Implementation of Task-Based Language Teaching: Developing English- speaking abilities in the international context of the Comenius programme

Abstract

The global phenomenon of globalization derives in the consecutive spread of English as the lingua franca that allows cross-cultural communication. The worldwide dominance of this language leads to the substantial increase of English learners. Under these circumstances, a considerable number of language teaching methodologies emerge in order to guarantee an effective language learning process. The field of English Language Teaching (ELT), hence, is primarily characterized by the development of traditional models, such as the Grammar-Translation method (GTM), that are thereupon challenged by modern methods, such as The Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) approach. On the grounds of the latter model, Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is proposed as a strong communicative educational framework that intends to develop the communicative competence of the learners, with a particular emphasis on the oral discourse, through the use of tasks. With the above theoretical assumptions in mind, the purpose of the current paper is presenting a teaching proposal that implements the major communicative task-based principles in order to stress the speaking abilities of the learners. The contribution addresses specifically to the Spanish participants of the Comenius action, a European programme that involves international communication via English. The students need to engage in social interactions and deliver an academic presentation with other exchange students. In this context, thus, this teaching proposal elaborates four task-based lessons aimed at providing students with the necessary English-speaking abilities to succeed socially and academically during the Comenius. In particular, each of the lessons conveys a task that simulates a real communicative situation in which learners need the language in order to achieve an outcome. Therefore, this contribution can be considered to be fruitful in order to prepare students for real circumstances. Nevertheless, the teaching proposal has not been put into practice in a real classroom, which encourages further studies to actually implement it.