of examples of correct sentence structure using the grammatical item

82- TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING: THE CASE OF EN 10 Ma. Luz C. Vilches Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines [email protected] ABSTRACT Task-b...
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TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING: THE CASE OF EN 10 Ma. Luz C. Vilches Ateneo de Manila University,

Philippines [email protected]

ABSTRACT Task-based language teaching (TBLT) is one way of translating some principles of communicative language teaching (CLT) into practice. It offers practical ways of creating a balance in classroom instruction between developing ’knowing what’ and ’knowing how’. This paper discusses how TBLT methodology is applied in EN 10—an English bridging course at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. First, it presents a background of EN 10. Then it describes the specific type of task-based approach—as influenced by ideas from the Philippines English Language Teaching (PELT) Project— that underlies EN 10. Thirdly, it describes the details of TBLT methodology application in the EN 10 course design, classroom practice and learner output. Finally, this paper presents preliminary information on some of the impact of TBLT-oriented EN 10 on the learners.

Introduction Whenever I ask teacher training participants in the Philippines how they taught English in the schools, their answers usually form a pattern of description of classroom practice which is characterized by segments that are sequentially set as follows: introduction of a grammar rule; presentation of examples of correct sentence structure using the grammatical item in focus; sentence-level oral drills; gap-fill writing exercises; grammar test to assess students’ learning of the introduced rule. Teachers’ comments on these classroom procedures indicate that while they appreciate the rigorous adherence to grammatical form correctness, they are unhappy about the neglect of the application of grammar rule in real-life communication. Made more aware of the value of language teaching that enhances were

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language use, they then ask the question ’how does language teaching facilitate in the learner not just &dquo;knowing what&dquo; but also &dquo;knowing how&dquo;?’ One of the more commonly recommended suggestions in answer to such a question is for the teacher to use communicative language teaching (CLT) strategies (for a more detailed discussion of CLT, see, e.g., Brumfit and Johnson 1979; Littlewood 1981). Basic to CLT strategies is the concept of the ’communicative task’. In this paper, I shall illustrate how CLT strategies may be systematically exploited in a language class with a taskbased teaching methodology (for more detailed discussions of task-based methodology, see, e.g., Willis 1996; Nunan 1989; Prabhu 1987; Candlin and Murphy 1987). More specifically, I shall describe how the task-based principle in CLT has been translated into practice in EN i 0--an English bridging course for first-year university students at the Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. First, I shall present the background of EN 10 vis-A-vis the reasons for the application of task-based teaching. Second, I shall describe the elements of the task-based methodology used in EN 10---its foundation; its influence on the course syllabus design, course materials, teaching strategies, student learning processes and learner output. Finally, I shall discuss preliminary observations of the impact of this teaching approach on learner involvement and language learning. EN 10: A Background

The

undergraduate English language courses at the Ateneo de Manila University Department of English are three-track: merit (for students with advanced language proficiency); regular (for students with good and near advanced proficiency); remedial (for students with fair and barely satisfactory proficiency). EN 10 belongs to the remedial track. It is conceptually designed as an English language bridging course for those who have already been accepted into the university but whose English language proficiency needs to be brought up to a ’high satisfactory’ level, at least, so that they can cope with the academic requirements of the university in which the medium of instruction is 95 per cent English. Yearly, a third of the entire first-year population (approximately 1,400-1,600 students) in the Ateneo are registered in EN 10. These students are generally fluent both in conversational and informal written English. However, they often lapse into major linguistic inaccuracies, especially evident in their academic writing. Their essays can also improve a lot more in terms of focus, organization and coherence. In addition, they need honing especially in the

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of appropriate strategies for better reading comprehension and devel-

opment of critical thinking. Over the years, since the department formally launched this bridging in the early 1980s, it has been called several names: initially English X, then Module C, and currently EN 10-~lescriptively known as Remedial English in the early 1990s, Basic English in the late 1990s, and Introduction to College English since 2001. The latest change of name was made in an effort to lessen the stigma which students, especially those who had good scholastic records in high school, tend to associate with EN 10. EN 10 is a 6-unit non-credit course and, for EN 10 students, this is a pre-requisite for the four regular English courses required in the university core curriculum. Hence, while those on the regular track finish these four required courses within two semesters, those in EN 10 have an additional summer2 and an extra semester to complete the same. This unavoidable logistical arrangement contributes to the unease that students feel when they realize that they need to do EN 10. This situation also has consequent implications for student motivation and, in turn, teacher lesson planning to anticipate ways of addressing the issue. Over the years till 1998, EN 10 was taught using what we would call the ‘skills-oriented’ approach. The main focus was the four macro-skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Lessons revolved around activities that were meant to develop these macro-skills directly and became ends in themselves. For example, students did interview role plays as a way of practising interview skills; they also wrote descriptive paragraphs to improve their skills in portraying an atmosphere through concrete and specific (imagistic) language. While the results of this teaching method indicated considerable success based on overall assessment of students’ performance in the succeeding English courses, the EN 10 teachers continued to search for ways of further improving their approach to teaching the course and making it more personally meaningful to students. The impetus came in 1997 through the direct influence of the development in the Philipcourse

pines English Language Teaching Project. -

The PELT Project Influence

on

EN 10

From 1995 to 1999, the Ateneo Center for English Language Teaching (ACELB, in collaboration with the Institute for English Language Education at Lancaster University, managed the Philippines English Language Teaching Project. Sponsored by the UK Government, this project aimed to

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upgrade the English3 CLT proficiency of teachers in the Philippine public secondary schools.3 As a teacher training project, PELT was influenced by educational ideas that underlay its practice. One such idea was about the function of teaching as facilitating learning. In effect, PELT advocated an ELT classroom paradigm model that is learning-centered (Hutchinson and Waters 1987), process-oriented (learning as a dynamic process, cf. Allwright 1984), and comprehensive in its view of the learning process (see, e.g., habit formation in Skinner 1957; problem solving in Brunner 1966; affect in Stevick 1976; acquisition in Krashen 1982). Learning as a process was looked at in PELT as a two-tier structure where the lower level represents ’foundation-

and the upper level, ’potential-realizing’ (Waters and Vilches To 1998). actualize these ideas in CLT practice, PELT used what eventually became known in the project as the ILW Framework or the Integrating Language Work lesson planning model (see Lorenzo [I998] for more

building’

details). Adapted from the Materials Design Model (Hutchinson and Waters 1987), the ILL framework consists of four elements: input (I), contentfocus activities (CFA), language-focus activities (LFA) and task (T). Input consists of any piece of communication data that provides stimulus material for activities, topic for communication, information for processing, a new language item, and the like. Stemming from the input, content-focus activities allow students to express their understanding of the information presented as well as generate meaningful communication based on this information. Language-focus activities, on the other hand, are those that enable learners to practise the language structures, study how the language structures work and acquire the necessary language to participate in communication. The task in ILW takes on a specific identity. It does not refer to practice exercises; neither does it refer to occasional and isolated pair or group work activities in class. Rather, as a communicative task-life-like and with a specific context-it is the lesson’s culminating activity. It is an opportunity for learners to apply and display their knowledge of the content and the language in focus in the lesson. In other words, it is the learner’s achievement goal in the language lesson; hence, it is also the teacher’s primary focus in lesson planning. This means that identifying the task is a crucial element in the process; without this, any other activity in class loses direction and purpose. This being the case, the lesson is by nature, task-based. By implication it suggests that in planning a lesson, the teacher begins with



86 in mind. Then he or she tries to determine what can help the students accomplish the identified task. What ideas have to be generated that will provide them with the necessary content knowledge for the identified task? What language bits should they exploit so that they can articulate their ideas sufficiently and well? For the teacher, answering these questions would mean choosing the appropriate forms of input as well as content and language focus activities that will prepare the students adequately for the execution of the task. During the PELT Project years, some key members of the Ateneo English Department were trained in the ILW lesson planning model with a view to training other teachers to use it. In this training process, these teachers saw the usefulness of the model for their own teaching purposes. On the basis of even preliminary but deemed successful experiments in their classrooms, some of them thought that perhaps this task-based model could be an answer to the need to improve the teaching methodology for EN 10 and other English courses. Hence, in 1997, the first small group workshop on task-based language teaching using the PELT ILW model took place among EN 10 teachers. The entire year was also characterized by intensive work on the EN 10 textbook.4 Teachers worked in groups to design the ILW lesson for each of what had been decided to be the four major EN 10 tasks. Doing so gave them a better grasp of the ILW concept and its implications for classroom teaching delivery. Having traced the roots of EN I O’s task-based approach, let me now discuss the course itself: its syllabus design, the materials used, the teaching methodology and corresponding student response. I shall discuss these in relation to the tasks. A lot of what goes into my description of the course has come from my personal experience of teaching EN 10 as well as from the experience shared by other EN 10 teachers during periodic discussions of course work. a task

Profiling EN 10 The Foreword to the EN 10 textbook, Tasks for Freshman English spells out the general thrust of the course: to allow students ’to look at real-world uses of English while developing and improving their skills in the four areas of communication in a second language’-listening, speaking, reading, writing. In addition, it stresses that the course ’prepares the students to get into the mainstream of college English and, later, the demands of using English for academic purposes’. To actualize this purpose, the EN 10 syl-

87

labus requires the students to do four major tasks sustained by a common theme. On its first year of implementation, the syllabus had ecotourism for its theme. In this paper, I shall discuss the implementation of the syllabus that used the ecotourism theme. The four major tasks-making a print ad, a brochure, a travel magazine and a travel guide--comprise the major units of the course. Each unit-with a time allotment of approximately three to four weeks of class hours-has its own sets of input, content-focus and language-focus activities building up toward the task. All the task outputs are written; the last one includes a formal oral presentation component as well. The tasks are arranged in the order of complexity both in terms of content and language requirements and allow for a gradual build-up in the development of students’ learning and language capabilities. All four tasks form a major basis for the summative evaluation of students’ performance-the others being the mid-term and final exams, which assess the students’ reading comprehension and writing abilities. Throughout the course, the students also receive ample ongoing feedback on their work through both individual consultations and written comments. Preliminary to Task 1 is an introduction to the dynamics of group discussion-this being the main mode of classroom interaction in EN 10. Here students learn not only appropriate group discussion gambits but also the practical aspects of listening and taking conversation turns, negotiating meaning, taking on leadership roles, arriving at a consensus and owning group decisions. These are actualized through problem-solving activities using mini-cases studies. Unit 1-The Print Ad In Unit 1, the students are brought to a critical awareness of what inhabits the world of advertisement including its linguistic devices. Focusing on the importance of words and their levels of meaning, the first part of the unit is characterized by an alternating pattern of input and content-focus activities; the activities shift towards language in the second part (see

Table 1). The first input is a collection of video clips of TV commercials from which is also derived the first content-focus activity: a discussion of the video clips that begin with identification of (1 ) the TV commercial’s target audience, (2) images suggestive of the product being advertised, (3) visual elements used, and (4) specific words used and their associations. To reinforce the discussion of these ideas, the lesson is followed by the

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second input

an essay on propaganda techniques in advertising. Reading comprehension for this is aided by a worksheet that requires the students to identify the propaganda techniques, describe these and cite appropriate examples of such techniques from their own experience of watching TV, listening to the radio, and reading newspapers and magazines. Then a pattern of input-and-language-focus activities follows, specifically calling attention to the texture and nuances of words and their effects and meanings. The exercises consist not just of sentence-level gap-fill but also of those that involve understanding meaning at the discourse level. An example is the cloze test for the AIWA print advertisement. Here the students are asked to choose from a list of words what they think would best complete the sentences from the advert text. Then, they discuss what image their choice of word combinations projects about the product being advertised and what possible effects these words have on a potential buyer of the product.

Table 1. Lesson outline for Unit 1: the print ad

89 The lesson task is a print advertisement of a product. It is meant to exploit the students’ content knowledge of advertisement and their linguistic ability to use the appropriate words and patterns that evoke their intended meaning. This task, to be more meaningful, is provided with a 8 context in a life-like situation as follows.8 Instructions: You are a group ofyoung entrepreneurs opening a business company. From the type of company assigned to you, choose one type of business from the list below. Then, come up with a name and a slogan for your new company.

Task Preparation Instructions:

Consider a product that your new company wants to market and the target audience. Follow the steps below to come up with a print ad to advertise that product.

Step

1: Think of the

image

that the advertisers

(you) want

to

give

the

product. Step 2: Think about the visual element in the advertisement. What illus-

trations/photographs would be most appropriate? Step 3: Think about the text to go with it. Exactly what would it say? What positive, emotive words could you use? Could you use any puns or figurative language to restate your message?

Step 4: Putting all your ideas together, design a complete advertisement with illustration/photograph, caption and text. On my second round of

teaching this course, I made my students do a poster essay instead. Following the same basic guidelines, I asked them to their poster essay to ‘sell an idea or a value’ in response to any social, political, economic, or cultural issue in society either at the national or international level. The culminating activity for the unit is a group presentation of students’ advertisements or posters. use

90 Unit 2-The Brochure In Unit 2 (see Table 2 for the outline), the ecotourism theme becomes more prominently introduced. The main input is a video documentary ( ‘Quiet Places’) on Philippine ecotourism. More than just some material to prepare the students for the task, this video documentary raises the students’ level of awareness of an environmental issue that impacts both local and global situations. They are challenged in their views about care for the environment and express these in the discussion that follows the video presentation. The discussion also motivates them to do a bit more research on the topic, which in turn becomes the basis for their ecotourism brochure.

Table 2. Lesson outline for Unit 2: the brochure

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Quite early on in this unit, the teacher introduces the task, precisely because it entails some research and possible visits to the place of interest whenever accessible. In my own class, I divided the students into six groups, each assigned to do an ecotourism brochure on their chosen area or province in the Philippines. The groups had to decide on specific places in their assigned province/area that they would include in the tour, especially places that applied the principles of ecotourism, whether at the initial, developing or advanced stages. Each member had to write a paragraph on one place. I encouraged the students to visit the places, talk to people, get the feel of the environment and take photographs if possible. The finished product would then consist of paragraph descriptions contributed by different members of the group. Input on ecotourism alone would, of course, not be sufficient content knowledge to help students do the task. Additionally, they need to know what brochures are like. Students are asked to bring to class a sample of a brochure. Before they are put in pairs to examine their brochures, a whole class discussion takes place. It centres around the following questions: Why are brochures made? Who reads them? What do they contain? In pairs the students then examine their brochures to answer these same questions with more specific answers. They also look at the features of the language of brochures, compare these with the language of TV, radio, print advertisements, and discuss the fit between language, content and purpose. The rest of the activities in this unit have to do with paragraph development. They sharpen students’ reading comprehension through outlining ideas. They also develop students’ writing skills in descriptive and expository paragraphs; the specific focus is on well-articulated topic sentences.

These classroom exercises are meant to serve as side helps while students engaged outside of class hours in independent research and drafting of their paragraphs for their brochure task. Their final output is marked not just by their ability to write well-focused and well-organized paragraphs but also by their creativity in formatting and designing the brochure, which they are proud to present to the rest of the class at the culmination of the unit. are

Unit 3---The Travel Magazine At mid-point in the semester, EN 10 students are expected to be ready for a longer kind of writing activity. Hence in Unit 3 (see outline in Table 3), the task is a travel magazine, which challenges students’ ability to sustain

.

92

writing on a topic by expanding ideas from just one paragraph to at least five. Following are the context and guidelines for Task 3: You are an editorial staff for a travel magazine that showcases the ecotourism possibilities your province has to offer. Remember that one of your aims is to present alternative tourism possibilities in your provinces that adhere to the principles of ecotourism. Brainstorm and plan on the contents of your travel magazine to include a variety of articles that describe, narrate, explain a process, and compare and contrast different places. Each group member must have his or her own essay contribution for the magazine. Decide as a group how you will sequence the essays in your magazine; the title and theme of the magazine; and the specific audience for the

magazine. Unit 3 is very much a reading and writing lesson. The language focus revolves around essay writing practice using different rhetorical devices on ideas gathered by students from their research on the places that they use as topics for their travel magazines. At the end of the unit, the students are made to decide which from among their drafts they would like to develop into the essay that will eventually be included in their magazine.

93

94 In Unit 3, the workload of both teacher and students build up. Students required to do peer reviews of their drafts. An extensive amount of time is also given to individual student consultation outside of class hours to provide them with more thorough feedback on individual essay writing activities as well as other emergent matters related to the task preparations. Producing a travel magazine complete with creative layout, illustrations, essays and other add-on features is an achievement in which students find great fulfilment. It involves them not just in writing and rewriting for better communication but also in cooperative learning, decision-making, and taking responsibility for the roles that they themselves create for each other in view of accomplishing their task. are

Unit 4-The Travel Guide While Unit 3 deals with the main writing component on the ecotourism theme, Unit 4 (see outline in Table 4) challenges the students to do a 3minute formal oral presentation (OP) of a fraction of what they have learned from the research. They simulate the role of tourist guides convincing tourists to visit a specific place or an interesting spot.

Table 4. Lesson

outline for Unit 4-the travel guide

95 One of the objectives of this unit is to make students become aware that in public speaking is more than just a matter of getting the content It right. also means taking stock of time limit, and hence choosing a limited topic suitable to the expected audience. This also means employing linguistic devices and personal stage presence that keep and maintain audience interest. The students are not allowed to read from notes; however they can glance at their cue cards. Part of the task preparation stage includes introduction of the use of audio-visual aids--0HP and Power Point presentations-and dealing with the Q & A portion. Since at the actual OP, the students take turns acting as presenters, audience and evaluators, at the task preparation stage, the teacher gives a short briefing on each of these roles. Included in the briefing are the guidelines for giving feedback. During the OP, students dress up in smart casual style. The seating arrangements in class simulate a semi-formal atmosphere. The presenting group takes the left front seats; the audience takes the middle seats; and the evaluators take the back seats. At the end of each 3-minute OP, anyone from the audience and the evaluators can ask a question. When all the members of a group have presented, the teacher asks the group members to evaluate their performance first-beginning with what they thought went well and then what they thought did not go well and then, perhaps, the reasons for this. Then the leader of the panel of evaluators does a sumsuccess

mary of their group assessment, including specific recommendations for their classmates’ OP improvement. For most of the students, this OP exercise seems quite daunting; nevertheless, it is something they would never want to forego. The feedback giving is an interesting exercise because the students get an assessment of their performance not just from the teacher but from among themselves as well. They listen intently to the feedback of their classmates and seem to take it in seriously. From the preceding description of EN 10, we note two general recurring characteristics. The first is the interactive nature of classroom work. It promotes activities that attempt to balance focus on meaning and focus on form. The second is the process-orientated manner by which these interactions are carried out. Skills get recycled. This is true especially in the processes of task planning and performance. Foster and Skehan (1996) note from some empirical evidence the positive effects of these processes on learners. They deduce that if learners are given a chance to plan before they begin a task, their accuracy and fluency also considerably increase in proportion to the cognitive difficulty of the task.

.

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Having reached this point in the discussion, we may ask the inevitable questions: Does using task-based teaching for EN 10 really make a difference ? What long-term effects does EN 10 have on the students? Does it really benefit them throughout their academic life at the university? The Impact of

EN 10

In January 2002, after four years of implementing the current task-based teaching methodology in EN 10, the faculty met to assess the programme. One of the suggested priorities that came up from that discussion was for the English Department to do a formal study of the impact of EN 10 on the students in order to obtain a more empirical basis for our evaluation of the merits (or also demerits) of EN 10. Research is currently being done and preliminary data from students’ written feedback show a positive trend. Early in the year, I was privileged to read 65 one-paragraph essays on the theme ’What am I taking home from my first year English classes These essays were written at the end of the second semester (November 20U1) by students who had done EN 10. Although the essays made general comments on all the English classes the students did during the year, I specifically noted those that pertained to EN 10. I found three recurring themes in the students’ feedback about the impact of EN 10 on them. One is the development of their confidence in writing and speaking. Another is inculcating discipline in their thinking, in organizing ideas systematically, and in working hard at the revision of essays until they got better results. Connected with this is the third theme which has to do with respect for the learning process-the ability to develop patience and determination knowing that they see a gradual improvement in their performance at every step of the way. One of the 65 one-paragraph essays that caught my attention was by a woman who dramatically described a vivid picture of the impact of EN 10 on her writing ability. I thought it would be interesting to quote it here as follows: .

I learned to write in more explicit, illustrative, and distinct way because of English 10... Last school year I used to say ‘Boys are gross because they are unhygienic’. Now, I say, ’Tristan is a filthy and repulsive maggot because the tips of his two-inch toenails are already forest green and murky brown’. I used to say, ’I don’t like his new girlfriend because she smells bad’. Now, I say, ’I don’t like Therese for Carlo because her armpits smell like a dozen of five-year-old, rotten, hard-boiled eggs’. I used to say, ’I love you because you make me feel special when you’re so sweet’. Now, I say, ’I love you

97 because you make my heart sink when you give kiss on my forehead whenever I have PMS’.11

me a sweet

and innocent

In a less dramatic way, the valedictorian of Class 2002 also highlighted graduation address the fact that he was a product of EN 10. He particularly noted how much he had been helped in EN 10 to improve his

in his

English language proficiency, which became a plus factor in developing his self-confidence and in gaining the success that he reaped at the end of his four years of Ateneo education.

What Lies Ahead? The description I have given here of EN 10 makes the course seem free of reservations and uncertainties. This is not the case, however. Based on students’ course evaluation in 2000, the EN 10 teachers realized, for one, that the ecotourism theme was rather limited and might have been a bit overdone. In view of this realization, teachers since then have chosen a variety of other suitable themes. Secondly, teachers have also felt that a better integration of the language-focus activities in the lesson should be achieved. Ongoing sharing and discussion of actual teaching experiences is being done to respond to this need. At last year’s EN 10 programme review, it was also decided, based on student performance, that the tasks be upgraded to reflect a more substantial demand for language practice at the discourse level even at the onset. In view of this, for this year’s classes, the Print Ad has been replaced with the Exhibit Guide Book as the first major task. Doing a print ad has become a mini-task instead. It is interesting to note that the suggested modifications of EN 10 have often touched on microlevel issues. In other words, the underlying taskbased approach remains in place. Although this situation is not necessarily an indication of foolproof success, preliminary positive feedback demonstrates that task-based language teaching has been workable in EN 10 and that the details of its implementation deserve further attention to ensure that it continues to be relevant to the English communication contexts of the students and serve well the goals of the bridging program.

Received

September 2002

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REFERENCES

Allwright, R.L. 1984

’Why Don’t Learners Learn What Teachers Teach? The Interaction Language Learning in Hypothesis’, in D.M. Singleton and D.G. Little (eds.), Formal and Informal Contexts (Dublin: British Association for Applied

Linguistics/Irish Association for Applied Linguistics): 3-18. Brumfit, C., and K. Johnson 1979

The Communicative Approach to Language

Teaching (Oxford: Oxford Uni-

versity Press). Brunner, J.S. 1966 Toward a Theory of Instruction (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Candlin, C.N., and D.F. Murphy 1987 Language Learning Tasks (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall). Foster, P., and P. Skehan 1996 ’The Influence of Planning and Task Type on Second Language Performance’, Studies in Second Language Acquisition 9: 12-20. Hutchinson, T., and A. Waters 1987 ESP: A Learning-Centered Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Krashen, S. 1982 Principles and Practice in Second Language Acquisition (Oxford: Pergamon Press). Littlewood, W. 1981 Communicative Language Teaching (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Lorenzo, E. ’The ILW Framework in the ELT Classroom’, ACELT Journal 2.1: 13-18. 1998

Nunan, D. 1989

Designing Tasks for a Communicative Classroom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).

Prabhu, N.S. 1987

Second Language Pedagogy

(Oxford: Oxford University Press).

Skinner, B.F. 1957

Verbal Behavior (New York: Appleton-Century Crofts).

Stevick, E.W. 1976

Memory, Meaning,

and Method (Rowley, MA:

Newbury House).

Vilches, M.L.C. 2000 2001

’Promoting Language Learning in Secondary ELT: The PELT Project Experience’, Philippine Journal of Linguistics 31.2: 107-13. ’Process-Oriented Teacher Training and the Process Trainer: A Case Study Approach to the Philippines ELT (PELT) Project’ (Unpublished PhD dissertation; Lancaster University, UK).

Waters, A., and M.L.C. Vilches 1998

’Foundation-Building and Potential-Realizing: The PELT ELT Paradigm (Or: The Learning Cake)’, ACELT Journal 2.1: 3-11.

Willis, J. 1996

A

Framework for Task-based Learning (Harlow: Longman).

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NOTES Ateneo de Manila University [http://www.admu.edu.ph] is a private institution the by Society of Jesus—a religious order in the Philippines. 2. What is considered a Summer Term in the Philippines takes place in April and May. Since there are only six weeks allotted for this term, classes meet daily for an hour and a half each. 3. For a more thorough discussion of the project, refer to Vilches 2000 and Vilches 2001. 4. I would like to acknowledge the efforts and leadership of Lia Pison and Marianne Gutíerrez—faculty members of the Ateneo English Department—who were in charge of putting together the work of the different groups in order to come up with a textbook—properly formatted and introduced—ready for the beginning of classes in June 1998. 5. This is an advert for a stereo with a dolby sound system. 6. This column refers to how the work in class is organized. The acronyms are explained as follows: WCW whole class work; PW pair work; IR independent reading; SGW small group work; IWrk independent work. 7. The acronyms for this column are explained as follows: I input; CFA content-focus activities; LFA language-focus activities; PT preliminary task; T task. 8. Ateneo de Manila University Department of English 2000. ’Tasks for Freshman English’, unpublished textbook, p. 29. 9. Individual Writing. 10. I would like to acknowledge Lia Pison’s EN 10 sections E 08, E16 and E 21.I am grateful to Lia for having shared her students’ essays with me. 11. Written by Marie Kathryn Veloso, En 10—E 16. Quoted with permission from the writer.

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