 I took, I was just looking actually at some experience from observing teachers, new teachers, I suppose, or trainee teachers' teaching. And that is, I suppose, providing their classrooms or their students with tasks, speaking tasks particularly I'll focus on. They don't really work, okay. So what do I mean by they don't really work is that the teaching gives really vague instructions or throw some cards which I'm going to do with you in just a moment and see as you talk about these. So going back a step, what was I going to say about that now. So I am drawing on trainee teachers I suppose, but I think that also as a quite experienced teacher I'm guilty of this, kind of just throwing a question or throwing something at the students and saying, talk about it, I haven't had much time to plan this class. I don't know, is that your experience from, I think you know we've got people with lots and little experience and in between in the room I'm sure. And have you had the experience with tasks? You know you're like, oh that won't really go very well. So I thought so I'm going to give you a scenario in a minute and then I'm going to draw on just some ideas from a methodology or an approach called task-based learning. Are any of you familiar with task-based learning? Yeah, I'm a bit of a fan actually, but I don't know about the rest of it. It doesn't really fit so easily into a syllabus that's largely based on course books and you know turn the page and so forth. But I think there's some really interesting stuff in task-based learning which we'll learn. I'll come back to that in a minute. So what was I going to talk about? So I want you to imagine for a moment I've got these cards here which, I'd have to confess the training in mind had rather nice, much nicer cards than I have which are a few of these tiny little cards here which have on a series of, Neil can you help me out here? No just tell them what they're so you can see them. So they are musical instruments. We've got saxophones and we have a piano and some drums and other exciting instruments. And this lesson in particular was in the context of listening-speaking lesson on music. Music, great subject. Enormous. Okay, so there was also some cards which I have introduced that had a couple of bands on them. Anybody from, I'd like to, we didn't want to just throw in a couple of bands actually or name a couple of bands. But maybe let's say an upper intermediate class made up of primarily Korean students, Japanese students and a couple of Portuguese and I think a Spanish student running for good measure wouldn't recognise or be able to relate to. Slayer. Was that? Slayer. Slayer. Good choice. Any others? Because I just couldn't remember what they were. I think there was, um, the killers. Okay, yeah. Anything from the 70s? A couple of Abba. Abba. Abba, Bee Gees. Okay, great. I don't know how it's called Bee Gees. Is that right? Yeah, it's okay. And maybe we'll put it in crowded house. I've got my Kiwi colors flying today. They are musical and not Australian just for good measure. So I want you to imagine now that giving you out some cards that have musical instruments on them and a couple of visuals, visuals of these bands. Alright, so you're in your groups. Fantastic. Just the person next to you. Talk about the cards. What? You have to imagine that we have cards. You've got to watch the cards for the experience. It's easy to pass the cards around. Right. How's it going for you? No comment. No comment, okay. But seriously, how is it going for you? What are you talking about? What did you two talk about? You said, do they play these instruments? Okay, alright. So you're giving me a good go. Thank you. Anybody over here? What did you do? Okay, so you're going off topic straight, right? Absolutely. Anybody else? What did you guys talk about? We looked at the pictures and said violin. Violin, okay. Great. And this is kind of what happened in the classroom. And I was assessing it. I was like, okay. But you know, the great thing about what we call here free lessons, that is students come of their own volition to the lessons, is that we have a rather motivated function. And they, you know, they get a really good go and talk crazily about all the stuff for 10 minutes. Okay, so what would be the next step in the lesson? Feedback. Okay, so what do you think the teacher got for feedback? Not much. Not much. But you know, there was 10 minutes speaking, so brilliant job done. Lesson over. Fantastic. Okay, so what was missing, do you think from, what was missing from the task for you? Great experience. Teachers in room. A question. A question. Yeah, really good question. So therefore, purpose. Yeah, there was no purpose to the task. And if you can't get, if you haven't got good feedback, you don't really know what you're asking. There's clearly not an objective or an actually. Aim. Aim or an outcome. I love the word outcome. I love the word outcome, don't you? Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, so let's go back a step and just see how we could make this task much better. Okay, so I've just robbed a few notes from the weirdest family. So just first of all, for those that who don't know, what is task-based learning? So task-based learning or task-based language learning, so no more task-based instruction. Really focus on the use of authentic language and I'm asking students to do meaningful tasks using the target language. Okay, so I asked myself that a lot. It's a bit of a fancy word, isn't it? What I take it to mean is, you know, what value is there in the task for the student? Does that make sense? Anybody have another idea? But there's something that they can really get out of it. I don't know about talking about those cards. I don't know if the learners gained a lot from that activity. So meaningful tasks, I suppose, in terms of task-based learning is that the learners are given a task, an activity to work on that there is a clear outcome. So it could be something as complex and life, like find candidates for a job and employ them and things like that. So that's quite a serious task. It takes a long time. Or it could be, I was thinking, well, if I have time, a game of picture hide and seek or make some quiz questions. You know, something that the students are very clear about what is expected of them and I suppose from a teacher's perspective, you know exactly what you're going to ask them of feedback and how it might leap you into the next stage or conclude your lesson in a great way where you can go away feeling like you've learned something. And I suppose assessment is primarily based on task outcome. So that is the completion of real-life tasks. So real-life tasks, I guess again, are meaningful. The value in students can actually relate to them is something that might be useful outside of the classroom. And maybe that's what Jim's talking about too, about strategies or how we can support our students, have strategies that have, you know, take us outside of the classroom as well. So of course, when we're talking about drawing on authentic language, this is language beyond perhaps just, okay, we're just discussing the past simple. So all our practice and all our speaking today is on the past simple or the present continuous or whatever your language point is because we know in life, and perhaps this is what happens to the students that found the classroom too, they step outside the classroom, go to the shop, order something, and goodness me, it didn't all happen in the past simple or the present simple. In fact, there was five t-shirts all at once. So I think that task that students can really, you know, get their teeth stuck into, I suppose, and draw on their existing knowledge. And I think what's also great about a task, I think in a TBL sense, is that it encourages, it has to learn is work hard to draw on a language that perhaps they don't have either. And so what that might create then is a hunger for language, right? We want our students to want more English. So I think I'm going off in a bit of a spiel now, but what's occurring to me is that, as I say this, is that this is actually to create motivation as well, I think, and that the idea of task-based learning is then following the task, there's analysis of the outcome or the process, and the teacher then teaches into the gaps, okay? So that there's value added from the task. So what language do the students need that they didn't have? What do they have problems with? And then we move on and teach into that. Which sounds fantastic, doesn't it? Goes to me anyway. Working with face-to-face, upper-intermediate there's not often trying to do that. Tap the board again. So we've talked about confidence, motivation, they've become better communicators, moving on. The framework looks something like this. So this prime, like many of the lessons that we prepare in our course books, there's a lead-in. We've got the good thing with it. So we've got this task cycle. But I guess... So what is a task? How could we improve on our talk about these cards? We need to ask ourselves a series of questions. And the more confidently we can answer yes to each of these questions, the more task-like, the more meaningful, the more purposeful our tasks are. So does the activity actually engage learners' interest? That's a good question. So rather than the teachers, you can bring in white witchery or slayer. Might not work for your students. Is there a primary focus on meaning that is working your way through the task? Is it meaningful? Does it have a value that we talked about? Is it something that students can relate to? Big question. Is there an outcome? My top tip, if anything from this, is if you're asking, does your task have an outcome? Is there an outcome? I find the planning for me. I work best working from the end right back to the front. So is there an outcome? What do your learners need to know, either to progress to the next stage in your lesson? Or what kinds of things might you like to hear from them? So... Is success judged in terms of outcome? I can't remember what that means. And does the activity relate to real-world activities? And there's my out clause here, this doesn't constitute it, like you get on the insurance hands-on TV. So... Just going back to our task here, does anybody have any ideas about how we could progress this, talk about these paths to a purposeful, value-added task with a clear outcome? Could I ask students what pubs they've been to in Goalway and what bands they've seen? Sorry, if you're relating it to the music. Yeah, no, that's perfect, that's great. And Goalway, especially if we're here in Goalway, because we've got this incredible music scene, haven't we? That students can't help but ignore. Yeah, fantastic, right? I meant that in a positive way. It's one of the things that keeps me here, isn't it? For anything else? Just personalise it for what instruments they themselves are playing as well. They could do, yeah, absolutely. Other than the chorus to something? Yeah. Fantastic, these are all moving a little bit more into something the students can get their teeth into and can relate to. Yeah, anything else? Yeah, obviously you can listen to bands from the students, not your bands, I think I'm pretty cool with my bands but the students might not think so, yeah. I've found a few others that might work would be a categorising task. We learn to categorise the musical instruments and rank musical instruments. But you know, tasks that there was something to do, I thought another, just ending over my porridge this morning, what else could the students do? They could put a band together, couldn't they? You know, themselves. Choose a band of their choice, perhaps. And maybe choose some musical instruments and what would they do. Take you to next level stuff. How about we're going to busk uptown Galway? So they could choose their instruments, name the band, what would they sing and perform, how much money would they like to make? Where would they stand? Things like, what else did I come up with? Yeah, how would they organise themselves in so force? So, you know, that might be a bit pie in the sky again. You've got some students that you just aren't really into music, that's the other thing, isn't it? So I guess you, of course going to know you learn as more of that, but good old free lessons and teaching practice, we don't know who our students are going to be, so you need to make something that's down in the middle.