Integrating Learning, Teaching, and Assessment

Abstract

This chapter discusses the role of the Council of Europe (COE)’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) (2001) and tasks for integrating the topics addressed in this book—course design, assessment, and autonomous learning—within institutions and classrooms, respectively. After reexamining the action-oriented approach and view of learners as social agents, the role of tasks to connect the classroom to real-world contexts of language use is explained in relation to the CEFR’s concepts of domains, situations, conditions and constraints, and themes. This is followed by a description of how tasks provide students with opportunities for language and strategy use, communicative language competence development, and assessment. In Sect. 5.2, the CEFR as an integrative tool will be discussed using concrete procedures for aligning an existing curriculum to the CEFR, and key resources for linking ‘Can Do’ descriptors to language (e.g., grammar). This is followed by a thorough review of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) literature to show how an action-oriented approach can be implemented in the classroom. After defining tasks, three approaches to TBLT are introduced together with the role of explicit knowledge (developed in part from grammar/vocabulary instruction) in the second language acquisition (Ellis 2003, 2009). The stance taken by Ellis (2003), the weak-interface position, provides the theoretical justification for linking tasks with the language necessary to fulfill these communication acts (Sect. 5.2.2). Guidelines for implementing TBLT and ensuring appropriate task difficulty are then reviewed. Section 5.3 illustrates how CEFR concepts concerning course design, TBLT, and self-assessment can be integrated in a general English university program in Japan (Nagai 2010). The exercises in Sect. 5.4 focus on the measures that can be taken to ensure that a CEFR-informed curriculum is enacted by teachers and learners in a way consistent with CEFR’s philosophy and principles. The case studies in Sect. 5.5 provide further examples of TBLT implementation for developing and assessing communicative language competence (Case Study 1 and 2) and intercultural competence (Case Study 5.5.2).