Task Based Learning

Abstract

The English education system in Korea tends to focus on input and form oriented methods to prepare learners for a national exam, (the K-SAT), rather than to use the language in an authentic context. Even after implementing communicative language teaching (CLT) in public school English classroom, teachers often devote class time to test preparation to fulfill students’ needs (Li, 1998, pp.691-693). Korea is a unique country with regards to its education system in that has a national curriculum that applies to the whole country and every public school. Since the national exam focuses on the receptive skills and rarely on the productive skills, this has influenced the whole context of English education in the public school system. However, as learners need not only receptive skills, but also productive skills in the real world outside the classroom, I recommend keeping a balance between input and output oriented methods when learning a second language. Considering learners’ needs on both the productive and receptive skills, my textbook will address balanced methods. The aim of this textbook is to give greater exposure to the language and offer greater opportunity to produce the language. The group of students I seek to address is early adolescent learners from the ages of ten to twelve in the Korean English as a Foreign Language (EFL) environment. The students have not been abroad, and thus have insufficiently experienced neither the language nor the culture of English speaking countries. The target learners’ educational situation is an extracurricular after school English classroom in a public primary school and their language proficiency level is A2 to B1 in CEF. I have chosen this target group of students because the national curriculum provides only 870 hours of English classroom hours through ten years from primary to high school, but 870 hours seems insufficient for second language learners in an EFL environment. I have conducted spoken interview with target group of twenty-two students and they answered that they don’t think they have enough opportunity to produce the language during the regular classroom hours. According to Ellis, “Fluent language users have had tens of thousands of hours on task. They have processed many millions of utterances involving tens of thousands of types presented as innumerable tokens” (Ellis, 1998, p.641). The authentic tasks provided in this textbook will fulfill the amount of the time that students in an EFL environment need to spend on task. According to Sharewood, children spend 9,000 hours on listening and speaking when learning their first language (Sharewood Smith, 1994). However, since the national curriculum in Korea provides insufficient opportunities to produce the language, the target audience needs to be exposed to English frequently as well as to improve their communicative competence and fluency. Students need to spend more time producing the language than the national curriculum provides. My textbook will offer greater opportunity to produce language while dedicating many hours to authentic tasks and help students to become fluent language users.