Introduction

The first edition of Richards and Rogers Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching was published in 1986. It included ‘Communicative Language Teaching (CLT)’ but not ‘Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT)’ in the list of methods/approaches it considered. However, in the second edition, published in 2001, ‘Task-based Language Teaching’ was now listed under the general heading ‘Current Communicative Approaches’. Between 1986 and 2001, TBLT emerged as a sufficiently well-defined approach to warrant separate treatment by Richards and Rogers.

In this chapter, I will first consider the major influences on the emergence of TBLT followed by an account of the proposals for a task-based approach that appeared in the 1980s. I then examine how TBLT subsequently developed, focusing on key issues relating to the design of a task-based syllabus and the methodology for implementing tasks. I will also briefly consider how TBLT has been adapted to computer-mediated environments and take a look at task-based assessment. The chapter concludes with an account of what evaluations of task-based programmes have shown about the effectiveness of TBLT.

Background to the Emergence of TBLT

The importance of including tasks in a language curriculum was affirmed in the CLT movement of the 1970s and 1980s. TBLT grew out of this movement with further inputs from early research in second language acquisition (SLA).

Communicative language teaching

CLT drew on theories of language that viewed language not just as a set of formal structures but as a means of communication. Hymes (1971) outlined a theory of communicative competence that accounted for both what is formally possible in a language (i.e. grammatical) and what is feasible and acceptable in terms of performance. Halliday's (1973) model of language took as its starting point the functions that language served rather than the formal properties of a language. He distinguished three broad functions (the ideational, interpersonal and textual), each of which was elaborated into a series of semantic networks which were then related to their linguistic exponents.