PDF #168 – The Communicativeness of Activities in a Task-based Innovation in Guangdong, China
Communicativeness of Activities in Task-Based – This paper analyses the extent of communicative activities in a Year Four primary school class in Guangdong, where a national task-based innovation has been mandated. The framework guiding the study uses a continuum of communicativeness of activities, developed by Littlewood.
In contemporary East Asia, the related concepts of communicative
language teaching (CLT) and task-based language teaching (TBLT) form
a central pillar of language policies (Nunan, 2003). Despite their popularity at the policy level, recent literature reports on numerous challenges
in implementing TBLT in Chinese contexts (Carless, 2004; Hu, 2002,
2005b; Littlewood, 2007). There is clearly a need for more critical scrutiny of the suitability of task-based approaches for schooling, particularly
in contexts where TBLT may prove to be in conflict with traditional
educational norms (Carless, 2007; Ellis, 2003).
In 2001, the New Round National Curriculum Innovation was
launched by the Chinese government, and TBLT was advocated as part
of the official syllabus (Hu, 2005a). It is asserted that TBLT in the new
curriculum can “develop students’ positive attitude toward learning” and
“enhance students’ competence in using the target language” through
tasks (PEP, 2001, p. 2). However, the government documents do not
define the key concept of task clearly. We infer that the Chinese government documents follow the standard understandings of TBLT, such as
the definition given by Willis (1996, p. 23), that “tasks are always activities where the target language is used by the learner for a communicative purpose (goal) in order to achieve an outcome.” In other words,
tasks are focused on communicative outcomes, instead of, or in addition
to, the presentation of grammatical information.
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