Hello

 My name is Miguel Gutierrez. I must say that I have already started to read the documents left for us at CELE and I have found that this Course will definately

fulfil my expectations.You see, last year I applied for a position as a teacher at the UCM and they turned me down because I didn't remember what  "Task Based Approach". was I felt very bad. So when I saw I could have the opportunity to learn about this I decided to enrol in this Course.

     Now I know I will not only leran a few definitions and concepts, but I will also acquire new abilities to improve myself as a teacher.

 WHO IS A GOOD TEACHER?

 Some people say that teachers are born teachers, others say that teaching is a vocation, a profession or even an arrt.   I am a teacher because I like it, but also because I think I was inspired by many good  or excellent teachers I had in elementary school (3 0r 4). I started teaching when I was about 16, so I grew up with it, I guess it's a part of me. 

     A good teacher is...

    someone who is teaching because he/she likes that, she likes sharing with students and other teachers.

    cheerful and enthusiastic  about the profession and shows this to her students.

    motivating, hard-working, demanding, but patient at the same time    

     aware of her social commitment, listens to that, and cares about others.

      able to wear her students shoes.

       believes in her studnets, she thinks they can learn, and that her participation in those students' life is important. She wants her students to succeed.

       (last, but not least) is ready to learn every day and prepares her class, pays attention to diversity, and prepares many activities.

        This is what I can say right now, there are many other ideas  and thoughts about that.... 

 Ana María Martínez

0.1 PERSONAL REFLECTION: A GOOD TEACHER

1. How much effort did this teacher put into making you learn?

This teacher was my Literature teacher in highschool. He always told us about books and short stories. They were not included in the program of the course, but he always talked about a different story. He also asked us to write a short story every month. He was always patient. I really enjoyed it. He used to be attentive to our stories and never laughed at us. He was always kind to everybody. He gave us much more of himself than what a Literature teacher was expected to give.

 b. Which of his/her qualities have you incorporated into your own teaching?

To be attentive to students needs.

To be patient.

To encourage students to do things and to learn about things that are not included in the program.

Thelma

     From: Erika Gómez and Miguel Gutiérrez

Erika Gómez.

The teacher I have always admired was my Universal Literature teacher, he was caring, he always talked to us about our learning problems and he used to spend time with us to develop a relationship among the group, we had a friendly relationship, the teacher was very respectful, he treated us well and equally, the teacher had positive attitudes toward us and it made me feel respected. He had the commitment to increase our learning by motivating us, he didn’t talk in the same way all the time, he used to turn up and down the volume of his voice so you were always paying attention to him because you didn’t know what would happen in the next second, it was really amazing the way he could catch everybody’s attention and he always had a course organization. My teacher was always taking courses and we knew he was very well-prepared, it makes you admire him more. He was very enthusiastic, we sometimes took classes outdoors listening to the birds and the stories about different authors as Edgar Alan Poe. He was very fun and humorous, he taught his classes with passion and it was really great.

Miguel Gutierrez says that the most important characteristics he remembers about some of his teachers are:

1.      They all had expertise.

2.      Always tried to act as facilitators of our learning process.

  3.   Promoted independence among their students

  4.   They always showed respect for others and for their learning process.

5.       Tried to work as monitors in the classroom

6.        Always managed to somehow engage their students   in the learning task.

  7. It was obvious that they always tried to turn every class into a learning experience.

   8.  They were always curious about knowledge.

So we concluded that the most important characteristics are:

1. Experience.

2. Respect.

3.      Engage their students  in the learning task.

     4.   Tried to turn  every class into a learning experience.

5.      Curious about knowledge.

*********En mi caso mi profesor no trataba de que fuéramos independientes, por el contrario éramos completamente dependientes de él, nos protegía mucho.

We think the teacher's advance preparation, course organization, experience, the clarity and ability to be understood  by  students, the  ability to pursue and meet the course objectives make them to get their achievements.

 To be a good teacher is something I pretend to be someday.

A good teacher for me is someone who is a good human being. I s someone who looks every day for his integrity. He´s always trying to be better. Because I think that teaching is part of our life (as someone said before). We need to teach every day even though we´re not in our classrooms, to our own children, to our family, to our friends, etc.

A good teacher is a good advisor, is a real guide because  he is someone who is transmitting good values to  disciples, he is dinamic, enthusiastic, friendly, patient, tolerant, sensitive,  passionate, etc

You know? It is not very easy to become a good teacher.  You need a lot af qualities.

I would like to be that       teacher for my students.

  From Miguel Gutiérrez

A C T I V I T Y   1 . 7a

What so you think about these views on language learning? Which of these views best reflects your answer to the question “How do we learn a language?” in Activity 1.1?

Go back to your answers in activity 1.1

º Expand and/or support your answers using Wills’ text or the quotations above.

º Make sure you focus on: How do you think a foreign language is learned? Through formal instruction of structures, lexis and functions? Or through incidental teaching, while doing something else?

º Include examples of your learning and/or teaching experience.

º Send your answer to the forum.

Activity 1.1

What is language?

     To me, language is the ability man has to communicate with others not only through signs, but also by means of words. He does this in order to talk about his environment.

How do we learn a language?

     I think we learn a language through repetition and out of the need to communicate with others.

Activity 1.7a

     When I say that we learn through repetition, what I mean is that as in the case of every child, everything we (adult people) learn, we need to practice it in order to master it. I think we would be talking about  acquisition in the case of language learning. So repetition to me has to do with the opportunity to expose oneself to the language; “to achieve communicative goals, to make requests and suggestions, to persuade and entertain”. What I think we are talking about here is gaining communicative competence in another language.

     So the acquisition of a language –and I agree with it- depends on what learners want to do with it; what they wish to communicate. All this is based on their motivations , both intrinsic and extrinsic, as well as their “developmental stage of their interlanguage”, according to Ellis.

      Bearing the above in mind, I also think it is true that in the case of language teaching, learners acquire a language independently (to a great extent) of the teacher –or facilitator-, even in spite of him, and not in a linear additive fashion. It is also true that there is even a stagnation stage (or several of them) where learners do not seem to make any progress in the acquisition of a language. I have witnessed this stage both, as a student and as a teacher. Still, I must insist here that the level of acquisition depends on the kind of motivation learners have, which at the same time is not necessarily of the same type, but rather a dynamic process, like the learning process of a language.

     Now, what I have stated above makes me reflect on the time when I was a child. I remember that I was really motivated to learn English (intrinsic motivation)  because my father was really proficient in the language. He himself had learned it in an informal, fully immersion fashion while he was living in the USA. This means that had been compelled to acquire the language out of sheer need to understand others and to make himself understood.

     In my case however, I have learned the language yes, out of a great need  to be like  my father, en also to  be able to communicate with people in a different way. But unlike him, at the beginning I learned it in a classroom setting, or should I say in an artificial environment.

     So how exactly have  learned the language? I guess out of motivation and constant use of it as a means of communication, and I also remember I did it based on learning, memorization, repetition and use of language items.

     I agree mostly with what authors say in Wills’ article, and I also wonder if they are not trying to ‘squeeze’ a real setting into an artificial environment (the classroom). In my opinion, I think that as a teacher, one must try to cater learners with enough opportunities to expose themselves to a wide variety of contexts through which they can use the target language for a real purpose. This at the same time is carried out in the hope of providing them with opportunities to communicate in English.

      In none of the cases, the authors talk about ages of groups of study. I think that  age is a key factor to decide what kind of methodology you are going to use with your students, as there are learning differences between different age groups, as well as different sorts of motivation . On the other hand, I wonder  in relation to “PPP”, how much time should be devoted to each of the “P’s”?, or is it something subjective? And what about exams? Are we still talking about measuring the use and usage of language forms? Is it better just to concentrate on assessing linguistic competence? How? To what extent? . How does The Natural Approach measure competence in the English Language, for example?  And then there is the hierarchy of English Course levels. Is it possible –and admissible- to have students in C8 if they have not mastered “Do”  and “Does”, for example? How do you know what level a learner should be in? What is my role as a teacher?

     I am sorry but at this stage I have more questions than opinions. I am sure that I will get the answers to my questions later on, during the course. Meanwhile, Long and Richards are the only guys I look up to.

I think formal an informal instructions are both the foundations for the general learning process. We cannot think about them separately. Throughout time, schoolars as well as teachers have seriously thought about leaning towards a specific orientation just to ,sometimes, find out  that both communication and form conjugate themselves to become tools and aids for the learner in his/her learninig process: there are then many arguments in favor of interaction and output in stimulating learning. But this does not mean that a focus on form and explicit language instruction have no part to play in a TBI [1]. It could seem simple and evident that not only grammar but comunication share an outstandig role in L2 learning, but we cannot forget all the historical controversy which has been there dealing with this issue. As a student and later on teacher, I have confirmed the necessity of having as many elements to tell off meaning or have it get across. Then, I could say that the teacher has become a decisive element in the teaching learning process whereas he is the one that conveys the process of  conjugating both approaches in grammar and communication in the language class: a useful role for the teacher is to make this input both engaging and accessible and

then to highlight useful patterns in it and draw them to their students' attention[2].

In general, I could say that my learning experience was involved with the remainings of the communicative approach which was about to evolove itself into newer prespectives. However, I had to wait for my thesis project to get my BA degree to noitice the relevance of some of the main problems related with an extrict notional-functional method. Actually, my researching was based on the urgent necessity of reconsidering the impact of not having a profiecient leve of lexical competence which is also quoted in Leaver & Willis (2004). Then; I would affirm that, now a days, there is still too much to learn and research about main areas of linguistc concern as vocabulary

Because my own language learning, I think it´s a process that requires formal  and incidental learning.   I agree with that view on language learning, that considers the teacher has a definite role to play in students language learning.One of the limitations I can find in EFL settings is that students are not exposed to the target language outside the classroom. Besides, considering the large size of classes, students have no immediate need to use English inside the classroom, due they all share the same mother tongue. So, when they are asked to use English to do a task, I don´t know if they are really engage  in a genuine communication.

At FES Aragon we´re working with American Headway series that combines the best of traditional teaching methods with more recent approaches.Students are encouraged to produce accurate and level-appropiate language and to bring their own personal experiences and feelings to the learning context.Grammar is on the PPP focus, students are guided to work out rules for themselves, real-life situations are practiced in the classroom. Language is seem as a whole. Learners acquire new language items by seeing them and using them in communicative activities.

 My  opinion is that though limitations in our EFL classrooms we as English teachers can work out through this complex process of learning a foreign language.

My answer in activity 1.1 was By imitation.

I still think that the most important way to learn a language is to imitate. This means that there must be exposure to the language. I think this exposure should be both, incidental and formal especially if we are teaching adults. They need to follow their own unconscious learning process as well as feel confident by getting explanations about the language and how it works (formal instruction of structures, lexis and functions). If teachers just let them learn through incidental teaching, most of them feel anguished, desperate and lost until they completely get disappointed and usually leave the course thinking they are not good for learning a foreign language.

In my teaching experience every adult student that has attended my courses has always asked for rules (or what is thought to be rules) in order to have an axis from where to start expressing ideas in the foreign language. Their problem is that they do not permit themselves to express without the support of their knowledge about rules. Then, the teacher must provide them with different learning environments to make them feel confident to produce utterances in the foreign language.

When students get to higher levels, I think formal instruction of structures is essential for them to know when, where and with whom to use different registers of the language.

Thelma López

  I was completely mistaken in theopinion I had about the way we learn a language.  After having read the text I completely disagree with which I had in mind. 

I was amazed to learn that language learning ia an organic process and that learners pass through a series of trasitional stages restructuring their interlanguage to accomodate a new form as they become aware of the new evidence in the input they receive.

Now I am aware of the responsibility that teachers have in this input.  To reach this objective teachers must set tasks that provide opportunities for learners to seize with meaning.  In this new kind of learning teachers must take into account carefully selected authentic materials.  The texts can come from the kind of real life contexts that students will be facing and, obviously the topics must be interesting for the students.

Another important thing is TBL is the output, which is algo necessary for learning as well as learner learner interaction.

A thing that we should not miss is error correction which is a form of assisting learners.

We´ve been reading enough about TBL. So I´m not going to give you another view or a resume.

I my own simple words I want to give a brief answer:

TBL is an approach that uses tasks as a didactic procedure to generate communicative competence.  It leads activities ,inside the classroom,  to communication as the final aim.. I can see TBL helps us to plan our classes with a question in mind What do students need the language for?

Actually I think that   we as teachers are trying to make students to communicate through activities that need a task. From all the information I can read about TBL, it can be the appropiate approach nowadays for all that is behind a task.The only thing I would like to know  how it works in order to provoke the communicative competence.inside my classroom.

Please tell me your opinion..

Tasks provide the basis for an entire language curriculum.

Tasks are arranged in descending order with those closest to communicative reality at the top.

Tasks can function as a useful device for planning a communicative curriculum.

A task-based curriculum involves “an integrated set of processes involving, among other things, the specification of both what and how.

Task-based teaching prescribes teaching methodology in broad terms, i.e. as “fluency” rather than “accuracy”.

The importance of the affective dimension in learning as well as the cognitive

Increasing their own self-esteem and their motivation to learn.

Prabhu, where attention to language form is only incidental.

Breen and Candlin, the process syllabus is constructed through negotiation between the teacher and the students… The syllabus is constructed as the course is taught… Help learners to become aware of, reflect on, and evaluate their own learning styles and the strategies they use to learn.

The role of meaning-based activity, the need for more learner-centred curricula, the importance of affective factors, the contribution of learner-training, and the need for some focus-on-form. Task-based pedagogy provides a way of addressing these various concerns and for this reason alone is attracting increasing attention.

Source:

Ellis, Rod. (2003)

Tasked-based Language Learning and Teaching. OUP.

Chapter 1: Tasks in SLA and language pedagogy

P. 27-33

Nace en la década de los ochenta como propuesta innovadora elaborada a partir de los presupuestos fundamentales que sostienen la enseñanza comunicativa de idiomas.

Introduce la tarea como procedimiento didáctico para generar en el aula auténticos procesos de comunicación.

Se destacan la importancia del factor afectivo del que aprende y el carácter instrumental de la lengua.

La enseñanza por tareas se define como un plan operativo centrado en el modo de organizar, secuenciar y llevar a cabo las actividades del aprendizaje en el aula.

El aprendizaje se entiende como un proceso activo que se encuentra en reestructuración continua y que conforma la interlengua.

Se ponen en funcionamiento un conjunto de estrategias cognitivas de tipo universal y otras específicas del sujeto que aprende, de ahí la importancia que tiene el factor psicológico y afectivo.

El aprendizaje está ligado a las motivaciones profundas, a la afectividad y a los intereses del sujeto.

Se da la resolución de problemas, la negociación y el intercambio de reacciones.

La tarea se entiende como una parte del trabajo de clase que hace que los alumnos comprendan, manipulen, produzcan y se comuniquen en la lengua meta centrando su atención más en el significado que en la forma.

El objetivo es el de fomentar el uso de la lengua al tiempo que se realizan cosas. En esta tarea interesan más los procesos que los resultados.

El profesor observa, sigue, aconseja y anima a sus alumnos tratando que éstos lleven a cabo un desarrollo integrado de las destrezas lingüísticas y el logro de la competencia comunicativa.

Se atiende a la dimensión formal de la lengua y a la instrumental.

La Metodología y el plan de trabajo consisten en diseñar tareas que potencien y desarrollen el conocimiento lingüístico y la capacidad comunicativa de los alumnos… Autoevaluación.

Diferentes tipos de tareas: tareas, simulación y proyectos.

Los materiales empleados van desde el libro de clase hasta todo lo necesario para la realización de la tarea final.

Fuente:

Rafael Sánchez Sarmiento

La enseñanza de la lengua extranjera basada en el enfoque por tareas.

Lo que se debe rescatar no sólo es que el líder del trabajo es la tarea, sino que el proceso de aprendizaje involucra las necesidades, los procesos, la motivación, etc. del aprendiente. El papel que desempeña el profesor es más bien de asesor, dado que observa y se mantiene a una distancia prudente, de tal manera que permite que los alumnos interactúen de manera activa. Del enfoque operativo se desprendieron los conceptos de autoevaluación y evaluación continua, que van ligados al papel que desempeñan tanto del profesor facilitador – consejero, como el de los alumnos – activos; además de reflexionar acerca de lo que sucede a la vez que están trabajando. Se persigue que el tipo de material que se utilice sea auténtico. Se estimula que los alumnos reflexionen acerca de sus estilos de aprendizaje y las estrategias que utilizan, además de que se le entrena para dar y recibir apoyo, fomentando tanto la independencia como la interdependencia de los educandos.

Marie Cecilia

It's a methodolgy which combines the affective part of the student and the language itself. According to the different articles we read, the teacher should think on what to do (task) and how to do it (procedure) and guide students through a set of activities or pre-tasks to help them reach the final task, and design activities to help students with new vocabulary, grammar structures, input, in general to promote real communication among them and do something real with the language.

TBLT is an approach that was derived from CLT. This approach is closely related to learning theory and language learning. It is also based on pragmatic  features of  the target language   (whether in the classroom or not), focuses on form and on meaning as well as affective, humanistic and metacognitive factors. It also includes distinctive features such as: classmanagement, learning styles and strategies, syllabus design, activities  and materials development. TBLT encloses the aspects mentioned above and because of  this flexibility and broadness, tasks can be adapted to various teaching and learning purposes. We have learnt that tasks may have at least five different strands according to the purposes they are planned for. Tasks give us chance to practice in real language settings which  allows communicative competence as a whole. Students enjoy tasks because they are different, they can be creative and they can recreate  real life stituations. When using tasks students can pour down everything they know.

Activity 2.4

     I think we basically work with a textbook syllabus. That syllabus –grammar points and lexis- is presented or dealt with according to an specific teaching model.

     Thus, we have to adapt to the books, and at the same time we adapt them to our own learning and teaching styles.

     Now, the book I am using at present I think basically deals with a pre-task, a task cycle and a language focus, at least to some extent.

     Aside from it, that is the model I try to abide by on my presentations, although at times I fall back on the PPP model. This means I focus on a single grammar point and present it explicitly. Later on, in the same class I give my students a written exercise to provide them with mechanical practice as a means of automatization which in time, will perhaps enable them to acquire that grammar point. However, sometimes I also use Willis’ model (or I try to).

     But how and why do I choose one model or the other? I think one of the main issues here is time economy: How much time I have to deal with a certain pattern pattern in a first or a second presentation. Also, there are the amount of opportunities for acquisition through different kinds of practice (that is, if we assume that if SS get enough practice, they will acquire a certain grammar point, instead of presuming that acquisition does not take place immediately after learning or in a linear way).

     Another important point has to do with the kind of learners there are in my class: age, occupation, and reasons for wanting to learn English as a foreign language (which is very different from L2).

     So I prefer to see myself as an eclectic kind of facilitator rather than a person incapable of accepting new teaching trends, as long as I am able to adapt them to my own needs and those of my students.

     Miguel Gutierrez

After reading the information about the three models I still think that my lesson follows the principles of PPP. I sometimes use a little TBL, but most of my lesson is PPP. I always use a context in an through which I present the topic. This stage is always followed by activities that make students practice in order to integrate their previous knowledge as well as the new language which has just been presented. After that, the grammar structure is explained (students usually ask for an explicit grammar rule). I provide the explanation by asking them to say what new language features they have found in the previous activities and the way the have found these features work as well as the kind of ideas they can express.

Task based language teaching constitutes a strong version of CLT, but it’s not the only way to achieve a strong version of CLT. TBLT appears to blur the traditional distinction between syllabus and methodology because this distinction underlines the weak version of CLT.  TBLT involves an integrated set of processes involving the specification of both “what” and “how”, the most important is how the students will learn.

Designing a task-based curriculum involves making decisions about what task learners will do and the order in which they will perform these tasks. According to Skehan, the procedures for teaching each task can be organized in pre-task, during-task and after-task.

One of the earliest proposals for task-based teaching is the humanistic language teaching, this approach encourage the learners to recognize their feelings and put them to use by caring for and sharing with others, in order to increase their self-esteem and their motivation to learn, the second one is the procedural syllabus, this consist in meaning-focused activities that require the students understand, convey and extend meaning and the attention to language form is incidental, the third approach is the process syllabus performed by Been and Candlin, here the process syllabus is negotiated between the teacher and the students, i.e. curriculum, plan procedures. Here there isn’t  a priori syllabus, the syllabus is constructed as the course is taught.

CLT is influenced by pragmatics and discourse analysis and it is primarily concerned with functions, communication and fluency.  TBL has to do with second language acquisition and it is clear about procedures and materials.  It relies on students rehearsing the given tasks.  In this approach the students take an active role in carrying out the task.  They have to select and organize the verbal and non verbal elements in order to perform the task with the guide of the teacher.  The definition that attracted my attention was the following:

Nunan sees TBL as providing meaningful teaching and learning activities tht engage learners in purposeful communication.

     Hello everybody.

     Rather than commenting on each one's 'task', as I've read the through summaries, This has made me reflect on the TBL Framework.

     I find TBL teaching very interesting and at the same time, if not very challenging, perhaps a little too demanding in terms of the types of classes we teach (groups of students, textbooks, schedule, syllabus,...), even though right now the new trend is  texbooks to be based on this kind of framewok, at least to some extent (e.g. New Cutting Edge).

     On the other hand, I was surprised to learn about what is said in relation to the task Cycle (Marie Cecilia): That in the end, the TBL framework seems to fall back on Form.That's not what happens if you learn a language in an informal fashion. ¿Why do they do that? ¿Does this really facilitate language acquisition? I will have to read about it more in depth.

    Maybe, with the experience and knowledge we have, we should design an approach to learning English in a way that we really cater for our learners' learners needs. It could be somtehing in between PPP and TBL teaching. ¿What do you think?

     Miguel Gutierrez

Hi Luz and Thelma

This is a question for your team (2). In my team (3) we had to do the presentation on  Language Focus, and  in this stage, the role of the teacher chabges from monitor or guide to real teacher. This is the stage in which teachers explain and help students with grammar, pronunciation, vocabulary, etc. The task cycle is divided in 3 major sections, do you consider the teaching or correction of pronunciation is an important aspect during the task cycle?

Greetings

Luis

Hi, Marie Cecilia

     I

Activity 2.9

MY EXPERIENCE PLANNING A TBL LESSON

     This time I prefer to answer the questions one by one.

1.-How did you feel using this model?

 Very bad.  I have realized that teaching experience does help to plan and teach a class, but in my case, too much experience may make you stiff and close minded in terms of new teaching trends.

2.- Were there any problems during the planning?

A lot. Besides what I have mentioned before, I didn’t have enough time to read (apart my peers’ summaries) about TBL teaching more in depth. Therefore, it was extremely difficult for me to develop my Lesson Plan. In fact, it took me days until I could finally come up with something  ‘decent’ last night and very early this morning.

So one of the problems I had was to adapt the Model to a very basic level of English (In the end,  after many tries, I chose to do my Lesson Plan based on a ‘simple’ grammar point), particularly the report part.

3.- What advantages / disadvantages do you identify for teachers and learners?

A lot. One of them is the independence learners gain, compelling the teacher to act merely as an advisor, a monitor and a facilitator.

Also, T. becomes more aware of the painstaking procedures to deal with in terms of the handling of the different activities in a textbook.

On the other hand, I think this approach is a very good try to help out students to learn a language

In  a less rigid fashion.

A drawback could be the time spent preparing a class like that, as well as the time devoted to perform all the tasks and activities.

Miguel Gutierrez

Hi dear classmates. I have just finished my lesson plan.

At first I had the idea about how to make it, then I found it fifficult to write on a piece of paper my ideas clearly. I think beacuse I am a baby in doing so. I am not used to this approach. Honestly I was glued to the format the teacher gave us and also I realized that !I do not like planning!

But well I am here because I pretend to learn and I need to make an effort in doing so.

So see you next.

                        Good night.

• How did you feel using this model?

At the beginning I thought that planning a lesson using a different approach was going to be very hard since I believed I was completely used to teaching in another way, but while working on it I found out that it was easier than I had thought because I realized that actually I include a lot of TBLT in my regular lessons.

• Were there any problems during the planning?

I got some problems at the very beginning when I had to decide what teaching topic I was going to plan and when I had to write the main objectives.

• What advantages/disadvantages do you identify for teachers and learners?

I think that having students involved in a task encourages them to be responsible of their own learning and to realize that learning is a creative process. It also helps them become self-dependent. On the other hand, I find that using TBLT can be frustrating when the formal evaluation is given since institutional exams are not always designed under the principles of this approach.

Thelma C. López-Speziale

All the definitions I got from my colleagues mentioned the following two characteristics:

      A task is an activity

      It has a goal, an objective or a purpose

Thelma

I inteviewed four teachers and they though a Tak is an activity , it is a situation in wich the students have to solve  a problem through language.

One of the teacher told me that this kind of approach need  very motivated students to learn the Target language and this make me think about my students.

What do they need the language for? Only because it is a requirement?

Do they have the correct motivation to learn?

               What do you think about?

      These are the answers I got:

     A task is an activity that includes various steps  or interrelated activities to get to the objective. An Activity students have to do usually with an objective, in these activities they have to use the language to communicate. They have to think of a function to perform the task. Something  students have to accomplish within the course and /or the class.

 It was very challenging for me to start with a new aproach.  Nevertheless the results were satisfactory.  I think learners work harder but they also learn more.

The role of the teacher at this stage is to observe and to make corrections.

A disadvantage for teachers is that you have to plan the task carefully and that keeps you busier as you have to spend a long time to prepare it.       Alicia López Yáñez

• How did you feel using this model?

• Were there any problems during the planning?

• What advantages/disadvantages do you identify for teachers and learners?

Actually, I had, without noiticing, used a TBL approach  in diferent ocassions through my academic life. I have found this kind of approach, many times, succesful and meaningful for my students who have shown a big range of reactions including that one related with the motivation to produce for the first ever.

I guess, I didn´t have any problem with this kind of approach which happen to be rather familiar to me. The only problem which is one of the most frequent with lesson planning is not having enough time, not fulfilling all the set of tasks and unexpected events on the way.

I consider that the only disadvantage of rigorous TBL is the lacking of grammar explanation, but it can be strenghten up with extra and specific grammar teaching. I would say, sometimes, eclectic offers solution.

What is your position on the debate

Are you for or against the motion?

Well, first af all I think that  through either tasks or exercises I learned the target language.

And I think that my students have also learned it.

At the beginning of this module I could not distinguish between task or exercise. I thought it was the same for me. But now I have notice that tasks involve almost the whole process of a natural communicative act. Meanwhile exercises are reduced on a structure level. So I have realized that tasks are not exercises.

I argue in favor of Martin Bygate. He defines well the concept of task and exercise.

I his opinion tasks are very well planned workplans in wich learners "use language pragmatically and strategically in order to achieve a non- linguistic outcome".

On the other hand Guy Cook agues that taks are only exercises. I think that it is a poor vision of what a task is. Because tasks involves more elements and planning a lesson through tasks is a very hard work and teachers should learn how to do it.

A C T I V I T Y    3 . 6

     It’s been difficult for me to deal with the concept underlying TBL teaching and to understand the difference between task and exercise (now there seems to be another  difference, this time between task exercise and activity).

     However, according to what I have read (and understood) about it recently, there is an explicit difference (or rather differences) in relation to the concept(s)/theory between a task and an exercise.

    Classroom tasks have to do with real life activities: those SS. will do outside the classroom and those they won’t. Nevertheless, I think what matters in this case is the meaning focused use of language, of everyday language. In other words, what is important is the interactional authenticity brought about.

     Now, it is true that trying to implement tasks in English as a foreign language teaching (artificial environment) is something very difficult to achieve (specially at very basic levels), but still, throughout my career I have done it  with some success, and of course, in terms of meaning focused outcomes.

     Therefore, based on my experience, in spite of the fact that such tasks are carried out inside the classroom (most of them), if we really assume that they resemble real world language, then we both, the facilitator and the learner are compelled to communicate between each other in the target language.

     On the other hand, the aim of an exercise has to do with form rather than meaning, or as Widdowson says, with the part of the language corresponding to semantic meaning.  I do see tasks and exercises, as it is stated in the Brighton 2003 Conference Selections paper, on a continuum, but they are two very distinctive things.

     Still there is the question in my case related to when to implement one or the other and why if we bear in mind the fact that learners do not master a piece of language immediately after it has been taught, what is the purpose of an exercise? Maybe form is part of the bridge learners have to over to get to meaning. When is it appropriate for them to get across?  

       Miguel Gutierrez 

I think that tasks and exercises are not opposite, but complimentary aspects of the same activity.  It is not possible to talk about pure tasks and pure exercises (if we accept the definition of tasks as "focus on meaning" and exercises as "focus on form"). It is true that solving a task implies creative skills, but it also implies the selection of the most appropriate linguistic form- which is a creative process too - in order to express and communicate the conclusion (meaning) of the task as clearly and precisely as possible since speakers have the intention of communicating their ideas in such a way that they can be understood the way they want them to be understood. Meaning and Form are not separated from each other.

On the other hand, I find several reasons why tasks are not explicitly used by most of the teachers:

  1. Most teachers don't know how to use them,

  2. the syllabus does not include them (if there is any syllabus in the Language Center),

  3. the textbook does not include them,

  4. the institution (the Language Center) needs to have students graded in numbers in order to have them pass to the following level or repeat the level; tasks are not easiest way to assign students a grade (a number),

  5. there is no interest in learning how to teach using tasks because a change might question an already comfortable position.

Dear Thelma,

Your exercise-task transformation was clear and easy to follow. It shows us how small changes can result in big differences and how we don’t have to struggle too much to create tasks. There are two details in your work that were crucial, the information gap you created in the task transformation (different maps) and the fact of turning it into a telephone conversation. Good work!

Maria Elena

Dear Miguel,

You worked much harder than you had to for this activity, you ended up planning a second TBL lesson. But I am glad you have enjoyed it.

As I read your lesson plan and attached materials I identified 3 exercise-task transformations. In spite of the fact that you are working with an "already considered task-based" textbook your lesson plan shows us that there are exercises that can still be implemented in a more meaningful, motivating way. The three transformations I identified made me notice you were really involved in your lesson planning and using your creativity to transform exercises. That is great!

1. The task of planning the fanciest lunch menus and exhibiting them in the classroom walls seems much more motivating than the original exercise in the textbook.
2. Having the students make up a joke for each of the pictures before listening to the original ones also sounds great! I think students may even come up with much funnier jokes and as you said it, the language they will use will be completely unpredictable, they might not even use "there is-there are". The task does not end here; you also ask them to act out the joke! And choose the best one. That's going to be real fun!
3. The "raising awareness" task you include where students re-write the jokes changing the noun from singular to plural is also very original.

In relation to your comment where you say it might be too much time for a simple structure like "there is-there are" I want to make you aware of the use of "countable and uncountable nouns" which accompany this structure in your textbook. This makes the teaching point much harder than you think. If you add the unpredicted vocabulary and language that will come up from your task performances to this I think time will be just enough.

It's really gratifying to see you so involved in the development of your TBL teaching skills. I am sure your teaching skills are improving and your students will benefit from it. Did you notice that now all the written practice exercises were assigned for homework and there was more fun and interaction in class? I know the lesson which follows this planning might start with the language focus but it will surely be more meaningful for students. Well done!

Maria Elena

Well, I think that if learners don't know what to do with the task is because we, as teachers, haven't explained them accurately what to do, this is my  point of view.

I  agree that if students don't have enough English they just will make up words and that's not the point and we can't correct every Spanglish word they produce, so I think it is better students have a wider knowledge of English to start working with tasks, maybe low intermediate.

I really don't know if learners will or won't like working focused on tasks, I have never used them, the only way to know if they will like them is to use them in our classes.

I agree that when students are working they start talking about other things and in Spanish, you – as a teacher – can't be with all the groups at the same time, so when you go checking to other group you lose the control of the former one, in fact it has happened to me when studying French the teacher leaves us  and we start whispering in Spanish.

Our students are used to learning in a conventional way but I think they are flexible and we can lead them in another way of learning.

I agree with the idea that students need a teacher in front of them and I don't know how they will take the idea about getting all the responsibility of their learning, I think they could think we are lazy because they are doing our job and that could affect us because of the CAD, that is a tool where students grade the teacher's performance along the year and that could be bad for us. What do you think?

I really agree that students like to have content written in their notebooks, in fact I have read and I like Van Pattern's ideas, he says that there is a sequence we have to follow in other to learn another language and according to him the input must be before the output, I mean the form must be taught first and then the meaning, that has to be focused in the previous form.

Another thing that could be true is that learners can take too long time to understand and too little time to perform, in my case I just have 50-minute classes, I don't agree about students don't following instructions I think they really do.

On the other hand I have realized that tasks can be a really good way for students to use the language in context and in a natural way, and exercises just give students forms to produce a particular meaning.

The only thing that I can add is that I have never implemented tasks as they are explained in all the paper work given to us, so I can't say that I am for or against the motion, I have to use it to have an experience and then give my point of view so I am seriously thinking about including them next year, maybe just in one group and evaluate the results along the scholar year. I really would like to try to practice this new theory and know if all the barriers said by the authors can or can't be avoided.

1.      What made you decide to use TBLT in your courses?

2.      How long have you used TBLT?

3.      In what levels have you used TBLT?

4.      Is TBLT supported by the Language Center you work for? If yes, explain how.

5.      What problems have you faced?

6.      What benefits have you had?

Thelma

      We ha ve many questions by now. Mine are these:

      Do  adult students feel they are learning when working with tasks?

      Do they accept working with tasks instead of working in a traditional way?

      What is the most difficult part when an ordinary teacher is designing tasks?

      When reteaching is necessary, in what stage ( of the framework) should we focus   on? Where do we start over again?

       Is it easy to design tasks for true beginners?

       We know that when working with tasks we focus on the processes (learning, cognitive, group) and meaning, but when dealing with ordinary groups  at school, outcomes (grades and numbers ) are important. What can you tell us about this?  

      What kind of exam or evaluation process should we do when teaching and learning with tasks? Can you give us some samples or examples?

          Greetings,

           Ana

Hi

I think that the transformation you did to the activity was really good since ss have to interact more and do something real with the input from the vocabulary activity in the book. Congratulations.

Luis

Dear all,

Your questions in this forum are really interesting and they give me an idea of your worries and probably hesitations about using TBLT. When I was designing this unit I was about to cancel this activity but your participation has shown me it was worth keeping it. Thanks a lot!

Some of your questions and worries will be approached in unit 5. Until then!

Maria Elena

1. Is it difficult for you to adapt or make up your material?

2. Do your students really accept the new way of learning?

3. What do you do if your students ask for explicit grammar when performing the task?

4. How do you evaluate students using tasks?

5. Is it easy for you to be creative when making up your tasks?

6. How long does it take to you to decide the task to work with?

A c t i v i t y    5 . 3

     One of the things I have learned about working as a teacher is that, as Villagarcia says, "teaching is a very complex phenomenon. Also, like any other of my colleagues, I kind of 'play by ear'(or should I say 'teach by ear'?), but not in a literal way, as when teaching we put into play all our knowledge, our expertise and our intuition as teachers in the hope we will facilitate our students' acquisition of the language.

     So in relation to TBLT, in my case, due to the amount of time I have worked as a teacher, I daresay this approach is not completely new to me in terms of the implementation of parts of it due to the fact that as I have said before, I have been 'teaching by ear' for quite a while.

     However, now that I have leaned more about it, it has become for me a very useful tool in terms of practicality and in terms of reflection.

     The TBLT framework is not the panacea for the teaching practice; it is only another means to pave the path towards reaching some of my students.

     Miguel Gutierrez

  I didn´t have the chance to apply it in my classes because they are over...... but it is useful to read what happened in your group....... in order to know how my students will react next year......... I agree with you about giving our students more input before starting the task........ maybe It could be advisiable to join Vanpatten's theories with tasks....... I think the mix will be great for our students' improvement.......

Dear Erika,

I liked the exercise just as it was but your transformation into task made it even nicer and more challenging for students. The new task has an outcome, it helps students work with more language, it is less mechanic, more meaning-focused and it promotes more interaction. Good job!

Maria Elena

Comments on Activity 4.6

Option 3: Textbook Analysis

Dear Erika,

Your textbook analysis meets most of the specified requirements: an introduction about TBL principles, specific examples from the textbook module and the author’s definition of task. Your introduction is quite complete and illustrative, you even made reference to task typology (listing, sorting and ordering, comparing, etc.), a topic I am glad you searched by yourself. However, the “Development” section in your paper (pre-task, task, planning and report, analysis, practice sections) is confusing. I do not know if what is written there comes from the textbook, from the teacher’s manual or, is it your personal planning? Rather than writing all the procedures I would have expected you to describe the sections in the textbook module and to say if you had identified the sections of the TBL framework you talked about in your introduction. If so, are they in the order Willis suggests?

In your analysis I would have also expected you to identify any of the kind of tasks you described in your introduction.

Something crucial in the textbook module description would have been to point out if the module objectives are presented in terms of tasks. If so, what was the task for the module you analyzed? Was it interviewing each other to complete a fact file? I infer so because of the task section in the “development” stage but it is not specified anywhere else. On the contrary, at the beginning of the “development” section it says “The students learnt in this Module (Question form/Simple Present).

When you mention the author definition of task, shouldn’t that be in quotation marks? Did the author use the word “task” or did you infer the definition? In any of both cases, does that definition match what we learned through the course?

To sum up, I think it would have been advisable to have a “Textbook Description” section and then an “Analysis” section of what you had just described.

Finally, the most important section in your paper, the “conclusion” is reduced to a few statements which are not supported. E.g.

• “this book is coherent with its objectives and samples of tasks” = why? how? Which objectives, the question forms and simple present? Are those tasks?

• “this book covers all the components of the TBL framework” = were the included sections in the “development stage” taken from the textbook? are they presented in the textbook with the same name and in the same order? Do you identify any additional section?

A textbook analysis is a complex task to do, especially if you have not used it before. Many textbooks claim to be in the cutting edge of language teaching but they aren’t. I am not saying “Cutting Edge” is not a task-based textbook neither am I saying it is. I met Peter Moore here at CELE when he presented this textbook and he said he had to present his textbook as a TBL one because of marketing reasons. His editors wanted to sell a task-based textbook. From my experience using this textbook I know there is much to recover and that it has lots of TBL features but giving you my opinion without any support would be unfair.

Keep TBL principles in mind, see what textbooks have to offer, consider your course objectives and your students’ needs and plan your teaching around tasks. I am sure you have now better basis to explore your teaching and make your own conclusions.

Maria Elena

Hi

I really like the way you presented your analysis on the textbook, in fact, I analysed the same textbook because that's the one we are using at CELE, but i haven't ever used it in a class. i have to agrre with Maria Elene, your conclussion was too short and I personally don't think this textbook is 100% TBLT. The first 4 pages of each module are just precticing exercises (grammar or vocabulary), they are not pre-tasks activities, but I consider the tasks as real tasks. I also pointed out in my article that the book does not follow the principles of TBL as the grammar or structure analysis is before the task, that is to say, that the author somehow manipulates the language stuedents are to use during the task, and that makes the task unnatural. To sum up, I found your article very complete. Congratulations.

Luis

Dear Luis,

You analysis is very interesting both for its content and conclusion. However, it is also confusing and poorly supported at some points. As you will notice in the inserted comments to your paper, you assumed the reader (myself) knows what you are talking about. A book and module descriptions before the analysis would have made things much clearer.

The instructions for this activity specify you should also include a theoretical framework on TBLT and specific examples to support your analysis. The theoretical framework is missing and examples are necessary on many of the statements you include in your paper. As I am familiar with TBL principles I was able to understand your analysis but I don’t think it would be clear for anyone who is not familiar with TBL.

I read your analysis through your eyes and TBL perspective. However, the fact of having the grammar and practice stages before the task made change the perspective and I found it much closer to a PPP model.

The PPP model always starts with a contextualization. Otherwise, it would not be Communicative Language Teaching. Therefore, ignoring the name of “tasks” used to label the activities in the textbook, the whole module approach can be identified as a PPP model:

• Contextualization: vocabulary, listening and speaking activities

• Presentation: Grammar focus on “infinitive” ys. “ing”

• Practice: Section with the same name in the textbook

• Production: The task

As you can see, a serious and deeper analysis of Cutting Edge would be extremely interesting, beneficial and enriching for the English Department. The instructions for this activity also ask the teacher to talk about his/her personal experience using that textbook and to say something about the students’ response. This is also missing in your paper. But it would be an excellent opportunity to share experiences in the English Department.

So, I think you have now enough bases to carry out a deeper and more supported analysis of Cutting Edge. Maybe because of lack of time you did not do the analysis the way you would have wanted to. But I think it is worth doing it in the near future especially considering the benefits for the English Department. Think about it, we could probably organize a workshop.

Maria Elena

PS.

You will get the original document with comments by e-mail

Dear all,

What interesting things you all said in the “meet your classmates” section! I am glad we have so much in common! With children or without them, with husband or without him, with experience or without it, there is always something we can share!

I also work at CELE where I have taught English since 1986. Yes! I started when I was a “kid”. I made my first trip abroad when I was 15 years old. Since then, I became aware languages and traveling were important in my life. At present, when there is a chance to go abroad I am always ready with my suitcase. It was in my English classroom where I met my husband Milton, a Brazilian very handsome man J. I am a restless person, I can never sit without doing anything. I like challenges and new things. I love watching films and taking care of my nephews and nieces when I am asked to do so. When I want to relax I go jogging or I cook.

If I were an animal I think I would be a Squirrel or a Rabbit. Both are small but fast and with quick movements. However, I am more like an Ant hardworking and disciplined.

About the course? Well, I wish I could have included all there is to include about TBLT. When I chose this topic I really felt obliged to keep up-dated and I did not want to be a victim of fashion. But as in any other topic, there more you read about it, the more there is to learn. As teachers we always have the impression that teaching is about going over topics and content. Probably this was the greatest challenge for me as course designer, the course deals more with creating spaces for learning than with covering content. I hope it meets your expectations.

Maria Elena

Hello everybody. My name is Sylvia Fierro and I work as a teacher and coordinator at a senior high school.  I graduated as a psychologist, which I practised for several years at a school.  After moving to Cd. Victoria and having three children of my own, I wanted to stay at home in the afternoons and only work in the mornings.  At that time, educational psychologists were not common at schools in Victoria but there was an urgent need for teachers.  Having watched teachers and students in a classroom, I decided to give it a try.  This happened in 1989.  And I fell in love with teaching.  And here I am.  Trying to be up to date in this area.

I'm kind of a workaholic, so I need other things to keep my mind off my job.  I therefore took up cross-stitching which I do while my husband watches all the soccer games on weekends.  I'm not a soccer fan but this knowledge has come in handy now that I work with teenagers.  When my children were at home, I was rather up to date with singers and bands; my children are now living elsewhere, so now I have a hard time trying to bring up the lastest singers in my class.  When I name a 'famous' singer, most of the time my students look at me and believe I was born in the 1800's!!!

Why did I choose Task-Based Teaching?  Because I've heard a lot about it but I've read too little about this method.  I sometimes believe my classes are oriented at carrying out a task, but I realize sometimes that they are only carrying out an exercise.  I want to have this clear in my practice.  It sounds wonderful, having students learn something in a meaningful way, but sometimes it's hard thinking how to do this.  So here I am.

I hope to find with this module many answers.  Good luck to everybody!!!

I guess some of my teachers definitely influenced on me to be a teacher due to their dedication and enthusiasm to provide their students with the tools to learn. Besides knowing their subject thoroughly, it was possible to see their love for teaching. They were there in heart and soul.

From them, I’ve taken the interest to be updated in the subjects I teach and the methodology I use to teach them. I’m interested in the students as individuals and I try to open a canal of communication to understand their needs and motivations to learn. For me, those are the most important qualities I’ve incorporated into my teaching.

Hi, everybody

I'm happy about being part of this group. There's lots of things to discover and to share.

Please, send all your comments, questions and contributions.

Thelma

PS I'm glad to see some of you have already started using the Forum. Isn't it a wonderful way to get to know each other and to keep in touch?

This is Magda Velasco Arriaga from Victoria, Tamaulipas. I'm happy to start this new course. I really hope to learn more and to improve my teaching! I want to share with you my teaching experiences and I hope you do the same! I think this will be enriching!

Nice to meet you all!

Magda Velasco

Hello everyone!

My name is Blanca Tapia Huerta. Currently I am teaching the intercultural communication class from BA in Applied Linguistics at the university of Tamaulipas. I had taught different English levels in the last couple of years, and I had worked with teachers as a language program coordinator.

I got very interested in this module "Task based language teaching" because I love to learn by doing, and I wish my students could learn by doing something too. I got inspired by the confucian text "Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; but directly invole me, and I´ll make it my own."

It is a pleasure to work with all of you.

Cheers

Blanca

In my own experience a good teacher is someone who is a guide and a monitor thorought the studies. A good teacher motivates his or her students. Once I had a teacher who I consider to be a great teacher. Inside the classroom we were really involved in his class, we were the ones who were discussing the topics, working and learning. Outside the classroom he forced us to read a lot and he conducted certain meetings in order to provide feedback. Also he asked us to made a portfolio, and made us reflect on everything we did during the semester, and at the end I learned a lot.

Hello to you all.  My name is Catalina but most people call me Katy. I'm 31 years old, I'm married and I have 2 beautiful daughters (what can I say). I live and work in Cd. Victoria, Tamaulipas. I work in CELLAP and in a high-school. I have had the opportunity to teach all age-students and I really like it.  I started teaching when I was almost 18 years old.

I'm not a very organized person but I'm very hard-working and I like to keep moving all day long, my mom says my soul doesn't have peace because I'm always looking for something else to learn or something new to explore, that's why I decide to take this Diplomado and I don't regret it.

I'm looking forward to starting a Master's Degree but I think tat would be later.

I'm really happy to be working with all of you and I hope don't let anyone down, I'll do my best.

Thanks

Having read “The Swing” and the quotations in this unit, I’m glad to say that I have evolved from the audiolinguist method (if I ever applied it, which I think I didn’t, though I do remember seeing some of these books in my mother’s small library) to something closer to the communicative method or approach to teaching language. 

I believe that I need to present something interesting and fun to my students to get them interested in using the language (they are teenagers at a private school).  So maybe I would have to say that I am more inclined in thinking that learning a second language is more towards incidental than formal practice.  My teenagers are at school because their parents take them and maybe they are slightly aware of how a second language, specially English, will help them in their future, but this knowledge does not take the teacher too far at holding their attention for a long time.  So presenting a topic or a task which they might feel related to might just do the trick.  And there is where I think that the teacher’s flexibility lies: not all topics in the textbook are popular with my teenagers.  I must choose amongst all the exercises to fit all the styles as much as possible while at the same time keeping my students motivated.  Obviously, this must be the same problem that all teachers face. 

The notion that “learners do not necessarily learn what teachers teach” and that what they learn  must be influenced  “on the developmental stage of the learner’s interlanguage” is seen regularly in a classroom.  Some of us question why we have students at certain level when they still aren’t able to use a certain structure and sometimes it’s the student himself who tells you, “I know the structure but I don’t know how to use it”.  This is frustrating to teachers and the ‘soothing’ words “You’ll get it with practice” sometimes seem hollow.  Further proof that the idea that “what is learned can be assimilated and become an established part of the learners’ language repertoire without any lapse of time” is inaccurate.  The quote on page 3 of  “The Swing….” by Carroll and Stern  is shocking but unfortunately quite true.

So many variables go into learning a language that I sometimes feel lost.  Nowadays, many of us teachers realize that learning a language should have the ultimate goal of giving the learner the tools to communicate in this foreign language.  But communicating ultimately means producing the language and my students face the additional challenge of doing it at an age where peer pressure is tough.  For teenagers ‘taking risks’  to test hypotheses about the target patterns may be a frightening experience, so doing it amongst themselves first help them gain confidence. 

I think these views are an example of some procedures that teachers have experimented in classrooms, and I can see that some teachers nowadays continue using some of these practices. However, I can see too, that the English teaching has been enriched through the years. Now as teachers we have more tools and more experiences about how to teach a new language because we can find lots of information related to other teachers' experiences and we can take them into count in the classroom and in this way to get better results.

As I mentioned in the activity 1.1, we learn a second language by imitation and repetition. In the classroom students that are learning a new language start in the same way. They begin listening to the teacher and then they repeat what the teacher said. The students need to be exposed to a language environment to continue learning but at the same time they need to discover their own internal process.

In my own experience I have seen that some students have an intrinsic motivation that pushes them to look for more information that helps them to learn in a better way. They continue researching out of the classroom and practicing, that is important for getting involved with the language. This motivation takes them to have a good development into pair and group work in the classroom. They have a better production during communication tasks, and as a result they start having self confidence.

In the other hand, I have seen too, other cases in which as the Willis' text says, the students not always learn what teacher teaches. Some students have had problems to develop the language even though the teacher's instruction. For that reason I think that the formal instruction is not a guarantee that students will internalize the learning. In some cases students are going to succeed by only get involved in the language in an incidental teaching. The same as when they learned their mother tongue. It is going to depend on their motivation. I have seen more than one case and I really got surprised because when I was a child I thought that a new language could be learned only with a formal instruction. Now I continue getting surprised because I continue learnig new things! 

Magda Velasco A. 

How do you think a foreign language is learned?.

Working as an English teacher makes you try out different techniques, approaches and methods.

Many times you learn to teach following the guidelines given at the school  where you work. Other times you are given lesson plans with all the activities that should be done.

And what happens in your mind as a teacher? Many things except to think how students learn a language.

One is many times worried about the activities students should do to in order to reach a learning goal and teachers do not reflect on how students are learning.

Most of the time I have been teaching English following the pattern known as PPP and I try to give time to the last stage that is Production because the objective is to have the students produce freely, however it does not guarantee that students will be able to have fluent an meaningful communication outside the classroom.

I understand that learning a language  can be accomplished  by satisfying a need of communication.  The more real an activity in the classroom is the more chances  will the student have to learn a certain learning goal.  What I find difficult is to design a real communicative activity that helps students to learn.

Recently I have heard about a tendency on teaching that has to do working with tasks.

I have also heard that it is based on the communicative aspect of learning a language.

I’m positive that formal instruction is not the only resource for students to learn a language in order to communicate and create with the language. However, I do think that to correct certain structures, formal instruction is useful, the same way as it is when learning our mother tongue. Accuracy is important, in my opinion, to ensure respectability in matters of speech in society, but not during the early stages of learning the foreign language. I see the views that support that incidental and formal learning have equal influence reflect my answer about how we learn a language, because according to Selinker and Corder “…language learning (…) seems to develop independently of instruction”, but in most cases, a foreign language experience for learners happens in a classroom. The opportunities they have to be immersed in a real, natural environment surrounded by native speakers are not many, so formal instruction is their only possibility. It is then when, as Ellis says: “…the teacher has a definite role to play incidental and formal instruction by ensuring that there are adequate opportunities for meaning-focused communication to foster the acquisition of implicit knowledge and also by helping the learner to develop explicit knowledge”. The teacher must plan the class sessions so that he or she includes activities that resemble ‘real life’ or let students create their own communication, face authentic material so that students can ‘feel’ the language. A good example is, for instance, when the syllabus reads to teach spelling and numbers, instead of having a long list of nonsense words or names at random, some teachers bring to their classrooms forms for school registration or visa applications so that the language has a meaningful goal.

What is TBLT?

After I have read the two articles (Ellis and Sanchez), I can define that TBLT is an approach that focuses on communication in the classroom. This is a process in which the teacher looks for tasks that help the student to communicate and internalize the learning in a meaningful way. The teacher needs to know what his students' interests and motivation are and in this way design different activities that help them to communicate with others to solve problems, negotiate and interchange information or reactions. These kinds of tasks are going to help students to produce the target language and interact with partners.

The objective of these tasks is to give students the opportunity to communicate in the goal language and to crate a space in which the students feel free to express themselves, to express their needs, their preferences and their personal opinions about others.

In this way the teacher needs to ask himself about what kind of tasks are going to help students to reach the target language?, what tasks are a real goal to reach for the students? These tasks must help students to develop language learning and communicative abilities. I think this is a big challenge for us as teachers don't you think?  

Magda Velasco.

TBLT is an approach (I’d say) because it sees the language as a means to communicate in order to reach a goal, realizing functions either for tasks, simulations, or projects; that is that the language is not taught as a bunch of structures but as part of activities that convey a purpose. Therefore, for a class, teachers must plan the activities to develop in class, to create an atmosphere of real life communication,  taking into account “the students’ deep motivations, affectivity and interest since L2 learning is higher" (Rafael Sanchez Sarmiento), if these elements are involved when planning  the activities for the classroom. That way, a space for free communication is available for the students to create language.

I found the quotation interesting because in my experience (and, as the article claims), students may be reluctant to participate in taks that require not only linguistic effort but creativity and work. For this reason, the activities have contain useful material, atmospheres students may feel familiar and practical so that they can transform something.

What about TBLT? How can you describe it?

To begin talking about TBL, we should ,first of all comment on what is CLT (communicative language teaching). CLT is based on a functional model of language and a theory of communicative competence. Following this approach , teaching is directed at USE, the ability to use language meaningfully and appropriately to construct discourse.

According to CLT students discover the system of language in the process of learning how to communicate. Students are given opportunities to see how language is used in communication.

TBLT is based on the principles of CLT, here   tasks are used as a means of enabling students to learn a language experiencing it.

Tasks are necessary for learning a FL.

We could consider two types of TBLT.

1-     Weak version that is based on PPP teaching,. how ever, learning with this approach has been a lot criticized since language is seen as series of products.

2-      Strong version , based on tasks, which function as a device for planning a communicative curriculum.

The teacher is the one that designs the tasks, but it is not only doing that. He also has to specify what the objective of the task is and how the it is reached.

Solving a task could be divided in pre task, during task and after task.

When students work together to reach a goal solving a task , more attention is paid to meaning than  to accuracy.

In short I see TBLT as a way to enable students learn a language, solving tasks that the teacher previously designed in which students will experience how language functions.  They have to have clear objectives and the teacher must also guide students to select their strategies to solve such a task..

Analysis:  The four  teachers who I approached explained a task as students doing something.  The purpose differs: one states it’s an activity similar to real live, while another understands it as a procedure (“working in pairs to discuss a topic”) and the third equals a task to an investigation related to the target, for which she asks the source of the learners research.  A fourth teacher had no idea what a task was, so I asked yet another teacher who stated that she understood a task as an activity in which she participates at the end giving students feedback on form.

I will start by saying that it is a difficult question, and thus there are no easy answers to it. After reading the two texts (Questions of Definitions.... and Tasks in SLA and Language Pedagogy) I am a little confused and I´m still not sure of the answer. By the way, both texts were very interesting, especially the first one. However, in this text I noticed that some of the participants refer to TBL as an approach, others as a method, an some others as a methodology. ???? However, the general discussion and the different opinions on TBL and PPP is thought-provoking. I´m not that familiar with TBL but I was wondering that it has the same components, but in a different order (practice, production and presentation). As they say in the text, the key is finding the balance. I think that for some students (reflective ones for example) PPP might work better, while for some others (active ones) TBL might be more suitable.

I think in order to answer this question, (What is TBL?) we would first have to clarify wether we are referring to task-supported learning or to task-based learning. From my perspective (but I don´t know if I am right) I think the former has more to do with a technique, while the latter can be considered as an approach. What I mean, is that when you use tasks among many other types of exercises and activities in a course you are using a different way of doing things (how you do it- the technique you use). When you use a task-based approach, you use tasks throughout the course because you believe that by doing, and by participating in meaningful and realistic situations is how students will learn the language. This not only has to do with how they learn, but also with why they learn that way, which has more to do with an approach to teaching. I think it was in Ellis´text where they say that while CLT is based on language use, TBL is based on SLA, so it has more theoretical underpinning on how we learn a language and so why should we "teach" it that way.

Idon´t know if we could consider TBL as a method, since although it has an approach to language teaching and certain procedures to follow -different stages to do the task-it doesn´t have a fixed curriculum to follow. It arises from students´needs and interests.

I´m still confused!!!

 What do you think?

I asked four CELLAP teachers and in conclusion all of them mentioned that :

1. A task is an activity or work  with an specific purpose.

2. Students should do it by themselves, so it should be provided with clear instructions, a deadline and teacher should monitor students' progress.

3. It was also mentioned that with a task the teacher can confirm if a topic was understood or not, so it can be used as a assessment tool.

I asked four of my colleagues at CELE what a task is and these were their answers:

1. Something with a beginning and an end that includes one or more activities to accomplish a specific goal or goals, that can be done individually or with others (depending on what it is) involves an element of planning and can be evaluated to see if, or to what extent, the task was completed.

2. Actividad o serie de actividades a desarrollar para lograr un objetivo.

3. An activity (or set of activities) that the students have to complete in their learning process.

4. It´s an activity or activities assigned to the students about a specific topic or idea as part of the production stage. This is where the student puts what he has learned into practice. The task could be part or the class or assigned as homework. It can be done individually or in pairs.

After analyzing the definitions I noticed that all of them started by saying that it is an activity or set of activities, and then went on to define it more specifically. Two people mentioned that it can be done individually or in groups. The verbs they used to describe the action  students have to do were: complete, develop and put into practice. It´s interesting that only one person referred to the aspect of planning(although it is not clear if she is referring to the teacher or the students). The last definition was specially interesting since it seems the person sees the task as what you do in the last stage of PPP, when, from what we learned in the last unit,  task-based learning would see it the other way around (you start with the task to identify student´s flaws and then present the aspects that they need)

In conclusion I would say we all have a general idea of what a task is, but not more specifically of what distinguishes it from an activity or an exercise. It surprised me that nobody mentioned that it is an outcome (although they did say goal, objective) and that it has to be meaningful.

It will be interesting to read other participations.

Having read the two articles, I would say it is still difficult to take a stand. While I was reading the section written by Cook, it all made sense to me. I agree with him that many times the different definitions of tasks are vague and even when they are very specific, you can still question if the communication taking place is "really real" and if students are not only focusing on meaning but also on form. Then when I read Bygate, his emphasis on pragmatic and strategic use as defining characteristics of tasks was convincing.

Ellis´ text seemed very clear in making the difference between tasks and exercises, especially when he says that the key point is whether linguistic skills are viewed as developing through communicative activity or as a prerequisite for engaging in it. I think that when and how you present an activity makes it either an exercise or a task. For example, in my own experience I think I have used some tasks as exercises, since I saw them as an activity where students could practice a certain structure in a less-controlled way. Even though the emphasis was on meaning, I saw it as practice, and I didn´t think of the incidental learning that could take place while they did it.  Now, I think I am more aware of the difference between exercises and tasks (pragmatic meaning, language users, incidental learning, focused on meaning, etc.)

In conclusion, I would say that making the difference between exercises and tasks is important, and it not only has to do with its design but also with its implementation (the rationale behind doing it a certain way, in a certain moment).

So far, I’d say that I see more clearly that there is a difference between a task and an exercise, taking into account that the former “calls for primarily meaning-focused language use” while the latter “calls for primarily form-focused language use”.  I see the distinction between a task, whose aim is handling what Widdowson calls ‘pragmatic meaning’, and an exercise, in which students do need to “find the linguistic forms to explain” whatever they are asked to.But I guess an exercise is mainly grammar structure (or lexical) practice, although students have to work on the forms, they are guided on how to fulfill the activity, resulting on a restriction to create or negotiate meaning to achieve communication; here students just follow what they are told to.

Thinking of that, I remembered that many times, when asking students to ask and answer questions in pairs (expecting them to use the recent grammar point studied in class), I found that they used whatever worked for them to convey meaning. For instance, when I taught my students how to ask basic personal questions, I paid special attention to the expression ‘what do you do?’ to find someone’s occupation, when I set the exercise -what I thought was an exercise (filling a form with a classmate's personal information),  students went back to ‘what’s your occupation?’…Of course, they conveyed meaning, right? So, at that time, I got kind of frustrated because I wanted them to use what I wanted (the new vocabulary and structures), but now I see that the kind of activity was a task, since they were given a form containing just titles (name, last name, occupation, age, telephone number, etc.) and were asked just to ask personal questions to find more about their classmates and fill in the form, so, the result was that they created the questions the way they thought would go through. The result: free interaction to exchange real-life communication.

Activity 2.6. Stand for a task or exercise

After reading Bygate and Ellis texts I stand for task because I think they are more complete and they lead students to develop in a better way their skills. Now I can identify better the differences between tasks that call form primarily meaning focused and exercises that call for primarily form focused. As Ellis says in his text a task requires that students function primarily as language users and the exercise as learners.

Something that calls my attention is the example that Ellis describes in his text about making an airline reservation, in this example it is clear for me the difference because in this task the use of language is deeper than in an exercise could be. In this case for making a reservation the use of language involves different tenses and structures so the student is acting as language user.

I think it is a great example about the difference between tasks and exercises and I think that could be a good guideline to us, don’t you think?

Magda Velasco

I agree with the fact that according to the kind of practice we want our students to have, we are going to choose between a task or an exercise. I also think that these two wonderful tools shouldn't be taken apart they should be used as a complement one to the other. Why? Well, sometimes it's necessary that students practice a specific skill or structure to reinforce and get a good understanding of it, and in some others they need to find out how to produce language focused in meaning, say what they want to say in the best way they can do it.

Dear colleagues,

Now we all can tell that we are reading the given texts about TBLT.  I must confess that at the beginning it was very difficult for me to understand the concepts but with a little effort I think we all can do it.  I agree with all of you saying that TBLT is based in students interests and needs and that it is focused on purposeful communication.

Dear teachers,

I think task not only refer to the process but also to the outcome.  The only thing that Im concerned about is when Ellis declares that the discussions around the definitions of tasks reflect a general decontextualized view of what a task is. Also Bygate,Skehan and Swain suggest that definitons of task will need to differ according to the purposes for which tasks are used. Then what happens with the definitions that we have already read.

I think it is a good idea, and this will really help students to interact between each other and also they will have to decide about different items just to pcik two which will take them to a negotiation phase, I like that in activities, because when they want to express they opinion they really start using all the vacabulaty they can or they start asking for new in order of expressing what they want to say.

I think I'd try it, I don't know how it'd work, but I'll let you know.

Have a nice weekend.

Hi Maité:  Hope you are enjoying a nice long weekend.

I read the task designed and thought it was interesting.  What I missed was the aim of the task.  I understand that you expect learners to use adjectives, determiners, future tenses and expressions of agreement and disagreement.  I believe it’s supposed to bring out spontaneous language but I still would like to know if it was part of a set program.  It seems to be excellent material for a conversation class.  When I was reading it, I started thinking what kind of structure your learners would come up with and thought that I could maybe use it if I were trying to have them use first and second conditional statements, as they are required to use it when explaining why they chose the items they chose.

Hi, Magdalena,

I like the way you redesigned the activity and make it a task. However, I wonder, when you say 'students act out the dialogue', do you mean they are going to memorize it? read it? or say it spontaneously (taking into account that they have already worked on it)?

Hi Betty! I already received your task and I think it is very interesting. I have worked with my students this topic but I think that the way you say in your activity is another good idea to do it. I think that students like to talk about their family and share with their partners something about what some of the members do. This is a good opportunity to do it and to learn at the same time. I think it is important to motivate students to communicate each other giving them tools to do it in an easier way and I think with this task you are doing it because as you say this activity motivates them to talk and share with their partners’ information that they already know.

You did a great job!

Magda Velasco

Dear Beatriz,

Your students' outcomes in the photos show they really enjoyed the task and they surely recycled and enjoyed their learning more thanks to your creativity. That's great!

Your students' outcomes in the photos show they really enjoyed the task and they surely recycled and enjoyed their learning more thanks to your creativity. That's great!

Your students' outcomes in the photos show they really enjoyed the task and they surely recycled and enjoyed their learning more thanks to your creativity. That's great!

Not having access to the book unit you are talking about makes it is hard to understand the context for the specific exercise you chose. To me, it seemed as an introduction to something larger.

Anyway, your exercise transformation added the "information gap" and the "choice of language" elements, both characteristics of free communicative activities.

As post-task activity you suggest having students talk about what they found interesting. I would suggest talking about the linguistic problems they went through when introducing their families too (language focus).

An idea!! What about making the task more challenging by having students draw their peers' family tree based on what the person introducing the family says? In a second task stage students could use this family tree and take turns to introduce their partners' family.

Keep on designing and transforming tasks! You are doing well!

Maria Elena

Maria Elena

Dear Magda,

You got a very similar exercise to the one included in Rooney’s article. However, I must confess I was surprised at the transformation you made of it. I found the planning time for questions especially relevant.

You are gaining experience in transforming exercises into tasks. Although Ellis does not include “a problem to solve” as part of his task criterial features, other authors do. I have added it to Ellis’ features and I think it really makes task performance more interesting. Try adding this “problem to solve” to your task. Consider Rooney’s suggestions of a competition between sellers and customers or add one of your own.

Good luck!

Maria Elena

Hi Sylvia,

I found your task motivating and appropriate to your students and their context. I´m sure they will have a good time "arguing and persuading" their "English parents". I especially liked the last part where you asked them to talk about the hardest parent or the funniest promises and arguments. I think this is a very nice wrap-up in which all the group can share something about what happened in the previous phase of the activity. I would like to try this activity with a group. I´m sure, besides being fun, it can give them a lot of practice as language users in a meaningful situation.

Thinking about the grammar lessons I normally teach, what I usually do is present a topic to the whole group which I hope is meaningful for them.  Therefore the whole group participates giving ideas and / or vocabulary related to the topic.  If it’s a grammar structure I wish to introduce, I tend to write on the board several examples based on what they give me.  If I had to name this phase, I would say it’s a pre-task, but at the same time I could also call it ‘presentation’

Then I usually ask them to carry out a similar activity or task in pairs or groups and I try not to involve myself too much in what they are trying to accomplish.  I expect them to produce the language following the examples which are written on the board.  I can’t make up my mind as to call this phase ‘production’ or ‘task’ or ‘producing while carrying out the task’

Once they have finished the task, I tend to ask them to report to me what they produced highlighting mistakes in form while at the same time showing interest in their production.

So I believe it falls more to the PPP and pre-task/task cycle/language focus model than it does to the TestTeachTest model. 

Making it fit into one category is giving me the creeps!

Hi guys!!

I have been teaching English for some time and since then (some years ago) I was tald that first there should be a contextualization, grammar explanation, though this stage could be modified, then a stage of practice and finally a stage of production.

I did not know but I was using some kind of PPP, though I was not applying the model of teaching  I use now.

I am currently more focused on the PPP since it is the model that is better known and more accepted in one of the places where I am working.

Personally I fell very comfortable using this model of teaching, however recently I started to feel that this model  is not giving the results I wish I could get.

I have received a lot of influence from everywhere and I feel I need to concentrate more on approaches like TBLT.  PPP is a good method but I think there are ways to get better results in the classroom.

Teacher Gonz…  (Gonzalo Hernández)

After the analysis of my lesson I think it fits in the PPP model because it has a presentation, a practice and a production stage. In the beginning of the lesson I present the topic (simple present tense with third person) saying different examples of actions a third person does, remarking the “s” in the verbs. I wrote these examples on the board. I think this is the presentation stage. In the second stage (practice) I asked students to say a sentence aloud about their parents’ routines or daily activities using some flashcards of verbs as help. In the next stage (the production) I asked students to form teams and I gave them a quiz with some sentences in disorder. I asked them to order the sentences and rewrite them correctly. Next I said a name of a student and asked him to read the first example and write it on the board. In this way they had the opportunity to check their answers. I think my lesson objective was reached because they finished the activities in a correct way, their answers were correct and when I asked them some discovery questions as what the new structure was useful I got a good answer. In my opinion the class development was very good.

My students’ reaction about this lesson recorded was good, at the beginning of the class I told them that I needed to record it because I had homework to do. They felt as movie stars and they behaved in a correct way. Well two of them were saying hello to the camera but in general it was very good.

Have a nice weekend!

Magda Velasco

I liked your activity very much.  By chance I´m covering a Unit in Mascarones about family.  I´ll try to use the task you worked with with some other changes and see if the outcome in my class is the same as yours.

Alicia Lopwez Yañez

Dear Alicia,

Your students’ profile is very interesting and you are surely sensitive to their needs. What I would like to know more about is their English level and the context you used for this task. I don’t think the students’ first individual list of things they need for the party is the task outcome. It is more the planning stage in my opinion. The role play is a good idea especially because it allows for more practice in a large group. However, a whole class discussion about the party would be more realistic and the outcome could be a real list of things they need to get for it.

What kind of language functions, lexis or grammar do you think this task will lead you to? What kind of input are you planning to provide your students with? Both of these questions and the readings about the TBL framework you must be reading now will give you more elements to create a TBL lesson in unit 3. Keep them in mind.

Good work!

Maria Elena

I found the cartoons very funny and meaningful I want to congratulate you for that job.  However I am for the mind map which I liked a lot.  It is very clear and shows thoroughly what the task cycle is.

Alicia Lopez Yañez

Finally I sent it!!  Gosh, it's hard to plan this, either for lack of practice or/and because, as Maité says, old habits die hard.  And even though I tried real hard to side-step the grammar point which I hoped and hope to have them practise, I think I wasn't very successful at it. I did include it (among others) though, in a questionnaire which I asked my students to complete. There came a moment when I was stuck and terrified of opening my book to guide me.  I even had two plans in mind; I wrote one out and found it irrelevant as a starting point for my students, so there I went again, trying to find something significant for my 15-year-old students.  At such a short age, using 'used to....' to refer to themselves seemed meaningless.

I didn't find it so hard to state what I wanted my students to do but stating the specific objectives in such an elegant way as Maria Elena does in her own lesson plan was a challenge.  I'm not sure I will ever be able to use such a language.

As you can see, I didn't feel very comfortable doing this.

I would like to mention that an admiration for primary teachers has just developed. I cannot believe they have to make a lesson plan for every single class. I am a high-school teacher and... NO WAY... I can make 8 lesson plans a day. IMPOSSIBLE! Don´t you think that it is too much time invested in typing/writing the lesson plan, than the plan itself? Do teachers keep the lesson plan handy to follow it step by step?

Regarding the model, I had to keep the PPP lesson plan in front of me to avoid doing the same. It was so hard, but I finally did it; well, I still have to wait form Thelma´s comments and see if she agrees that it is a TBL lesson plan. ups.

I want you to know that I am going to actually work with this lesson plan next Friday. I am going to present it as an MYP Project (Middle Years Program from the International Baccaulaurate) and see how it works. I will e-mail you my rubric as there is no way I can attach it here.

I´ll keep you all posted. Wish me luck.

After I plan a lesson I feel more confident. Planning is difficult at the beginning especially when there is not enough experience,  but I think for me to have a plan is better because I think I have the possibility to give a sequence to my lesson, to follow all the steps and to have better results at the end. I think the time is used in a better way because I do not repeat any action and I can give clearer instructions during it. I can have all the materials prepared in advantage and to prevent some difficult situations.

• What advantages/disadvantages do you identify for teachers and learners?

I have felt real challenging working with a model I am not used to.

From the beginning it has been very interesting.

The plan itself has not been easy. I understand the definition of a task, I know that it has to be focused on meaning , not on form. Finding an activity that resembles real life has been kind of hard for me.

Many times some activities that seem to be tasks, end up to be exercises.

I will keep on working on this to be better at analyzing my activities.

 I certainly had some problems at the beginning, since I was “married” to the PPP.

Designing a lesson plan was a common formula.  Presentation, Practice, Production, but now I have to work on: Pre-task, Task cycle (planning, reporting, focused on language activities) and Post task activities. I find all these steps more interesting and they all need more preparation.

I believe the benefits of TBLT are very clear and important.

Students will primarily work on using the language, it is believed now that acquisition is related to oral production (Focused on meaning), students will tend to use all their resources to satisfy a need of communication. Many times students practice and practice a certain structure and they end up using structures  different from the learning goal to communicate their ideas. Using TBLT students first focus on meaning then in form. I do agree with this point of view.

There is a great advantage for teachers, most of the work, in class, is done by the students, teachers has to concentrate on hoe the students perform the activities and find the way to give accurate and punctual feed- back.

Hi everybody. I´m sorry I joined in late, but I had troubles accessing the forum from unit 4, but I tried doing it from unit 3 and it worked.

These are my questions:

1. How can teachers know in advance if a task has the appropriate level of difficulty for the group? How can we know if ss. have the linguistic elements which are necessary to perform the task successfully?

2. How can teachers make ss. aware of the linguistic points they need to work on?

3. Is tak-based learning possible, or only supported task-based learning is feasible?

4. Shall we work on language on the planning stage? How can we do it without interferring with communication?

5. Is task-based learning more suitable for adults than for teenagers?

I guess we´ll soon find out.

Maite

1. How can you time each stage?

2. How can you asses each stage?

3. Sts at Language Centers actively participate in whatever task you design as they are eager to learn. How can you get High-school sts involved if classwork is 10% their final average?

After reading all the questions from my partners, I found these questions because some I formulated were asked by somebody else.

1. How do you monitor students during a task without they feel uncomfortable, distracted or shy to participate?

2. How do you be sure the students understood the task's instructions and they will do what you asked them to do if it is a many step process?

3. How can you motivate your adult students during a task if they feel and affirm they are lack of creativity?

Dear colleagues, we loved your instrument. After working with ours and then Maite-Sylvia´s we felt we could answer it without consulting the text. However, we did go over our notes which helped us a lot. We would like to make some recommendations though. In the box of the "framework" a title or topic is missing. In the right boxes, we were surprised how each of us noted down what in our opinion was important, thus you left out in the second box to the right what innovations are "changes in beliefs or behaviours". On the third box you mention that the where "is always the product of a particular cultural, politcal..." do you mean the "socioculturally constrained problem that is not static"? Are we saying the same using different terms? It would be better to add "SLA & TBLT emerged in late 1970s and early 1980s" in the fourth box. We filled in the fifth box with a completely different statement "Adopters are well-educated, widely traveled, high-risk takers; and, innovations that are concrete and clear". And we did agree on the last box, nevertheless, we added that end-users adopt such changes if they identify with problems; as well as, "researchers work on theories".

Regarding the second task, you really got us in questions 2 and 3 where we switched the order. To have the answers handy facilitates the task.

Congratulations on such detailed work.

Regards, Alicia and Josefina

Dear Gonzalo and Magda,

You really made my day with your work in the gallery! It is just great! And it is not your technological abilities which surprise me but the time you spend in creating and organizing the content. It was really creative and original. I am sure you will be able to use it for any other kinds of innovations.

You really made my day with your work in the gallery! It is just great! And it is not your technological abilities which surprise me but the time you spend in creating and organizing the content. It was really creative and original. I am sure you will be able to use it for any other kinds of innovations.

Congratulations!

Maria Elena