Questions from Universidad de Cordoba, Monteria-Colombia

A while back, I accidentally put my V-task paper out to the xmca mailing list. I thought I was replying to one person, but it turns out that the entire xmca community received it.
I sent out a message apologizing for it's release. One reply did come, apologizing for reading it, but at the same time asking questions. Here is the exchange of e-mails that occurred between Jose David Herazo Rivera and myself.


Mr. de Boer

I am aware that your research paper was not intended for everyone in the xmca-discussion, but I have not resisted the temptation to read it. Having done so, I have a few questions I would like to ask. It is no problem if you are too busy and cannot answer at the moment.

For sometime now I have been looking for a way to implement TBL as from the very beginning of a unit sequence. usually what I have done is some pre-task work, as suggested by different authors, consisting of controlled tasks or exercises. I think the V-task might be very helpful in this sense.

1. Concerning the V-task parameter number 6: how is it possible that students decide the language they need or want if the task, to some extent, determines the language that is required?

My answer to his question:

Question 1:
The V-task parameter number 6 yes, states that the students determine the language they want or need through questions. You have a valid point in that the task in some ways determines to some extent the language required but this is not necessarily the case. As with TBL there always seems to be a central theme, having students ask each other questions etc, but with the V-task the work is individual. In some cases (and most of my students to this point have been children) the task is set so the language is less restricted, yet, as in our everyday life, if we are set out to do a task, then there is going to be some rigidity to the language involved. In this case the students made up their school schedules, which in the coursebooks they offer here in Japan, all the components of that V-task were all individual chapters focussing on one chapter a month, and through PPP.
The problem that we encounter here with TBL is that it is too vague and not specific enough in its direction. Students go home not knowing what they learned and parents also need to see steps in progress. One of the points of the paper was to show that TBL can be structured to some extent and still bring in the language needed to the lesson to satisfy the parents demands, yet, it is more real world use, the students don't get taught the material, they have to ask for it. In asking for it, we don't necessarily teach it to them, we use the classroom as the teacher, other students pitch in to assist each other and the classroom becomes a autonomous learning environment.
So yes the language required to some extent is determined, yet the student determines what components of that language they want.

For example. In a PPP environment, lets say that the lesson is to do with past tenses. So in the textbook they have the set question

Did you ..... on Saturday?
The preset vocabulary might be
bake cookies
brush the dog
watch TV
and so on.

So asking a student,
Did you brush the dog on Saturday?
the answer invariably would need to be Yes, I did or No, I didn't, since the structure of the lesson points students to those two answers.
But, many students don't have dogs, so the answer should be: I don't have a dog.

In a V-task setting though, without pairwork (that can come later) The students give me a list of 10 things they did on Saturday, then the lesson language is less restricted, but it focuses on the past tense. We all have our coffee time questions with other staff about what we did on the weekend come monday morning... how is my lesson different?
But the students need to find out what they did because they don't know it in English, they need to ask questions to get the information so they can write it down. They determine what they want to write, because it pertains to them, not to a textbook answer which may have no relevance. They may learn it from another student, when it comes time for pairwork. Hey, what did you do on Saturday? to complete the task.

2. We are usually tempted to believe that the creation and occurrence of ZPDs in the EFL class is a very complicated and complex event, and we feel kind of frustrated when we see that the act of giving help in spelling a word, like in your example, is accounted for as interaction within the zoe, or scaffolded interaction. What's your opinion about this? Do you have examples of other assisted or scaffolded performance that have occurred in your lessons?

My answer to his question:

Question 2:
Good question and valid.Yet, in this instance, the students are in the early stages of 'learning how to learn' and knowing how to get information is one of them. Learning how to ask for information here in Japan is a big step for some students. Its a very Confucius type society in its teaching methods. Students don't ask, and then certainly don't ask each other.
Yet in asking for spelling, there are a number of factors involved.
1. They may not have the confidence to spell the entire word, so instead of checking, they ask. My role would be to determine how much they know and to help them from there. So if they ask for spelling and it requires scaffolding then I will proceed in that direction. I have included an article in this mail which shows how scaffolding might help in the V-task, based on the levels of scaffolding that may be required from the teacher. These are valid scaffolding parameters as well. Now I must make it clear that the scaffolding and the zone which is discussed in my paper is still in its preliminary stages.

My main reason for writing this paper was to find a link between TBL and Vygotsky. In my initial research, there was no link, since TBL didn't take into account any Vygotskian type thinking at all. Which is why I revised the definition of TBL to bring in Vygotsky. You can't change Vygotsky, but you can change TBL. So by revising TBL, I was able to come up with a method (V-task) which seemed to satisfy the requirements of TBL and Vygotsky. Yet very importantly provide a learning environment which made students autonomous learners.

In my essay I cited Ohta: In the V-task, developing learner autonomy is a key issue and ‘increasing autonomy is evidence of increasing internalization’ (Ohta 2001: 74). Even something as simple as asking for spelling, which in my case with children is a very big part (EFL) and a necessary step for later on.

3. In the lessons you present students it is very clear the negotiation of meaning, or negotiated dialogue, as Swain calls it. have you tried this type of task in more complex settings where the task product is not linguistic?

My answer to his question:

Question 3.
Yes I have tried this in more complex settings. Initially, when I started this research I chose a lesson where the students used a set of components (called SciTek) similar to Lego, but much bigger and more centered around technology. The lesson was to work together to gather the inventory and using the V-task parameters (at that time the parameters of the V-task were not yet defined, but well on their way) were to build whatever they were building. In my case they built a car and an airplane. So they had to negotiate for parts, determine which parts they needed, what they looked like, etc and the final product was the car. The language used was free - but in this collaborative learning environment, simple phrases that one student knew, were passed onto other students.

I recently did a talk on this same concept in Sapporo in Japan and I'm due for a talk on this in November at the JALT national conference in Tokyo. I still use SciTek, but SciTek doesn't need to be used. The concept is what defines the task, what you choose to use to teach this kind of task is up to the teacher.

4. TBL has been criticized on the grounds that the communicative performance that occurs through it does not necessarily lead to acquisition. HOw does the V-task seem to overcome this critique?.

My answer to his question:

Question 4
TBL in an EFL setting is not effective as it stands. Yes, it teaches the students real world use of the language, but still, its focus on pairwork and figuring out something in pairs really doesn't help in the EFL setting, especially since there really is no target in a TBL lesson. Students still haven't been taught how to ask the questions they need to ask to understand what they are doing. TBL focuses too much on the use of real English, which understandably in an ESL setting might be ideal.
But TBL also assists in the development of the interlanguage, which in my setting is very important and necessary. PPP teaches structures but there is not allowance for interlanguage. TBL focusses on interlanguage, yet there is no structure and the students may not see the short term benefits after they have walked out of the lesson. The V-task, having a little more structure, yet focussing on interlanguage gives the students something to 'get' and as I mentioned, it gives the students the necessary skills for learning how to access the language they need. As stated above --- ‘increasing autonomy is evidence of increasing internalization’ (Ohta 2001: 74).

In Japan, this kind of lesson would be ideal, since still in many classrooms, PPP is widely used, and students don't learn really how to communicate. They learn set phrases, yet when they go to a different country, they haven't got the confidence to ask questions or speak the language because PPP is so rigid in its method, that anything outside of the set phrase taught to them is considered to be incorrect. The teacher focuses on the set phrase, and not the negotiated meaning. Pairwork also has its good points and bad points, but in the V-task it is not required, since the idea is for the students to get the language they want. In pairwork it is just the automatic gamesay of asking questions and answering them. The V-task goes beyond that, saying if you need information to complete the task, then learn how to ask for it and in doing so learn how it works. So to answer your question, TBL doesn't focus on the language that the student wants or needs at that particular moment. But in the V-task, the language that they want or need, needs to be accessed to complete the task, but the objective is not the final product, it is the language needed to get to the final product. In TBL, the focus is on the final product. Hence the acquisition rate is potentially higher for the V-task since the gap created using the V-task is a learning gap, not a task.

Please, there is no need to apologize to me about reading the article. Thank you so much for your questions. I hope I have answered them for you. This paper is due to be published in TESOL this year, in a TBL series they are producing. My dissertation is still a little ways away, but this will be the focus of my dissertation.

And in any future correspondence, please call me Mark!

I would finally like to apologize for having commented on a paper that was not intended for me to read.

Kind regards,

JOSE DAVID HERAZO RIVERA
Universidad de Cordoba
Monteria-Colombia

Dictogloss

Here is a group of students doing a dictogloss exercise. We did a song from the SuperKids 3 book, the 'Did you play baseball yesterday?' song.

The students responded much better than I thought they would and I tried to do as much scaffolding as I could; for example getting them to spell a word as much as they could before I helped them the rest of the way, rather than me just spelling the word for them when they asked. Of I redirected the question back to the group to see if anyone else could help spell the word. This was the first dictogloss that I did with them and I did end up playing the song about 6 times. (I also played the last part of the song once as you'll see in this video).

Overall the dictogloss was a surprise success, the students had a slow start, but to be expected having never done this before, but the students ended up doing a lot of communicating amongst themselves to get the words all down. In the end, I let them check their version against the version in the book. They were almost all perfect.

As you will see in the video too, the Did you....? version was OK, but when it came to the simple past sentence, they couldn't catch the -ed on the end of play, or paint.
This was only their second week on this chapter - simple past with regular verbs adding -ed only, so I will try something different next time to see how much they were able to notice.

Find the Differences

In today's lesson, with four Jr. High School Students we did a 'Find the Differences' lesson.

Students were put in pairs, and one person from the pair was given Sheet A and the other was given Sheet B. They were not allowed to show each other their sheets and they were only allowed to talk to 'find the differences between sheet A and sheet B items.

Not all items are different. One pair was done relatively quickly, within 30 minutes and when I asked them how many of the items were the same, they replied 'ten'. At that point I wrote on the board, that only the gloves, key and the wallet were the same, all others had some sort of difference.

Now, this class has had experience in the past with being able to ask for meanings, or ask to acquire new language, this kind of task is ideal for that. Yes, they need to use language that they already know, but they need to ask for more. I sometimes answered, but most times, I redirect the question to the rest of the class.

Finding the differences is not the point, the point is being able to communicate what you see to the other person. Confusions were mostly on the jeans or the suitcase.

The jeans drew confusion from the students in one case saying the 'happy face is on the left' vs the other student 'the happy face is on the left leg'.

The suitcase drew confusion, since they were all able to tell that the arrow was pointing up, but no one was able to determine that one arrow was short and the other was long.

The writing colors threw them off as well. All of the pictures were discussed diligently, the point of the lesson being just that. I didn't want them to feel that they failed in the lesson if the differences were not discovered, but I wanted them to be able to be able to discuss the pictures in detail, or most importantly ask for new language when needed.

At the end of the lesson, when the students were able to see the differences, groans and laughter filled the classroom.

The last 10 minutes of class was to discuss the various lexical items or chunks that they learned during the task.

At the bottom, at the top, left leg, facing, long, short...

but in asking about the lesson itself, all students agreed that this kind of lesson is useful just about in any situation, and although one of the students is not as grammatically advanced as the others, he was very good at being able to communicate exactly what he wanted to say.

How was the lesson?

fun, useful, difficult to explain the pictures but I could use my English, I learn how to say more English when describing things.

Great lesson and great student response.

Mark

A Sample Communicative TBL

Today I had a class with 4 Jr. High School students.

I wanted to teach them simple present and have them use it.

On the board, I wrote the following 9 questions;

1. Where were you born?
2. When were you born?
3. Where did you go to grade school?
4. Who was your favorite teacher?
5. What was your favorite subject?
6. Where do you go to Jr. High School?
7. Who is your favorite teacher?
8. What is your favorite subject?
9. What is your future ambition?

The idea being that I wanted them to notice the difference between Questions 4 and 7 and Questions 5 and 8. I wanted them to be able to make the distinction that starting question 6, the tense changes and becomes present.

The first 5 questions went rather smoothly, questions did arise, such as 'How do you spell September?' or 'How do you say 地理学' in English? (Geography).

One student raised his hand and inquired about the question 4 being repeated again in question 7, but he immediately withdrew his question when he noticed for himself that the question 7 pertained to Jr. High School. The others were listening to his question and at that point they all realized that the part starting at Jr.High was in the present tense.

We had covered the past tense in a previous lesson, but we hadn't really covered the 'be' verb past tense to any great degree. But no questions arose about this and they had completed the task by the end of the lesson. They had to ask all other students, all of the questions.

They communicated pretty much in English for the most part, but this kind of lesson raises the same question as outlined Hobbs, J. 2005 'Interactive Lexical Phrases in Pair Interview Tasks' in Edwards, C., Willis, J. (2005) Teachers Exploring Tasks in English Language Teaching. MACMILLAN, Hampshire, U.K. pp. 143-156. There needs to be some focus on helping students become less stilted in their language and more smooth in their interactions. By introducing students to lexical phrases as suggested by Hobbs, it could help the students use more peripheral language and less of their own Mother tongue.

A definite case for action research on how we could do this within the school as a whole and not just for this class.

Mark