WEIWEI YANG (NANJING UNIVERSITY AERONAUTICS ASTRONAUTICS)
YING WANG (NewChannel International Education Group LImited)

TASK-SUPPORTED LANGUAGE TEACHING: PRACTICES AND EVIDENCE OF EFFECTIVENESS IN THE CLASSROOM : METHODOLOGIES AND TEACHING APPROACHES

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has been a common instructional notion for organizing syllabi and teaching for foreign language courses in the past 25 years (Candlin & Murphy, 1987; Crookes, 1989; Long, 1989). However, the notion of task-supported language teaching (TSLT; Ellis, 2017; Long, 2015) is much less known by second language education practitioners and researchers. Although TBLT requires systematic organization of the syllabus with tasks as the centerpiece and the organizing unit (Ellis, 2003; 2009; Long & Crookes, 1992) and with tasks preferably derived through needs analysis (Long, 2015), TSLT has much more flexibility in fitting into syllabi informed by other L2 teaching approaches such as grammar-translation, presentation-practice-production, and communicative language teaching. This presentation introduces the concept of task-supported language teaching, elucidates the notion of task, discusses the benefits and necessity of TSLT with theories of second language acquisition (e.g., the Skill Acquisition Theory, Dekeyser, 1998; 2007; 2015), and exemplifies classroom practices informed by TSLT, along with evidence from a classroom research of TSLT in L2 pronunciation teaching. Specifically, for the exemplification part, the first presenter will draw on her own classroom practices in using TSLT in her general English courses and L2 pronunciation courses for Chinese university students. An empirical research study of the effect of TSLT was conducted in one of her L2 pronunciation courses by the presenters, and the presentation will report on the research methods and the positive findings of this empirical research. Implications of the classroom practices and the empirical research for TEFL will be discussed.

Weiwei Yang is Associate Professor of English at Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics in China. Her research interests include cognition and discourse, second language literacy development and assessment, second language acquisition, and second language teaching and learning. She holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics from Georgia State University, USA.

Ying Wang holds a MA in Applied Linguistics from Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (China). She currently teaches IELTS to Chinese EFL students, and she has also taught English to middle school students in China. Her research interests include instructed second language acquisition and pragmatics.