FP011TP ActPract CO Piñeyro

Practice Activities – FP01 TP
PRACTICE ACTIVITIES:
TASKS AND PROJECTS
GENERAL INFORMATION:
The practice activities consist on four questions you must answer following the
instructions. Your submission must fulfil the following conditions:
- Length: 4 pages (without including cover, index or appendices –if there are any-).
- Font type: Arial or Times New Roman.
- Font size: 11.
- Spacing: 1.5.
- Alignment: Justified.
The activities have to be included in this Word document: keep the activities’
statements/questions and answer below them. In order to make the correction process
easier, please, do not write the answers in bold, so it will then be easier to distinguish
between questions and answers. Remember that the document must still fulfil the rules
of presentation and edition, and follow the rubric for quoting and making bibliographical
references as detailed in the Study Guide.
Also, it has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the “Subject

Evaluation” document. You must not send it to the teacher’s e-mail.
Do not forget to read the assessment criteria, which can be found in the document
“Subject Evaluation”.
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Name and surname(s): Piñeyro, Romina Paola

Group:2017-02
Date:June 30th
ARFPMTFL2463801
Practice Activities
Read the materials and watch the video “Prof. Ellis on task-based pedagogy: the
what, why and how”, available on campus.
Task 1.
Do the following proposal fit the definition of “tasks” according to Ellis? Justify
your answer.
Retrieved from Counihan, G. (1998). The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. IV, No. 11, November
1998. http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Counihan-Activities/Rejoinders.html
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Firstly, it is necessary to revise Rod Ellis´s definition of task. According to Rod Ellis, a
task has four main characteristics:
 A task involves a primary focus on (pragmatic) meaning.

 A task has some kind of ‘gap’ (Prabhu identified the three main types as
information gap, reasoning gap, and opinion gap).
 The participants choose the linguistic resources needed to complete the task.
 A task has a clearly defined, non-linguistic outcome.
Considering these aspects necessary in a task to be such, we could say that this
proposal does not fit the definition of task completely. Firstly, the primary focus on
meaning is not clear since the task just starts and there is not a clear purpose for the
conversation to take place spontaneously, nothing motivates the conversation to start.
As regards the gap reasoning, we could say that the teacher somehow manages to
establish this moment of gap filling when she utters the listed expressions and expects
the students to reply something, however, the activity is still too vague to fulfill a
purpose. Concerning the linguistic resources needed, the teacher does not provide
much input, or “incidental” learning to take place, as Ellis mentions in his video, so
probably the answers to the proposed expressions will be vague too. The outcome of
this activity has not been clearly defined so it seems that the task is a task for the sake
of it rather than for fulfilling an aim in teaching.
Task 2.
Define “implicit” and “explicit” knowledge and provide an example (Robinson’s
article in the library might complement Ellis’ video).
Implicit meaning, according to Ellis, is associated with the TBL approach since the
learner acquires the language incidentally by means of communication activities and by
means of exposure to input unconsciously. For example, in a problem solving situation
the learner will feel motivated to find a solution and this will provoke that he uses the
linguistic resources without realizing about form and structure. Explicit knowledge is
more associated with a focus on form and structure and is better developed in a PPP
approach in there is a clear exposure at the beginning. For example, when teaching
specific grammatical contents this explicit learning takes place, eg: learning the –s in
Present Simple Tense.
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Task 3.
What are the main wrong assumptions done about task-based learning? Can you
provide examples that support Ellis complains, i.e. that show task-based
activities that do not fit the prototypical assumptions?
One wrong assumption may be that it is assumed that applying TBL approach all
students do is getting in pairs or groups just to talk, this is a misconception, according
to Ellis. He highlights the importance of developing the four macro skills besides
speaking, since TBL approach involves input tasks in which learners process the
language to later put it into practice. A good example is when students are allowed to
speak at random, without any guidance or prompt or clear aim in what they are doing.
Task 4.
Can an online course be fully task-based? What inconveniences it might
encounter? You might want to read Lee 2016 before answering.
Task-Based Language Teaching is a proposal of second language teaching informed

by the latest research findings on second language acquisition. As such, it plays a
major role in current language pedagogy. However, findings in second language
acquisition are not always accessible and relevant to practicing teachers. Either
because they seem far from their everyday classroom needs or because of the high
technical discourse they are usually written in (Markee, 1997: 80). As course designer
aware of this situation, I set myself the goal of making the knowledge and
understanding of TBLT more accessible and meaningful to busy practicing teachers
mainly because I believe, the role of the teacher in the success of any new
methodology is unquestionable. So, I believe, that probably a mixture of approaches
would be better in an online course, since students need to be taught at certain
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moment in a descriptive way in order to achieve better results and also need to be
exemplified how to deal with ICT aspects.
REFERENCES:
 Prof. Ellis on task-based pedagogy: the what, why and how. Retrieved from
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=5&v=zdRibzXW2TI
 Markee (1997) Making Curricular Innovation. Cambridge
 Prabhu (1987) Second Language Pedagogy

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Practice Activities – FP01 TP

Also, it has to be submitted following the procedure specified in the “Subject

Name and surname(s): Piñeyro, Romina Paola

 A task involves a primary focus on (pragmatic) meaning.

Task-Based Language Teaching is a proposal of second language teaching informed

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