FROM TASK-SUPPORTED TEACHING TO TASK-BASED LEARNING THE CASE OF JAPANESE LANGUAGE TEACHING IN ROMANIA

Abstract

Speaking a foreign language is a must in today's globalized world. Placing one of the most recent teaching approaches - task-based learning (TBL) - in the context of the development of teaching methods and approaches over the years, our paper presents and analyzes the difficulties encountered by teachers in understanding and employing this particular method. We briefly present the main teaching approaches from a conceptual perspective, with a special focus on the objectives and on the characteristics of TBL. Furthermore, we analyze the particular case of the Japanese language teaching and learning in Romania and the difficulties that the Romanian teachers of Japanese encounter when they attempt to use TBL in their classes. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Headnote

Abstract: Speaking a foreign language is a must in today's globalized world. Placing one of the most recent teaching approaches - task-based learning (TBL) - in the context of the development of teaching methods and approaches over the years, our paper presents and analyzes the difficulties encountered by teachers in understanding and employing this particular method. We briefly present the main teaching approaches from a conceptual perspective, with a special focus on the objectives and on the characteristics of TBL. Furthermore, we analyze the particular case of the Japanese language teaching and learning in Romania and the difficulties that the Romanian teachers of Japanese encounter when they attempt to use TBL in their classes.

Keywords: teaching method, teaching approach, Japanese language, task-based learning, task-supported teaching.

Foreign languages are one of the most important assets that a person of today's globalized society owns. The world of the 21st century relies heavily on communication and knowledge of at least one foreign language has already become the usual standard in everyday life. Learning a foreign language is no longer a matter of being an erudite, which subsequently brings about changes in the process of foreign language teaching.

The issue regarding the necessity of understanding foreign languages goes back to the 18th century, when Greek and Latin started to be learned and taught through the famous Grammar-Translation method. Involving little or no spoken communication or listening comprehension, the Grammar-Translation method was not aimed at building communicative skills, but was focused on learning grammar rules and applying them in translation. Context was given little importance when teaching vocabulary, the one-to-one equivalents being the rule. The development of intellectual capacities and of logical thinking prevailed over the actual learning/teaching of a foreign language. The concept of communication was almost inexistent. The main goal was that the student became able to read literature in the target language - Greek or Latin. According to Prator and Celce-Murcia (Prator and Celce-Murcia, 1979: 3), the key features of the Grammar Translation Method are as follows:

* Classes are taught in the mother tongue, with little active use of the target language.

* Much vocabulary is taught in the form of lists of isolated words.

* Long elaborate explanations of the intricacies of grammar are given.

* Grammar provides the rules for putting words together, and instruction often focuses on the form and inflection of words.

* Reading of difficult classical texts is begun early.

* Little attention is paid to the content of texts, which are treated as exercises in grammatical analysis.

* Often the only drills are exercises in translating disconnected sentences from the target language into the mother tongue.

* Little or no attention is given to pronunciation.

The Grammar Translation Method is still used today in a surprising number of institutions, the main reason being probably the reduced amount of effort for the teacher in preparing the lesson, providing the explanations and in testing the result.

While the Grammar-Translation method was originally used for preparing students to be able to read and translate literary texts, with almost no focus on speaking, the methods that developed afterwards gradually addressed the other skills as well, either separately or in various combinations. The Direct Method, for example, focuses mainly on speaking, with lessons being held in the target language only. Grammar rules are not presented by the teacher in an explicit manner, but in an inductive one. Needless to say, the amount of time dedicated to lesson planning increases considerably. Furthermore, the quantity of information that can be transmitted by using this method is greatly reduced if compared to a lesson taught in the Grammar-Translation tradition.

As a reaction to the Grammar-Translation Method there comes the Direct Method, which attempts to integrate more use of the target language during the teaching process. Only the target language is supposed to be used for instruction and the student is forced to think directly in the target language and to use it as such. Written work is given little attention, the emphasis being laid on spoken production. J. Richards and Th. Rodgers (Richards and Rogers, 2001: 12) describe principles of procedures underlying the Direct Method in the following way:

* Classroom instruction was conducted exclusively in the target language.

* Only everyday vocabulary and sentences were taught.

* Oral communication skills were built up in carefully graded progression organized around question-answer exchanges between teachers and students in small, intensive classes.

* Grammar was taught inductively.

* New teaching points were introduced orally.

* Concrete vocabulary was taught through demonstrating, objects and pictures; abstract vocabulary was taught by association of ideas.

* Both speech and listening comprehension were taught.

* Correct pronunciation and grammar were emphasized.

The Audio-lingual method provides students with the necessary tools for communicating orally at a basic level. The development of the Audiolingual method was motivated by various scientific and historical factors. Bloomfield1's emphasis on the importance of the observable linguistic phenomena, as well as the development of behaviorism2 in the United States provided a fertile ground for the development of the Audio-lingual method. Furthermore, the outbreak of the Second World War brought about the necessity for the US soldiers to learn to speak the languages of the countries they were being sent to in a very short time. Based mainly on repetition and imitation, the Audio-lingual method was quite successful until the cognitive approaches started to develop.

The Silent Way3, Communicative Language Learning4, Suggestopedia5, Total Physical Response6 or the Communicative Approach7 - all place the student, together with his needs, at the center of the teaching-learning process. We witness a shiftfrom the teachercentered to the student-centered approaches, with an increased emphasis on the student as a whole person. The student's feelings and emotions, together with his cognitive and intellectual abilities, are all taken into account during the teaching-learning process. While the Grammar- Translation Method did not address communication at all, the new approaches focus on the development of all the communicative skills - reading, listening, writing and speaking. The Communicative Approach in particular has been extremely popular starting with the 1970s, especially because it introduced the idea of the meaningfulness of language study. With the traditional methods, the aim that the student had to achieve was the mastery of the target language; with the communicative approach, the student must become able to communicate in the target language, even if the grammatical correctness is not always 100% achieved. Real-life situations and authentic materials are used in class and the teaching process focuses on the use of language rather than on passive learning.

The shiftin the teaching paradigm can also be noticed if one analyzes the names of the strategies employed in the teaching process. The first strategies that were used in foreign language teaching are called methods: The Grammar-Translation Method, The Audio-Lingual Method or The Direct Method. The use of a method implies the existence of a rather strict, logical and systematic strategy of instruction. The use of a method presupposes that the teacher has the solution, that he/she is the puppetmaster who applies a certain strategy that his/her students must learn and follow for best results. The Silent Way, Total Physical Response or Suggestopedia no longer impose a 'method', but rather appeal to either psychological or cognitive aspects of the student's personality. The student is no longer treated as a puppet following the master's model, but is asked to use his/her own mind and body to integrate the language learning experience. Community Language Learning shifts the focus from teaching onto learning. For the first time, it is clear from the very beginning that the focus is not on the teacher, but on the learner. The Communicative Approach brings the teacher and the student together in an approach - "the act of drawing near" (Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language) - to real-life communication. The role of the teacher has thus changed quite dramatically over the years. From organizer and controller in the traditional methods of teaching, the teacher evolves into a facilitator in the so-called humanistic approaches to language learning.

The approach called Task-Based Learning (TBL) is closely associated with the Communicative Approach, logically following the real-life centeredness that the Communicative Approach presupposes. Both in Task-Based Learning and in the Communicative Approach three aspects are considered vital for efficient language learning:

- Regular exposure of the learner to the target language in meaningful contexts;

- Frequent opportunity for the active use of the target language in communicative situations;

- Strong motivation for language learning.

The so-called Task-Based Learning approach to language learning starts from the premise that learners of a foreign language would be more efficient in their learning process if placed into real-life situations, where they must solve real-life tasks. Solving tasks is a common activity in real life, hence its relevance for language learning. The most visible advantage of using TBL is that the student uses the target language for achieving a realistic goal at his/her current level. One clear purpose of choosing TBL is to increase learner activity; TBL is concerned with learner and not teacher activity and it lies on the teacher to produce and supply different tasks which will give the learner the opportunity to experiment spontaneously, individually and originally with the foreign language. Each task will provide the learner with new personal experience with the foreign language and at this point the teacher has a very important part to play. He or she must take the responsibility of the consciousness raising process, which must follow the experimenting task activities. The consciousness raising part of the TBL method is a crucial for the success of TBL, it is here that the teacher must help learners to recognize differences and similarities, help them to "correct, clarify and deepen" their perceptions of the foreign language. All in all, TBL is language learning by doing(http://www.languages.dk/archive/poolsm/manuals/final/taskuk.pdf).

A communicative task has been defined by D. Nunan as a piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing, or interacting in the target language while their attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to express meaning, and in which the intention is to convey meaning rather than to manipulate form (Nunan, 2004: 4). The typical structure of the TBL process consists of three main phases: the pre-task phase, the task-solving phase and the post-task phase. Together they form the so-called task-cycle.

During the pre-task phase, the teacher usually introduces the topic to the class and explores it together with the students through various methods (watching a recording of a similar task, reading or listening to a text that will lead in to the actual task etc.). It is during this phase that useful vocabulary is emphasized. The students then proceed to do the task, in pairs or in small groups. The teacher monitors them and offers assistance when needed, encouraging all attempts at communication. Mistakes of any nature do not matter at this point. Planning is the next step, during which the students prepare to report to the whole class, either orally or in writing, how they did the task and what they discovered. The teacher must be prepared to provide help with grammar or other language-related problems. The following stage is reporting to the class orally or exchanging written reports and comparing them. The teacher acts as a chairperson and comments on the content of the reports. The post-task phase focuses mainly on language.

The typical structure of a Task-Based lesson is summarized in the following scheme (Task Based Learning" - European Commission funded project:http://www.languages.dk/archive/poolsm/manuals/final/taskuk.pdf):

TBL is one of the latest teaching methods employed in foreign language teaching and, as presented above, it focuses mainly on tasksolving and communication, the language aspects being dealt with indirectly. TBL basically opposes the traditional Presentation-Practice-Production (PPP) approach to teaching. The presentation phase usually consists of two steps: a warm-up and the introduction of the language items to be studied; during the practice phase, the focus is on form, the students doing various exercises in order to learn the forms correctly; the production phase focuses on fluency and gives the students the chance to apply what they have learned during the first two stages. While the practice stage is highly controlled, the production one tends to be less controlled. The PPP approach is used to a very large extent, the reasons being rather easy to understand. The controlled environment makes it easy for the teacher to avoid unpleasant situations during the lesson. The students, on the other hand, feel secure, since they always have a model to refer to when in doubt. However, the PPP does not offer the authenticity that the student needs in real life situations. TBL, on the other hand, forces the student to use whatever knowledge he/she has got in order to 'survive' in the real world. Needless to say, a TBL lesson implies a more difficult task for the teacher, since he/she must always be prepared to provide the accurate information whenever the students need it. Previous planning may not always be enough, especially in the case of young, inexperienced teachers.

In the case of Japanese language teaching in Romania, the long tradition of employing the Grammar-Translation Method or the PPP approach seems to be hard to challenge. The preference given to these two approaches is understandable, since teaching Japanese as a non-native teacher is not an easy job, especially for the higher-intermediate and the advanced levels. The traditional teacher feels secure if he/she can prepare everything - including the answers to the possible questions from the students - in advance. Various trainings for Japanese language teachers in Europe or in Central and Eastern Europe have been held in the past years, many of them focusing on TBL as an alternative to traditional teaching8. And while everybody agrees that TBL might be an approach that addresses better the needs of the students nowadays, the number of teachers who actually use it is extremely limited.

There are, in our opinion, at least two major reasons for that reluctance of including TBL in one's teaching. One of them regards not only non-native teachers of Japanese, but also Japanese native teachers with insufficient socio linguistic and pragmatic knowledge and competences and consists in the difficulty of evaluating whether the task has been properly accomplished or not. Subjectivity may be highly present and, while that is acceptable in the real world, it becomes problematic when it occurs during an evaluation process in an educational institution. Therefore, we consider that training teachers on how to evaluate TBL is equally important. The Japan Foundation specialists created a very suggestive image of the competences and activities that a person must have and do in order to communicate efficiently. The image is that of a tree, where the linguistic, socio linguistic and pragmatic competences form the roots, the communicative language competences and activities form the trunk and the receptive, productive and interactive activities form the branches9. The problem is that, in the case of the Romanian teachers of Japanese, it is taken for granted that they possess the elements forming the roots of the tree, while in reality things appear to be different.

The other reason which influences Romanian teachers of Japanese in their not choosing TBL as a viable alternative to traditional methods is, in our opinion, that there still exists a misunderstanding of what a task is. When, during a study meeting10, after a presentation of PPP and TBL contrastively, teachers were asked which of the two approaches they use in class, some of them answered "TBL", adding that after they teach a grammar structure, they usually ask their students to use that structure in sentences or texts of their own. Such answers demonstrate that the production stage of a PPP approach has been mistaken for a genuine TBL approach.

The situation of Japanese language teaching in Romania is characterized, in our opinion, not by 'task-based learning', but by what R. Ellis calls 'task-supported language teaching' (Ellis, 2003: 27). The difference between the two is that while task-based teaching/learning refers to a teaching approach based on meaning-focused tasks, with little attention given to grammar, in task-supported language teaching "tasks are seen not as a means by which learners acquire new knowledge or restructure their inter-languages, but simply as a means by which learners can activate their existing knowledge of the L2 by developing fluency" (Ellis, 2003: 30). The current situation in most of the institutions where Japanese is taught in Romania is that the Romanian teachers of Japanese employ a task-supported teaching approach, the real task-based teaching/learning approach being used, where possible, by the native Japanese teachers.

Footnote

1 Leonard Bloomfield (1887-1949): American linguist who greatly influenced the development of comparative and structural linguistics in the USA. He believed that linguists should be trained in the methods of scientific enquiry, rejected categorically speculation of unobservable phenomena and based linguistic enquiry on samples of spoken language. Bloomfield favored the image of language as a building constructed of small blocks of sound and meaning, each block having a specific place and function and exhibiting specific characteristics (Siobhan Chapman and Christopher Routledge (eds.), 2005: 34-40).

2 Movement in psychology and philosophy that emphasized the outward, observable aspects of thought

3 Developed by Caleb Gattegno, The Silent Way regards language learning as a process of solving problems and discovery of new things. The teacher stays silent and only guides the students in their problem-solving process. The silence is supposed to help the learners concentrate on solving the task (Ciubancan, 2012: 80)

4 Community Language Learning requires teachers to regard their students as whole persons. The teacher is a language counselor, helping the students overcome the fear and the insecurities that occur when confronted to a new (and threatening) experience such as learning a new language. (Ciubancan, 2012: 80)

5 Developed by Georgi Lozanov, Suggestopedia focuses on creating a relaxing environment, which will lead to a relaxed mental state in the learner. Music, décor and ritualized teaching behavior are used (Ciubancan, 2012: 80)

6 Total Physical Response was developed in the 1970's and focuses on the physical response to commands, teaching language through physical activity. The students' main role is to listen and perform. (Ciubancan, 2012:80 )

7 The Communicative Approach focuses on achieving successful communication in the target language, going beyond the level of grammar and vocabulary. The notion of "communicative competence" is introduced, referring to the ability of making oneself understood in an appropriate manner. Great emphasis is laid on the motivation that arises from the student's desire to communicate something that he/she feels as being relevant. (Ciubancan, 2012: 80)

8 For example, in 2012 there were two such trainings organized by the Japan Foundation, the special legal entity established by the Japanese Diet to undertake the dissemination of Japanese language and culture throughout the world: Training for Japanese Language Teachers in Europe in Alsace, France and Training for Japanese Language Teachers in Central and Eastern Europe, in Budapest, Hungary. Aside from these, various other smaller-scale study meetings were organized in Romania, especially for Romanian teachers of Japanese.

9 http://jfstandard.jp/pdf/jfs2010_tree.pdf

10 Study meeting organized by the Association of Japanese Language Teachers in Romania (February 2nd , 2013)

References

REFERENCES

Brandl, K., (2008), Communicative Language Teaching in Action: Putting Principles to Work. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Chapman, S. and Routledge, C. (eds.)., (2005), Key Thinkers in Linguistics and The Philosophy of Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ciubancan, M., (2012), "Teaching Methods in The Framework of Integralist Linguistics". In M. Ciubancan (ed.), The International Symposium on Japanese Linguistics and Methodology. Cluj-Napoca: Presa Universitara Clujeana.

Ellis, R., (2003), Task-based Language Learning and Teaching. New York: Oxford University Press.

Harmer, J., (2009), How to Teach (5th edition). Harlow: Longman.

Larsen-Freeman, Diane. 1986. Techniques and Principles in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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Prator, C.H. and Celce-Murcia, M., (1979), "An outline of language teaching approaches". In Celce-Murcia, M. and McIntosh, L. (ed.), Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. New York: Newbury House.

Richards, J.C. and Rogers, Th.S., (2001), Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching (Second Edition). Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sao Paolo: Cambridge University Press.

Internet web pages:

http://www.languages.dk/archive/poolsm/manuals/final/taskuk.pdf

http://jfstandard.jp/pdf/jfs2010_tree.pdf