks matters. Indeed, task complexity is an important characteristic of any tasks. It a given task is too difficult, it may have salient effects on the levels of success of CL. Task difficulty or rather task complexity, however, is not a simple issue.

The relationship between task characteristics and cooperative language learning is indeed another area worth examining in some depth.

It is commonly acknowledged that language learning is more effective when it involves meaningful communicative acts, when sentences are put in contexts and have their communicative values (e.g.Widdowson, 1978; Nunan, 1981; Spolsky, 1989). In classroom practice, efforts have been made to enable learners to perform meaningful communicative acts, e.g. having them perform some tasks that involve both productive and receptive skills.

1. What is a task?

However, the term ‘task’, as Ellis (1994) has pointed out, is very broad. Quoting Crookes (1986), Ellis (1994) wrote that a task is “a piece of work or an activity, usually with a specified objective, undertaken as a part of an educational course, or at work” (p. 595). Indeed, tasks are varied, some are small and simple, some are more complex, e.g. projects. Nunan (2002) gave some examples of the real world task: “Call the airline and reconfirm a reservation you have. Check other details, such as time of departure, and time you have to be at the airport.”

Nunan (2002) highlighted 7 principles of task-based language teaching as follows:

§  Students need to be adequately supported. Scaffolding is the first key to success.

§  Each task should depend on one another

§  Language items should be recycled.

§  Students should be made aware of language forms and their relationships with meanings.

§  Steps should be in order: from language reproduction to creation.

§  Learning should be active.

§  Students should be given time to reflect on “what they have learned and how ell they are doing.”

Recently, Oxford, Cho, Leung, and Kim (2004) have conceptualized task as having 5 definitions:

(1)   Task as duty

(2)   Task as a segment that is part of curriculum and teaching,

(3)   Task as a behavioral framework that is distinct from ‘activity’

(4)   Task as meaningful communication activity

(5)   Task as accuracy-oriented activity.

Oxford et al. have discussed dimensions of tasks and task performance. Task complexity is one topic they have looked at. There are many factors influencing difficulty of tasks. Below are some of their ideas:

“The amount of time allotted for the task can be a major factor (Honeyfield 1993; Skehan 1996a), especially for L2 learners who are at the beginning and low intermediate levels.When a task is “speeded”, that is, when only a certain amount of time is given to complete the task, it might become more difficult for some learners. If students are allowed to take all the time they need, i.e., if the task is “unspeeded”, this takes off some of the pressure. In-class tasks do generally have a time limit, although, depending on the task type and the goals, some tasks that are unfinished can be done as homework assignments.”

(p. 10)

“ Task input, especially the directions about how to do the task or what is expected, may be presented simply or in a cognitively challenging, complex way. Ordinarily it is important to explain what is expected in as clear and straightforward a fashion as possible, even if the task itself involves linguistically or cognitively complex operations.”

“Familiarity makes a big difference in terms of whether a particular student considers the input for a certain task to be difficult or complex. A student might mistakenly consider input to be linguistically complex just because he or she does not know the specialized, concrete vocabulary involved, as in words related to fixing an elevator. Also, input that is truly linguistically complex might or might not be considered difficult, depending on how familiar the learner is with the particular type of material.”

(p. 11)

And on the complexity of task:

“ A task may be cognitively simple or complex. It may involve a light cognitive load, i.e., the cognitive processing operations required by the task are not complicated. Conversely, the cognitive load of a task might be quite heavy, i.e., the task-required cognitive processing operations are complex (Foster and Skehan 1996; Ikeda and Takeuchi 2000;

Richards and Rodgers 2001; Skehan 1996a). However, not every cognitively complex task is viewed as difficult. Whether or not a particular student actually perceives a given, cognitively complex task to be difficult and challenging depends considerably the student’s familiarity with doing the kind of cognitive operations required. If a student has had lots of practice with a complex task, then doing another task of a similar kind might be straightforward because of familiarity.”

(p. 12)

In short, what makes a task difficult is complex.

In my view, what teachers and administrators should do is to do their best in making sure that scaffolding or support is adequate.

Scaffolding, the term coined by Bruner (1980), according to Gray and Cowey, founder of Scaffolding Literacy (2000) is ‘a process through which more knowledgeable participants support the performance of the less competent participants in a learning situation’ (p. 4). Scaffolding is based on Vygotsky’s notion of ZPD.

The students were asked to undertake complex and challenging tasks, so scaffolding was crucial for them. There are levels of support. If cooperation is to be taken seriously as a possible theme in education, scaffolding or support has to be put in place. Scaffolding and CL go together.

Jordan (2004) has suggested that support should be of three related and coherent planes:

1.Community Plane: This plane refers to scaffolding from the community. It includes the philosophy and policies of the community that support authentic activities. It also refers to communication with other groups or communities.

2. Inter-personal Plane: This plane refers to the relationship among members of the community: between teachers and students, teachers and administrators, volunteers and other members of the community, and so on.

3. Personal Plane: This plane refers to members’ empowerment and task scaffolding.

I’m sure we’ll explore these terrains in weeks to come.

Janpha

Ellis, R. (1994). The Study of Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Gray, B., & Cowey, W. (2000, 6-7th, April). Notes on Scaffolding Literacy in Early Childhood Settings. Paper presented at the The Association of Child Care Directors' Conference "Passing the Batton', Canberra.

Jordan, B. (2004, 21-23 January 2004). Co-construction in communities: Empowering children and teachers. Paper presented at the the 12th Annual Conference of the Australian Research in Early Childhood Education, Monash University.

Nunan, D. (1981). The use of dialogues in the communicative English class. TEFL/TESL Newsletter, 5(4), 21-27.

Nunan, D. (2002, July 6-7). Classroom Research. Paper presented at the Languages---the new millennium, Sydney.

Oxford, R., Cho, Y., Leung, S., & Kim, H.-J. (2004). Effect of the presence and difficulty of task on strategy use: An exploratory study. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 42(1), 1-47.

Spolsky, B. (1989). Conditions for Second language Learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Widdowson, H. G. (1978). Teaching English as Communication. Oxford: Oxford University Press.