Monday, February 26, 2007

Food for Thought

In an email titled: "TBL: DOA and RIP" my tutor said:

Yes, I do believe that TBL is dead. What we are seeing is the unraveling of the concept as it becomes diffused throughout the field. You will find just about any practice out there begin called “Task Based”, which is the same thing that happened to the “communicative” method. Actually, most of the communicative practices were codified in some form in TBL, IMHO.

This was after I read his 1998 article, Returning Full Circle: A Survey of EFL Syllabus Designs, where he predicts that TBL is on it's way out the door.

I found this particularly interesting considering our little study group has been grappling with this for tha last few months and trying to figure out how much TBL we do, what it really looks like, how we can incorporate it more into our classes and whether or not an ALL TBL syllabus could be effective in our learning contexts.

I think, as with most things, one needs to be cautious of an ANSWER to a problem like "how to teach English most effectively?" Obviously, (or maybe not) there isn't one right learning style for every student. And there isn't one right teaching method for every teacher. Balance people...BALANCE!!

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