Teaching writing through task-based instruction: Exploring English teachers’ experiences

Laxman Prasad Bhandari

doi:10.36892/ijlls.v2i4.466

Abstract

As educationists and policymakers have been concerned much in increasing the English proficiency of their citizens, educational policies on curriculums and syllabuses have moved increasingly towards various versions of learner-centered teaching approaches including task-based language teaching. TBLT is one of the widely discussed learner-centered approaches for the last few decades. It aims at developing students’ communicative skills through their active engagement in various tasks focusing more on meaning than on form. The study aims to explore English teachers’ experiences in teaching writing with respect to the intent of the secondary level English curriculum prescribed by the Curriculum Development Center, Ministry of Education, Nepal. The study is qualitative where five teacher participants were interviewed. The data were analyzed based on the taxonomy of task types by Willis and Wills (2007). The findings showed that the teacher participants are theoretically aware of TBLT, especially in teaching writing, and the intent of the prescribed curriculum; however, they are not able to fully bring their knowledge and skills into practice to meet the objective of the curriculum. Thus, the study purposes a way forward to strengthen teachers’ ability to bring TBLT theory into practice through training, workshops, research, and higher studies.

Highlights

English is taught as a compulsory subject starting from grade one in community schools and even before in the institutional schools up to grade twelve, and as a major subject in the higher level in the Nepalese context
The first theme ‘Teachers’ experiences of Task-based language teaching (TBLT) in teaching writing’ is about how they select and design, and sequence tasks for teaching writing to meet the intent of their prescribed curriculum, and the second theme on ‘Alignment of teachers’ experiences of TBLT with the intent of the curriculum’ deals with how teachers’ knowledge and experiences of TBLT help them meet the intent of the English curriculum prescribed in the secondary level
Since the research participants were exposed to various communicative language teaching approaches and methods during their university studies, they have a considerable amount of knowledge, and they (Lin & Wu, 2012) hold positive perceptions towards task-based language teaching

Summary

Introduction

English is taught as a compulsory subject starting from grade one in community schools and even before in the institutional schools up to grade twelve, and as a major subject in the higher level in the Nepalese context. Though students learn English for twelve or even more years, their competency in this language is still low. National policies and syllabuses have moved increasingly towards various versions of communicative language teaching including taskbased language teaching (Ellis, 2000) to increase the communicative efficiency of the students’ in English(Al-Ghamdi, Almansoob & Alrefaee, 2019). To develop students’ English language efficiency, student-centered curriculums and syllabuses have been designed and implemented for the last few years in the Nepalese context as well. The curriculum has been designed in such a way that the learners are actively engaged to use all four-level language skills in a variety of personal, social, and academic contexts (CDC, 2014)

Objectives

Results

Conclusion