tailieunhanh - Task - based language teaching in Vietnam: Misunderstandings and suggestions

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has been extensively researched and applied in many education settings due to the belief in its effectiveness in maximizing learners’ language competency. Although this issue is not a new concept in language education, misunderstandings of TBLT do exist, which leads to further misapplications of the pedagogy. | TẠP CHÍ KHOA HỌC ĐẠI HỌC ĐÀ LẠT Tập 7, Số 4, 2017 587–600 587 TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING IN VIETNAM: MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND SUGGESTIONS Chi Do Naa* a The Faculty of Foreign Languages, Angiang University, Angiang, Vietnam Article history Received: August 14th, 2017 Received in revised form (1st): October 22nd, 2017 | Received in revised form (2nd): November 02nd, 2017 Accepted: November 03rd, 2017 Abstract Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has been extensively researched and applied in many education settings due to the belief in its effectiveness in maximizing learners’ language competency. Although this issue is not a new concept in language education, misunderstandings of TBLT do exist, which leads to further misapplications of the pedagogy. Besides, the reality of teaching and learning may not make TBLT a preferred method. This paper therefore takes as its aims the common misunderstandings when applying TBLT in Vietnamese education settings. The author investigates how TBLT is frequently mistakenly perceived by language educators and provides suggestions on how to design language tasks with specific implications of TBLT in an EFL classroom. Keywords: Misapplications; Misunderstandings; Suggestions; Task-based; Task design. 1. INTRODUCTION Improving learners’ communicative competence is one of the major goals in language education (Barnard & Nguyen, 2010), and appropriate teaching approaches are essentially in need to transmit the language knowledge to learners and to unpack that knowledge for authentic use. Researching teaching methods to achieve that goal, Harshbarger (2002) and Phuong (2016) claim that Presentation - Practice - Production (PPP) is no longer effective since the chances and possibilities to use the target language for communication and negotiation are very limited, which goes against the goals of the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). Hence, the proposed solution is shifting to Task-based language teaching which is believed to