Listening & Speaking
Tasks and Teaching Principles study sheet
Tasks and Teaching Principles Study Sheet
Beglar & Hunt (2002), Sadow (1994), Brown & Nation (1997)
Recall that you are responsible for reading two articles, so you may skip questions on the third.
Beglar and Hunt (2002)
1. Provide an overall evaluation of the research that Beglar and Hunt describe. What points particularly draw your attention? Do you find this to be a reasonable task-based project that might be of use in your context(s)?
2. The authors note (p. 102) that several alterations could improve their project. Offer a short critique of their proposed changes.
3. Using a project that you encountered either as a language learner or as a language teacher, analyze the tasks therein with the three dimensions proposed by Skehan (1998).
Sadow (1994)
4. Borrowing from Ur (1982), how exactly would you explain taking the subway to an alien (the non-terrestrial type)?
5. In Japan we find a secondary education system that is heavily invested in extrinsic motivation in the guise of university entrance exams. Briefly detail the main facets of intrinsic motivation and provide an example of intrinsic motivation from your own language learning experience.
6. Bring to class a potential solution to the Smith and Jones conundrum on page 245. During the group discussion time, share your suggestion and arrive, as a group, at a best solution.
7. As you read through the description of frame theory, do you find any similarity to other theoretical entities we have mentioned in class? If so, which one(s)?
Brown and Nation (1997)
7. Brown and Nation note that “repetition and substitution drills have come to be considered old-fashioned and (worse still) not useful for language learning” (p. 2). To what extent do you agree or disagree? Why?
8. Sure, you want to know, right? Who are these dapper gents, and what possible relationship might they have with our discussion tonight?