Task components and task types

There are various components of tasks and task types. Nijmegen &Holland (1985, cited in Candlin, 1987) summarise criteria for ‘good’ language learning tasks in terms of nine vital qualities, which require that tasks are balanced, motivating, co- operative, strategic, differentiated, focused, open, structured, and critical. To be motivating, tasks need to be interesting, challenging, rewarding, valuable, and require participation. To be focused, tasks must be unambiguous, targeted, and relevant to the needs and goals of learners. This reflects the fact that tasks are not designed without specific purposes or goals and highlights the importance of learning goals, which must be relevant to learner needs and learner goals as described in the ‘focused’ criterion.

Researchers agree that goals are one of the components of tasks with others being input, roles, settings, monitoring, and procedures (Candlin, 1987; Ellis, 2003; Nunan, 2004). However, there also seems to be general agreement among researchers that only three of these are essential, namely, goals, input, and procedures. Nunan (2004:41) believes that goals are important since they provide a link between tasks and a broader curriculum. He concludes that ‘goals are general intentions behind any learning task, [that] may relate to a range of general outcomes such as communicative, affective or cognitive, or may describe teacher or learner behaviour’. It is possible that a complex task may have more than one goal. Candlin (1987) uses slightly different terms, for instance, ‘outcomes’ referring to goals and ‘actions’ referring to procedures, but they carry the same meanings. Ellis (2003) defines goals as the general purposes of the tasks arguing that goals can be specified according to communicative competence. Goals, which refer to a long-term expected

achievement as defined by Breen (1987) and Ellis (2003), should also be set when designing a task-based course so that the learners will know clearly which specific communication skills and strategies and linguistic elements are to be developed during the course. Thus, it can be said that both goals and outcomes can give learners a sense of achievement provided that these are set within the learners’ ability range. Breen (1987) provides some useful guidelines that link to the classroom teaching. He suggests that task designers need to address four questions when designing tasks, which are:

 What is the objective of the task? For example, is it to focus learners’

attention on accuracy?

 What is the content of the task? For example, does it draw on familiar or

unfamiliar information?

 How is the task to be carried out? For example, will learners engage in

planning before the task?

 In what situation is the task to be carried out? e.g. will the task be monologic

or dialogic?

These questions indicate that four elements need to be specified in tasks: objective, content, procedures and task conditions. This study plans to incorporate objectives, input or content, and procedures as the task components as well as to consider variables that influence complexity and difficulty of the tasks (Robinson, 2001, 2007; Skehan, 1998) as shown in Table 1. This means that while designing tasks, we must consider both components and other aspects such as the need for provision of planning time, extent of reasoning required, and complexity of structures and vocabulary appearing in the texts. However, the design of tasks should allow

flexibility in that the designed tasks can be adjusted during the course if they are not suitable for the learners’ proficiency levels and needs. This is likely to depend on the teacher sensitivity to learner needs and the teacher’s decisions regarding adjustments. Another important consideration is selecting appropriate types of tasks. This is because each type has different characteristics, purposes and requirements for task completion.

Table 2 (page 29) shows that tasks under the two cognitive columns are different. The three types of tasks employed in the Bangalore project appearing in Ellis’ list are classified and sequenced based on reasoning demands (Prabhu, 1987), but Nunan (1999) subsumes the tasks under the cognitive category according to strategy type. Ellis (2003) distinguishes between focused tasks and unfocused tasks. Unfocused tasks are designed to elicit general samples of language such as listening tasks or interactions. They are not designed for practising particular grammatical structures, and this is in contrast to the focused tasks that aim to induce learners to process some specific linguistic features. Examples of focused tasks include comprehension tasks, consciousness-raising tasks, and structure-based production tasks. There are various types of tasks found in the literature with different names, but Nunan (2004) and Ellis (2003) offer a list of tasks that are classified on the basis of different approaches. A summary of these is contained in Table 2:

Ellis (2003) Nunan (2004) cognitive i.e. information gap activity,

reasoning-gap activity, opinion- gap activity

(Prabhu,1987)

cognitive i.e. classifying, predicting, inducing, taking notes, concept mapping,

inferencing, discriminating, diagramming

(Nunan,1999) rhetorical (discourse) i.e. narrative,

instructions, description, report (genre) i.e. recipes, political speeches, job application letters, medical consultations, good/bad news letters

linguistic i.e. conversational patterns, practising, using context, summarising, selective listening, skimming (Nunan,1999) pedagogic i.e. listing, ordering and sorting,

comparing, problem-solving, sharing personal experiences, creative tasks

(Willis,1996)

affective i.e. personalising, self- evaluating, reflecting (Nunan,1999)

psycholinguistic jigsaw, information gap, problem-solving, decision making, opinion exchange (Pica, Kanagy&Falodun,1993)

creative i.e. brainstorming (Nunan,1999)

interpersonal co-operating, role playing (Nunan,1999)

Table 2: Categories of tasks (Nunan, 2004; Ellis, 2003)

In contrast to Ellis’ suggestion, Willis and Willis (2007) suggest two ways of designing tasks with one being based on written and spoken texts, and the other being based on one specific topic or topic-based tasks. Different types of tasks within a set are designed around one topic area. Willis and Willis (2007) believe that once the learners are familiar with the basic topic vocabulary they can explore the topic further and exercise a wide range of cognitive skills such as ordering, comparing, and solving problems. It is clear from the examples they provide that Willis holds different ideas on designing and classifying tasks from other methodologists.

The categorisation offered by Willis and Willis (2007) has particularly strong claims as a preferred option for this study. Willis and Willis (2007:180) point out that English for specific purposes (ESP) courses tend to focus on a limited range of lexical topics and language activities determined by a needs analysis. For Business

English teaching, Ellis and Johnson (1994:39) advise that selecting appropriate tasks and setting up the tasks thoroughly are essential so that the learners will have clear ideas as to what they need to do and what is expected of them. The tasks used for a pre-experience class may rely more on support materials such as texts or video, as the learners may not be able to provide much input.

It would appear that topic-based tasks in combination with pedagogic task types such as ordering, comparing, and problem solving suggested by Willis (1996), and Willis and Willis (2007) are more suitable for Business English teaching than other task types. As this project focuses on business presentations, different types of tasks can be designed around topics such as company’s products and company’s services. Tasks designed on the topic ‘company’s products’ could involve listing words relating to products, comparing different products, and presenting products. However, in the selection of tasks for teaching, there are a number of factors that need to be considered especially learners’ prior knowledge about business, their English proficiency, and learning needs. Some highly cognitive-demanding tasks may be unsuitable as all students are pre-experience business learners.