Doing task-based teaching By Dave Willis 1 Introduction Ideas change and develop. When Jane wrote A Framework for Task-based Learning (J. Willis 1996), the rationale was set out in an earlier paper, Willis and Willis (1987). Both the paper and the book were the products of research, classroom experience and contact with colleagues, notably N.S Prabhu whose work ...

'And mother bear enquired as to who had been eating her porridge': designing writing tasks By Roger Hunt With the possible exception of art forms such as poetry, all authentic writing is written with a particular reader in mind and has a specific purpose. The intended readership and purpose of the piece of writing determines the linguistic style ...

If I were in your shoes… By Margaret Horrigan Perhaps some of you know that 2010 is the UN’s year of biodiversity. Now, biodiversity is a term I heard a few years ago and it essentially was used back then to refer to the animal and plant kingdom. However, if we take Bill Bryson’s (2003) word for ...

Genre matters in academic writing by Thomas Baker At the University of Michigan, a genre-based approach is used to teach academic writing (hereafter AW) (Swales and Feak, 1994, 2004) for graduate, nonnative students and undergraduate students (Feak, 2007).  According to Paltridge, its basic premise is that language is “functional ... through language we get things done” (pg ...

Discord or symphony: tips for orchestrating your lesson by Jonathan Lewsey A musician needs to master notes, chords, sequences and so on, in order to create a piece of music that is pleasant to the ear. A conductor must inspire, monitor and lead the performers in the orchestra in order to produce a symphony. Equally, the teacher ...