Synopsis
This book is a handbook of concrete, adaptable models of task-based language teaching, which seeks to use real-world activities in the classroom to teach language skills. (For example, role-playing rather than reading dialog from a textbook.) The successful examples come from college, university, adult professional, and online programs. Case studies include programs in Arabic, Chinese, Czech, English, French, German, Korean, Spanish and Ukrainian, as well as web-based programs, and most can serve as generic models suitable for any foreign language. The introduction presents an extensive overview of the history and theory of task-based instruction and presents models and typologies of tasks. The book concludes with chapters on faculty development and task-based testing. This book is a companion to Content-Based Instruction in Foreign Language Education: Models and Methods, edited by Stephen B. Stryker and Betty Lou Leaver (Georgetown University Press, 1997).
About the Author
Betty Lou Leaver is associate dean of Global Education and dean of New York Institute of Technology campuses in Jordan. She has introduced task-based instruction into several foreign language programs, including the Defense Language Institute, the American Global Studies Institute, NASA, the American Language Center in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and the American Language Center in Chisinau, Moldova. She has also provided assistance to programs using TBI in Brazil, Turkmenistan, Japan, and Korea. Jane Willis is a visiting fellow at Aston University, Birmingham, UK, where she taught in the Masters in TESOL/TESP distance learning programs, specializing in course and materials design and lexical studies. She has taught English to European and Asian students and has educated teachers in Africa, Cyprus, Iran, and Southeast Asia. She began experimenting with task-based English teaching in 1982 in the British Council Teaching Centre in Singapore. She is the author of A Framework for Task-based Learning and coauthor of English for Primary Teachers.
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