Task-based learning and teaching in China: Secondary school teachers' beliefs and practices

http://ltr.sagepub.com/Language Teaching Research

http://ltr.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/10/15/1362168813505941The online version of this article can be found at:

DOI: 10.1177/1362168813505941

published online 16 October 2013Language Teaching ResearchXinmin Zheng and Simon Borg

beliefs and practicesTask-based learning and teaching in China: Secondary school teachers'

- Mar 24, 2014version of this article was published on more recent A

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

can be found at:Language Teaching ResearchAdditional services and information for

http://ltr.sagepub.com/cgi/alertsEmail Alerts:

http://ltr.sagepub.com/subscriptionsSubscriptions:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.navReprints:

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.navPermissions:

What is This?

- Oct 16, 2013OnlineFirst Version of Record >>

- Mar 24, 2014Version of Record

at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB on July 3, 2014ltr.sagepub.comDownloaded from at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB on July 3, 2014ltr.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://ltr.sagepub.com/

http://ltr.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/10/15/1362168813505941

http://ltr.sagepub.com/content/18/2/205

http://www.sagepublications.com

http://ltr.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

http://ltr.sagepub.com/subscriptions

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

http://ltr.sagepub.com/content/18/2/205.full.pdf

http://ltr.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/10/15/1362168813505941.full.pdf

http://online.sagepub.com/site/sphelp/vorhelp.xhtml



Language Teaching Research0(0) 1 –17

© The Author(s) 2013Reprints and permissions:

sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.navDOI: 10.1177/1362168813505941

ltr.sagepub.com

LANGUAGETEACHINGRESEARCH

Task-based learning and teaching in China: Secondary school teachers’ beliefs and practices

Xinmin ZhengShanghai International Studies University, China

Simon BorgUniversity of Leeds, UK

AbstractWhile much has been written about task-based language teaching (TBLT), research examining teachers’ understandings of what TBLT means remains limited. This article explores the understandings of TBLT of three Chinese secondary school teachers of English and the implementation of TBLT in their lessons. Narrative accounts were constructed for each teacher using observational data from two lessons and two semi-structured interviews. These accounts illustrate how each teacher implemented the curriculum as well as the cognitive and contextual factors that shaped their decisions with specific reference to the use of tasks. One key finding is that TBLT was defined in a narrow manner and was strongly associated with communicative activities, especially oral work involving pair and group work. The study also shows that the two more experienced teachers introduced a stronger formal element of grammar into their lessons than recommended by the curriculum; and while all three teachers highlighted the challenges for them in using tasks (e.g. due to large classes), the youngest of the three displayed most commitment to the principles in the curriculum. The qualitative accounts we present here are empirically instructive in the way they extend our understandings of how teachers respond to innovative curricula and specifically to TBLT; these accounts also have concrete practical value: they are a source of material that can be used in teacher education contexts to encourage teachers to reflect on their own beliefs and practices in relation to TBLT.

KeywordsChina, curriculum implementation, task-based learning and teaching, teaching English

Corresponding author:Xinmin Zheng, School of Education, Shanghai International Studies University, Room 820, Building No.l, 550 Dalian Xilu, Hongkou District, Shanghai 200083, China.Email: [email protected]

505941 LTR0010.1177/1362168813505941Language Teaching ResearchZheng and Borgresearch-article2013

Article

at NORTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV LIB on July 3, 2014ltr.sagepub.comDownloaded from


2 Language Teaching Research 0(0)

I Introduction

In 2003 the new English language curriculum at senior secondary school level in the People’s Republic of China was introduced. Prior to this, English language teaching (ELT) in China had been portrayed in the literature as predominantly teacher-centered, textbook-directed and memorization-based (Cortazzi & Li, 1996; Zheng & Adamson, 2003). The pedagogy for teaching English was characterized by a focus on grammar teaching and learning and on reading comprehension, with little attention to the develop-ment of students’ communicative competence, particularly in speaking and listening. The new secondary curriculum in 2003 was a response to this situation, and part of a broader policy of globalization that was being pursued in China. The Ministry of Education sought, through this curriculum, to support the development of students who can use English to communicate internationally (Ministry of Education, 2003). This cur-riculum also represented a marked shift in the pedagogy that teachers of English were expected to adopt. Learning was presented as a process of enquiry rather than being based on knowledge transmission and memorization. More specifically, the traditional emphasis on grammar and vocabulary learning was replaced by a focus on the develop-ment of communication skills (Wang, 2007; Wang & Lam, 2010).

Another key element in the new curriculum, and that which we focus on here, is that it recommends that task-based teaching methods be used to develop students’ communi-cative competence. Teachers are also provided with guidelines to consider in developing appropriate tasks (Ministry of Education, 2003):

• Activities must have clear and achievable aims and objectives.• Activities must be relevant to students’ life experiences and interests; the content

and style should be as true to life as possible.• Activities must benefit the development of students’ language knowledge, lan-

guage skills and ability to use language for real communication.• Activities should be of a cross-curricular nature, promoting the integrated devel-

opment of students’ thinking and imagination, aesthetic and artistic sense, coop-erative and creative spirit.

• Activities should make students gather, process and use information, using English to communicate with others in order to develop their ability to use English to solve real problems.

• Activities should not purely be limited to the classroom but also extend to out of school learning.1

Despite such guidelines, however, the curriculum does not define what precisely it understands a task to be, and how it might be distinct from other types of language learn-ing activities. Clearly, then, the curriculum requires teachers to interpret what a task is and to design their pedagogy accordingly, with the concomitant risk that if teachers’ interpretations are not aligned with those implied in the curriculum, the latter will not be implemented as intended. The motivation for this article thus stems from our interest in exploring what sense teachers make of the need to use tasks and the implications this has for the implementation of the curriculum.



Zheng and Borg 3

II Literature review

We now discuss three areas of literature that underpin this study: curriculum innovation, task-based language teaching, and teachers’ beliefs.

1 Uptake of ELT curriculum innovation

Curriculum innovation in education is characterized by an extensive literature that exam-ines this phenomenon from multiple perspectives (see, for example, Fullan, 2001; Markee, 1997). The traditional conceptualization of curriculum sees it as a blueprint setting out all of planned learning experiences for a specific group of learners (the intended curriculum). More recently, it has been acknowledged that an adequate under-standing of curriculum must include not just what is intended, but also the implemented curriculum: what actually happens at the level of classroom action (Wedell, 2009). Here we are particularly interested in the relationship between the intended 2003 English lan-guage curriculum and its implementation, with specific attention to teachers’ use of tasks. One approach to research on curriculum implementation described by Snyder, Bolin and Zumwalt (1992) is the fidelity perspective, which studies the extent to which a curriculum is implemented as planned. Our study reflects such a perspective, although our interests extend beyond describing whether what the teachers do reflects the planned curriculum; we are also interested in factors that shape teachers’ actions, such as teach-ers’ beliefs and the classroom context.

Evidence of the challenges that English language teachers face when they are required to move from traditional to communicative curricula emerges from a number of studies (e.g. Orafi & Borg, 2009), though specific attention to the use of tasks has been limited (one exception is Wyatt & Borg, 2011). In a recent study in China, Yan (2012) identified an implementation gap despite the fact that teachers of English were positively disposed towards the new curricular principles; however, teachers felt that their ability to imple-ment those principles was hindered by several adverse conditions, including student resistance, the lack of support from school administrators and the backwash effect of the examinations (see also Yan & He, 2012; Zheng & Davison, 2008).

2 Task-based language teaching

There has been much discussion in the literature about what tasks are and are not, and these have been reviewed in sources such as Van de Branden (2006). Ellis (2003, pp. 9–10), for example, highlights six elements of a task (e.g. it has a primary focus on mean-ing and involves real world language use), while Samuda and Bygate (2008) define a task as ‘a holistic activity which engages language use in order to achieve some non-linguistic outcome while meeting a linguistic challenge, with the overall aim of promot-ing language learning, through process or product or both’ (p. 69). The use of ‘activity’ in this definition may be one potential source of confusion to teachers (tasks, one assumes, are meant to be different from the ‘activities’ normally found in textbooks). To take one further example, Scrivener (2011) defines task-based learning (TBL) as ‘a vari-ant of CLT [communicative language teaching] … which bases work cycles around the




preparation for, doing of, and reflection and analysis of tasks that reflect real-life needs and skills’ (p. 32). This particular definition does little to further clarify what a task is and also seems to minimize the distinctiveness of TBLT compared to CLT more generally. Clearly, multiple interpretations of ‘task’ exist in the literature and that teachers too will have their own understandings of what the term means. This is even more likely in con-texts, such as that we examine here, where the curriculum does not seem to provide a precise definition of what a task is.

3 Teachers’ beliefs

In the past two decades or so research on language teachers’ beliefs and practices has witnessed a rapid growth (Borg, 2006) but specific analyses of TBLT from teachers’ perspectives have been limited. Andon and Eckerth (2009) analysed the understandings of TBLT held by four teachers of adult EFL and found that they had ‘a well-developed awareness of their own teaching as well as an awareness of … core principles of TBLT’ (p. 304). In a more recent study conducted with foreign language teachers in New Zealand, East (2012) concluded that there was encouraging evidence of attempts by teachers to implement TBLT, though of concern was the finding that a quarter of the participants in this study had minimal understandings of what TBLT was, and in some cases task was interpreted as simply a synonym for ‘activity’.

Work conducted in Hong Kong is also very relevant here. Carless (2004, 2007a) exam-ined the experiences of teachers of English in secondary schools in implementing task-based learning. Teachers highlighted several challenges: for example, TBLT was more time-consuming, was hard to manage in large classes and did not reflect the manner in which English was assessed in examinations. More recently, Carless (2009) reported that teachers of English in Hong Kong secondary schools seemed to prefer a presentation–practice–production (PPP) model of teaching rather than TBLT, which they perceived to be more complex. Similar empirical interest is starting to emerge from mainland China too, though work in this context remains limited. Deng and Carless (2009) studied the extent to which the activities in a primary school classroom in Guangdong reflected principles of task-based learning and found limited evidence that they did; contextual factors such as traditional examinations were one explanation for this; a second factor was the teacher’s own limited understandings of how to implement TBLT. The work of Zhang (2007; Zhang & Hu, 2010), also conducted in primary classrooms, provides further insight into the extent to which TBLT is being implemented in China and into the factors that shape this imple-mentation. One conclusion from this work is that the original top-down conceptualization of TBLT had been reconstructed and become progressively weaker at each subsequent level of the educational system, with the result that there was only limited evidence of principled use of TBLT in the work of the three teachers who took part in the study.

While the above studies demonstrate increasing interest in what TBLT means to teachers, we believe that there is a need for further research to examine what happens in the classroom when Chinese teachers of English implement the 2003 task-based curricu-lum, to understand the beliefs and contextual factors that shape these teachers’ instruc-tional decisions, and to use the findings from this kind of research to inform the development of in-service training, which can support the more effective curriculum implementation.



Zheng and Borg 5

III The study

The research questions addressed in this study were:

1. What beliefs about TBLT do three secondary school Chinese teachers of English hold?

2. To what extent do they implement TBLT as intended by the curriculum?3. What factors, according to the teachers, shape their implementation of TBLT?

1 Participants

Three Chinese secondary school teachers of English took part in this qualitative study. Two factors were taken into consideration when these teachers were selected. First, they had collaborated with the first author on a previous study (Zheng, 2005) and had indi-cated then that they would be willing to participate in subsequent research projects. Second, they were all following the new secondary curriculum described earlier, teach-ing the same level of students and using the same textbook. Thus these teachers were suitably positioned to allow the investigation of the research questions highlighted above. All three teachers taught English in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian Province, and Table 1 provides background information for them. In terms of their schools, Mr Yang (all names are pseudonyms) worked in an average school in terms of resources and stu-dent academic achievement. Miss Wu’s school, in comparison, was less well resourced and had lower student admission standards. Ms Ma, on the other hand, worked in a key school with excellent resources and students.

2 Data collection and analysis

Observational and interview data were collected in three phases for each teacher: pre-lesson interview, classroom observation and post-lesson interview. The pre-lesson inter-views (each of which lasted approximately two hours) focused on how the participants understood the 2003 English curriculum generally and task-based instruction specifi-cally. The interviews were semi-structured in nature (see, for example, Richards, 2009), allowing both the interviewer and the interviewees some flexibility in introducing and pursuing themes of relevance that emerged during the conversation. These interviews were audio recorded (with permission), conducted largely in Chinese by the first author, translated into English by him, and verified for accuracy with both the participants of the study and a colleague at Shanghai International Studies University.

Table 1. Teachers’ background.

Pseudonym Gender Age Qualifications Experience (years)

Teaching English Of new curriculum

Mr Yang Male 60 BA 36 3Miss Wu Female 32 BA and MA 8 3Ms Ma Female 40 BA 16 3




Following the pre-lesson interview, observational data were collected from two of each teacher’s normal classes (lessons lasted 45 minutes). Decisions about which classes would be observed were made by the teachers, and in each lesson a researcher was pre-sent (as a non-participant observer) and recorded information about the lesson via writ-ten field notes, with specific attention to the kinds of instructional activities and materials used. Copies of teaching resources and lesson plans were also collected. Additionally, the first observed lesson for each teacher was also video recorded. These observational data provided direct evidence of the manner in which the teachers were implementing the curriculum and using tasks. These data also provided the stimulus for the third phase of data collection with each teacher: a post-lesson interview. The purpose of these inter-views (which lasted an hour and were also semi-structured and audio recorded) was to discuss with the teachers the pedagogical options they used during the observed lessons, to examine the factors shaping teachers’ instructional decisions, and to explore further teachers’ understandings of tasks.

The analysis of the observational data was primarily formative; in other words, it took place prior to (and informed the design of) the post-lesson interview rather than occur-ring at the end. The video recorded lessons were not transcribed in full; rather, they were watched and narrative summaries made of episodes in the lessons that we felt provided evidence of the teachers’ understandings and implementation of tasks. Informed by the discussion of tasks in the literature discussed above, the lessons were analysed with par-ticular attention to the focus of activities (form or meaning), their outcomes (linguistic versus non-linguistic), organization (e.g. accuracy to fluency), interactional patterns (e.g. teacher explanation versus pair work), and the skills involved (e.g. speaking, reading).

The interview data were transcribed and subjected to a process of qualitative content analysis (see, for example, Newby, 2010) through which a range of beliefs held by the teachers were identified (initially through coding) and then categorized; contextual fac-tors that teachers cited in explaining their teaching were identified in a similar manner. Overall, the process involved close and repeated readings of the interview transcripts and identifying from the data (i.e. inductively) the themes that characterized the teachers’ commentaries as they articulated the rationale for their instructional decisions. The teach-ers were also given the chance to read and comment on our interpretations of their work.

IV Findings

1 Mr Yang

Mr Yang’s lessons were characterized by three stages: communication/skills work, lan-guage explanation, and language practice. Table 2 summarizes the stages in the two observed lessons and indicates how long each lasted.

The topic of Lesson 1 was ‘Friendship’. Mr Yang started with a pre-reading activity where students were asked to discuss in groups points such as ‘Make a list of reasons why friends are important in your life’ and to report some of their ideas back to the class. He then moved to the reading text by asking his students to guess what Anne’s (the text was about Anne Frank) friend was, and then he set the following questions and asked the students to read the text quickly in order to answer them:



Zheng and Borg 7

• How long did Anne and her family hide away?• According to Anne, what kind of person can be a true friend?• Why did Anne say that she was crazy about nature?

In the second stage of the lesson Mr Yang first explained the target grammar (direct/indirect speech), and then the students practised this grammar orally and in writing.

A similar overall procedure was observed in Lesson 2. This time the skills work focused on listening and speaking, using activities from the Teachers’ Book. This was followed by the explanation of grammar and vocabulary contained in the listening mate-rial just used. In the third stage of the lesson, students completed exercises in the text-book. Mr Yang explained the grammar in Chinese briefly, and then had his students do substitution exercises. As regards vocabulary, Mr Yang explained this in Chinese and showed his students how nouns could be turned into verbs.

On the basis of the two lessons observed, there was not much evidence of TBLT in any ‘strong’ sense (e.g. there were no real world activities), and the interviews provided some insight into Mr Yang’s understanding of TBLT. He had attended in-service training courses about the new curriculum run by experts from Beijing, watched model lessons of task-based lessons on video, and also observed his colleagues to see how they were using tasks. Informed by these sources of evidence he explained his understandings of TBLT as follows:

I think task-based teaching is consistent with the principles of communicative language teaching. As I understand it, tasks are communicative and goal-directed and they are the extension of my communicative teaching activities … I think task-based teaching is a strong communicative approach where students spend lots of time communicating. (Pre-lesson interview, Mr Yang)

For Mr Yang, students’ communicating seemed to be the defining feature of TBLT, and this is why (as in both lessons we observed) he gave students opportunities in each lesson to talk in pairs or groups.

Although he was positively disposed towards the new curriculum, he had been ini-tially unsure about whether he could use tasks in his teaching. However, on the basis of the greater understanding of TBLT he now felt he had, he believed that he could use tasks, but with caution:

The new curriculum introduced task-based teaching … It sounds good, but I was not sure if task-based teaching worked in my context as I had little knowledge about it. Anyway, I must be

Table 2. Mr Yang’s lessons.

Stage Lesson 1 Time (mins) Lesson 2 Time (mins)

1 Reading 18 Revision/listening 212 Grammar explanation 15 Grammar and vocabulary explanation 93 Grammar practice 12 Grammar and vocabulary practice 15




careful with it, you know, our national college entrance examination still remains unchanged and I have a large size class to take care of. (Pre-lesson interview, Mr Yang)

The examinations were a factor that Mr Yang mentioned more than once:

As you know, I am responsible for my students’ college entrance examination, so I have to teach each unit carefully and thoroughly. As far as I am concerned, I find it comfortable to teach with my traditional method, but I am also happy to try task-based teaching for the purpose of supporting my teaching. For instance, I apply task-based teaching to encourage my students to work in pairs or groups so that they can do question and answer activities to improve their speaking ability. (Pre-lesson interview, Mr Yang)

This extract shows once again how he equated TBLT with oral pair and group work.As part of his drive to be more task-based, Mr Yang also said he had reduced the time

he spent on explaining grammar, but he still felt that explaining grammar was an impor-tant part of his lessons: ‘I still need to explain [grammar] to my students clearly as I was concerned with some slow learners. To consolidate the grammar items, I had my students do both oral and written exercises.’

In the interviews, Mr Yang said that he was unable to follow exactly what was sug-gested in the Teachers’ Book due to his beliefs and context. For example, the suggested procedures in the Teachers’ Book for the listening work he did in Lesson 2 were:

1. Let students discuss the questions in Exercise 1 before listening.2. Have students quickly go over the other exercises on page 41 of Workbook.3. Let them listen to the whole text and ask them for main idea.4. Let them listen for the second and the third time and complete the exercise.5. Listen once again if necessary and check the answers.

However, Mr Yang went directly to steps 3–4, omitting the rest, then moved straight onto the explanation and practice of grammar (stages 2 and 3 in his lesson; see Table 2 above). Mr Yang explained these changes to the suggested procedures as follows:

It is very important for my students to master those words and phrases from the listening materials, such as ‘make friends’ and ‘may have been trying to do something’. The Teachers’ Book does not tell us to teach those points, but I think it is necessary. That is why I cut out some of their suggestions and added my own design. (Post-lesson interview, Mr Yang)

To sum up, although he was a very experienced teacher, Mr Yang showed a willingness to learn about the pedagogical ideas being promoted by the new curriculum and to inte-grate these into his established ways of teaching. He felt that using TBLT meant increas-ing the opportunities he gave students to speak English in pairs and groups, but even with this conservative interpretation he felt that tasks could only be used in moderation due to the examination system and large class sizes. Mr Yang also believed it was important to explain language to students and for them to practise this language through exercises. His lessons, therefore, once the first phase of communication and skills work had been completed, were quite language oriented.



Zheng and Borg 9

2 Miss Wu

Table 3 summarizes the stages of two lessons that were observed with Miss Wu. The first of these was a reading lesson and the second focused on writing.

In Lesson 1, Miss Wu followed five stages in working on the reading text ‘Earthquake’, which was about the Tangshan Earthquake, which occurred in China in 1976. In the lead-in she played a video about natural disasters, and students were encouraged to discuss this. The second stage, reading, consisted of three steps: pre-reading, while-reading and post-reading. In the pre-reading section, students were asked to predict what had happened to Tangshan in 1976, and for while-reading students had to identify in the text information about the dam-age caused by this earthquake. After the reading work, Miss Wu played a recording of the text for her students to listen to. In stage 4 of the lesson Miss Wu explained the use of the relative clauses and students (in stage 5) completed both oral and written practice.

Lesson 2 further developed the work started above on writing a news item and con-tained three stages. First Miss Wu explained several basic features of news stories, with attention to matters such as headlines, content and language. In the second stage of the lesson she presented one example of news writing completed by a student and evaluated it with reference to the features previously identified. Finally, she asked her students to work in groups to discuss ways of improving the sample story.

In discussing her teaching Miss Wu commented on the use of tasks in the new curricu-lum as follows:

If we can use task-based teaching in a proper way, I think it will give our students more opportunities to communicate in English and learn how to work socially with other learners. Besides, I believe task-based teaching can help our students develop skills to solve the real life problems they meet. (Pre-lesson interview, Miss Wu)

Three purposes of TBLT were signalled here: increasing opportunities for communica-tion, co-operative learning, and preparation for real-life problems. These ideas were all in line with those promoted by the curriculum.

Our analysis of Miss Wu’s teaching suggested that she followed the recommendations in the Teachers’ Book quite closely and she agreed that this resource provided a good model to follow:

I think the new curriculum, together with its rich resources, does provide us with some very useful and practical lesson patterns to follow. Why should I not just make use of it? (Post-lesson interview. Miss Wu)

Table 3. Miss Wu’s lessons.


1 Lead-in 6 Explanation (skills for writing) 142 Reading 18 Feedback on sample of writing 173 Listening 7 Writing practice 144 Grammar explanation 8 5 Grammar practice 6




She was aware, though, that following the Teachers’ Book was not always effective. For example, during the lead-in activity in Lesson 1, after she had played the video she asked students to discuss these questions in groups :

• What do you know about earthquakes?• How do you think people can avoid being hurt in the quake?• Can you describe the Wenchuan Earthquake according to what you have just seen

on the screen?

The students, though, did not engage with these questions and this led to off-task talk within the groups and a challenging (i.e. noisy) classroom management situation for Miss Wu to control. In reflecting on this episode, she complained that:

Our school is an ordinary one in a suburban area. We don’t have any privilege in taking in students. Apparently, the students in the same class are at very different levels, which made it very difficult for me to link my teaching with their real life. (Post-lesson interview, Miss Wu)

Class size and mixed ability groups did in fact emerge here as the main obstacles that Miss Wu experienced in seeking to implement the curriculum as intended:

I think I would like to use task-based teaching method whenever I can … I intend to follow the procedures suggested by the Teachers’ Book in my teaching plan, but I meet difficulty in teaching. You know, my students’ levels are very different and it is hard to control the large class. Moreover, it is time-consuming to carry out activities … I have lots of content to cover. (Pre-lesson interview, Miss Wu)

Time pressures were also noted here as an obstacle. Nonetheless, Miss Wu persisted in trying to follow the curriculum guidelines by providing regular opportunities for students to work in groups. In Lesson 2, after she had explained how to write a news report and made comments on the sample paper, she once again organized students in groups and asked them to discuss further how to improve this sample paper. In relation to her con-tinuing attempts to use group work, she said:

Though I have met difficulty in organizing activities in pairs or in groups, yet I still try my best to do so. This kind of teaching style and learning style takes time to shape. If I persist, I think my students will, more or less, make progress. (Post-lesson interview, Miss Wu)

These comments reveal a commitment to the new syllabus and a belief that, in time, tasks (which for her meant mainly pair and group work) would become easier to implement and beneficial for the students.

Grammar explanation, though not as explicit and lengthy as Mr Yang’s, was still a feature of Miss Wu’s work. In Lesson 1 she presented PowerPoint slides on which some basic rules for relative clauses were summarized. Students then practised relative clauses by doing oral and written translation. When asked for her views on grammar teaching, Miss Wu explained that:



Zheng and Borg 11

I think the most effective way for our students to learn English grammar is to practise it, not just to learn the rules by heart. I tried to use the exercises designed by the Teachers’ Book and got my students to practise and practise. I know that my students made some mistakes in doing so, but I think they will improve themselves through constant practice. (Post-lesson interview, Miss Wu)

Once again, Miss Wu’s commitment to following the Teachers’ Book is clear. In con-cluding our conversations with Miss Wu, we asked her whether she felt her teaching was task-based:

I myself was not quite sure if my performance was up to that standard, but, generally speaking, I tried to follow the procedures from the Teachers’ Book. When necessary, I would definitely skip some steps and use my own way. (Post-lesson interview, Miss Wu)

This final comment from the teacher emphasizes the major theme to emerge from this analysis of her beliefs and practices in relation to the use of tasks: her view that imple-menting the curriculum, and hence TBLT, meant following as closely as possible the procedures specified in the Teachers’ Book. She said that she would diverge from these when required, though we saw no examples of this in the two observed lessons. She was committed to making the officially recommended procedures work and persisted with these (particularly the use of oral group work, which for Miss Wu seemed to be a key feature of TBLT), even when it impacted negatively on her control of the class. Despite challenges posed by class size, student ability, and time pressures, she remained positive and optimistic that in time the benefits of the new curriculum would be felt by her and the students.

3 Ms Ma

Ms Ma’s lessons are summarized in Table 4. Each lesson consisted of four stages, though the only element in common was the final stage which was language practice.

Lesson 1 was a reading lesson and Ms Ma started this by explaining grammar; specifi-cally, she focused on the differences between a request and a command and told the students about direct and indirect speech. After the explanation the students were asked to practise the grammar in small groups. The third stage of the lesson was the reading focus. Ms Ma first encouraged her students to get a general understanding of the passage by skimming and scanning, then she asked them to read the text paragraph by paragraph so that they could find more detailed information. At the end of the lesson Ms Ma gave the students some written practice in using words and phrases selected from the text.

Table 4. Ms Ma’s Lessons.


1 Grammar explanation 10 Revision (reading) 62 Grammar practice 12 Listening 113 Reading 15 Speaking 144 Vocabulary practice 8 Language practice 14




In Lesson 2, Ms Ma started by checking students’ homework and asking some of them to recite paragraphs from the text they had revised at home. She also asked three pairs of students to turn sentences from direct speech into indirect speech. After this revision, Ms Ma did some listening work; students listened to a short passage and were required to identify detailed information in response to her prompts. This listening work was fol-lowed by speaking practice about direct and indirect speech which the students did in pairs and groups. Ms Ma concluded her lesson by reviewing and practising the key gram-mar and vocabulary covered in this lesson.

Our observations suggested that Ms Ma regularly dedicated class time to explicit grammar work and her views about grammar were confirmed when we asked her about her understandings of the new curriculum:

With the introduction of the new curriculum, it appeared to me that our educational officials and experts overemphasized the importance of developing students’ communication abilities in speaking and listening. To them, it seemed as if developing students’ speaking and listening comprehension is all there is in English language teaching. I definitely agree with the idea that speaking and listening should be enhanced, but it does not mean there is no place for grammar teaching. On the contrary, grammar teaching must also be better enhanced. (Pre-lesson interview, Ms Ma)

Ms Ma, then, felt that the new curriculum placed too much emphasis on communicative speaking and listening. These concerns resurfaced when we asked her for her views on using tasks:

Nowadays, when people mention task-based teaching, they have a bias or the wrong idea, that is, it seems as if task-based teaching can only be used in developing students’ speaking and listening abilities. I think it is completely wrong. As I understand it, we can also use task-based teaching to engage our students in grammar learning. Task-based teaching obviously provides students with contexts to use English, doesn’t it? (Pre-lesson interview, Ms Ma)

Ms Ma was of course correct here in her argument that TBLT is not just about speaking and listening. Her suggestion that TBLT provides students with contexts in which to use grammar was also correct, and she was the only one among the three teachers in this study who saw a connection between using tasks and teaching grammar. Her approach to grammar in Lesson 1, though, was not consistent with TBLT as it took the form of expla-nations prior to controlled practice (more in tune with a PPP approach to language teach-ing) followed by reading work. Ms Ma’s rationale here was:

I think grammatical points, new words and expressions are usually the main difficulty for my students to understand the text. So I prefer to help them clear away the obstacle in advance. In fact, I added just one more component to the pre-reading process that the Teachers’ Book suggested, that is, I explained the grammar before my students set out to get the general idea of the text. My teaching experience tells me it is very necessary. (Post-lesson interview, Ms Ma)

She acknowledged too that this was an example of the typical approach she adopted in organizing her lessons:



Zheng and Borg 13

Based on my personal belief that grammar is the first priority in learning a foreign language, I usually teach grammar first, and then I have my students practise useful grammatical items to consolidate what they have just learned. This does not necessarily mean I ignore developing their speaking and listening comprehension. In fact, I feel they can speak more correctly and understand better when they get familiar with the key grammatical points of the lesson. That is why I usually teach grammar followed by reading, listening and speaking. (Pre-lesson interview, Ms Ma)

As she noted above, explaining grammar prior to reading the text was not a step pro-posed in the Teachers’ Book. However, Ms Ma added this step based on the belief that students would find it hard to understand the text without first having the key grammar explained. In this sense, she was not implementing the curriculum as it was intended and introducing a focus on form to activities that were meant to be more meaning oriented. More generally, TBLT seemed to have had limited impact on Ms Ma’s work. Grammar remained a priority for her, and although she did give the students some opportunities to talk in groups, she did not feel that developing students’ oral communicative skills deserved the prominence she felt it was given in the new curriculum. She also felt that the large size of her class, and the different levels of students in it, made pair and group work difficult to manage:

The thing that I am worried about is that I am not able to monitor all of the performance in pairs or in groups, as you know, the class size is extremely large … I have fifty-one students in all. The good students always take the advantage to speak more, but the poor students are afraid of making mistakes … and, therefore, they often keep silent. I think the big challenge for me is how to organize more suitable activities for my students at different levels. (Post-lesson interview, Ms Ma)

In summary, then, it appeared that Ms Ma had not embraced in any deep manner the new curriculum. She disagreed with the emphasis it placed on speaking and listening and felt that large classes made regular interactive oral work problematic. She held very strong beliefs about the need for students to know grammar well and felt that skills work such as reading needed to be prefaced with explanations of the grammar to appear in the text. She recognized tasks could be used for any skill, not just speaking, but her persistent focus on grammar (introducing it even when not recommended in the Teachers’ Book) meant that it was difficult to discern in her teaching any places where her work could be described as task-based.

V Discussion

The analysis we have presented here highlights the value of interpretive studies grounded in a descriptive understanding of what teachers do in the classrooms. By combining evi-dence of what the teachers did with their explanations, in their words, for their behav-iours, insights have emerged here into teachers’ implementation of tasks in the 2003 secondary English curriculum in China.

Our first research question examined teachers’ understandings of TBLT. Overall, the common understanding of tasks we can extract from these teachers is that it involved communicative work, in pairs or groups, with a predominant focus on speaking. If we




compare this to the characteristics of tasks listed in the curriculum document (Ministry of Education, 2003; see earlier literature review), teachers’ understandings of tasks seemed narrow. There was also no evidence in the teachers’ commentaries of an aware-ness of the different ways that tasks and TBLT are defined in the literature (e.g. Ellis, 2003; Nunan, 2004; Willis & Willis, 2007). In particular, one point often stressed in such definitions – that tasks focus on non-linguistic outcomes – did not emerge at all here. The understandings of tasks held by these teachers, then, did not distinguish them from com-municative activities more generally. In this respect they were similar to some of the teachers in East (2012), who also held very broad views of what a task was. In reaching this conclusion we are not being critical of the teachers; it is likely that their views were powerfully shaped by the examples they saw in the curriculum materials they were given. In fact one conclusion these findings suggest is that, as implemented in the 2003 curriculum for English, tasks do seem to be synonymous with communicative activities more generally.2

Our second research question asked about the extent to which the teachers imple-mented TBLT as intended. Here too various perspectives were evident. Miss Wu’s implementation of the curriculum was very close to what was proposed in the Teachers’ Book. Mr Yang and Ms Ma both adhered less closely to the guidelines and in both cases they introduced a stronger element of grammar work than was recommended. They were both experienced teachers and the persistent power of their beliefs about language learn-ing and teaching was clear, especially through Ms Ma’s commitment to explicit pre-emptive grammar work. These two senior teachers thus provide evidence of how beliefs grounded in experience can mediate curricular recommendations (for similar insights see Orafi & Borg, 2009).

Our final research question examined the factors which shaped the teachers’ imple-mentation of TBLT. As noted above, the curriculum materials the teachers worked from were a very strong influence on their lessons; in particular, all three participants here were guided by their Teachers’ Books, which provided detailed procedural advice. Also as noted above, teachers’ decisions about implementing the curriculum were shaped by their beliefs about aspects of language teaching and learning, such as the importance of grammar or of speaking. While these beliefs did not lead to major adaptations in the implemented curriculum, they were nonetheless powerful enough to cause shifts in the orientation that the proposed curriculum was given (e.g. in Ms Ma’s case, the curriculum assumed a stronger grammar orientation than intended). If Mr Yang and Ms Ma are in any way typical of experienced secondary school teachers of English in China, then, as indicated by the literature on curriculum innovation discussed earlier, the wider persis-tence of such deep-rooted beliefs about grammar would represent a challenge to the implementation of the new curriculum. A third set of influences on teachers here were contextual, and they commented on how large classes, low proficiency or mixed ability students, time pressures, and examinations all hindered their implementation of the cur-riculum. These are factors that have emerged in several other studies of curriculum implementation (e.g. Carless, 2007a) and their presence here was not particularly sur-prising. What was interesting, though, was the manner in which Miss Wu, the youngest teacher in the study, persisted in her commitment to the curriculum even though doing so created classroom management problems for her. In her case it seems that her beliefs in



Zheng and Borg 15

the value of the curricular principles outweighed the concerns she had about the potential problems that implementing these principles might have in her classroom. The two more experienced teachers here did not exhibit such behaviour.

VI Conclusions

Before discussing the implications of this study we must acknowledge its limitations. Clearly, we cannot make general claims about Chinese secondary school teachers of English based on the three cases we have analysed, although we believe that many of the issues highlighted here reflect ones highlighted in previous research and will resonate more widely in the Chinese context. We also acknowledge that only two lessons per teacher were examined; while they generated interesting descriptive data of classroom events, observing further lessons for each teacher would have provided a stronger basis for claims about these teachers’ work more generally. Nonetheless, we feel this work makes a valuable contribu-tion to our understandings of teachers’ practices and beliefs in relation to TBLT.

In terms of implications, this study suggests that teachers of English in secondary schools in China may benefit from opportunities to deepen their understandings of what TBLT means, both as implied in the curriculum and in the literature more generally. For example, it is important that teachers extend their understandings of TBLT beyond a focus on speaking in pairs or groups; teachers would also benefit from an understanding of the non-linguistic outcomes of tasks and of the different roles that grammar can play in TBLT (see, for example Carless, 2007b; Loschky & Bley-Vroman, 1993). This latter point seems particularly important given that attention to grammar continues to be a valued aspect of English lessons in China. In-service teacher educators can address all of these issues, and one strategy they can use in doing so is data-based teacher development (Borg, 1998). This approach to teacher education emphasizes reflection and awareness-raising based on the study of transcripts of lessons and of teachers’ commentaries on their work. Thus, dur-ing an in-service teacher education session participants could first be presented with a transcript, for example, of the start of Lesson 1 from Ms Ma’s case, and asked to comment on the extent to which they feel it is task-based; the recommended procedures from the curriculum or Teachers’ Book could then be fed in, and participants could be asked to compare these to the lesson and to identify any discrepancies. The next stage might be for the participants to consider why those discrepancies exist, after which Ms Ma’s own com-mentary on her teaching – her explanation for diverging from the recommended proce-dures – could be introduced into the discussion. Analyses of this kind can lead to a greater awareness among participants of, for example, how teachers’ beliefs and contextual fac-tors influence instructional choices, of what TBLT is, and of the role of grammar in task-based teaching. The insights emerging from case-based in-service teacher education of this kind can then be extended through reading and, most importantly, by inviting teachers to undertake similar reflective analyses of their own teaching and of the factors that shape it (so motivated by the analysis of others’ work, teachers can, for example, then study the extent to which they use TBLT and what role grammar plays in their own work). The kinds of qualitative insight we have provided here into the teaching of English in Chinese secondary schools, in addition to being of empirical value, can thus also provide the basis of participant-centred in-service teacher education.




Funding

This work was supported by a grant from Shanghai International Studies University Major Scientific Research Project (project number: KX161027).

Notes

1. This extract in English of the MOE document was taken from a translation of the curricu-lum document produced by Shanxi Institute of Education and verified by the foreign language department there.

2. It is interesting to note that recent years have seen the revision of English curricula in China and that in these revisions less emphasis is being placed on the use of tasks. The 2003 senior high curriculum we focused on here will be revised in the near future and a similar change of emphasis is likely.

References

Andon, N., & Eckerth, J. (2009). Chacun à son gout? Task-based L2 pedagogy from the teacher’s point of view. International Journal of Applied Linguistics, 19, 286–310.

Borg, S. (1998). Data-based teacher development. ELT Journal, 52, 273–281.Borg, S. (2006). Teacher cognition and language education: Research and practice. London:

Continuum.Carless, D. (2004). Issues in teachers’ reinterpretation of a task-based innovation in primary

schools. TESOL Quarterly, 38, 639–662.Carless, D. (2007a). Grammatical options in a task-based approach. Modern English Teacher, 16,

29–32.Carless, D. (2007b). The suitability of task-based approaches for secondary schools: Perspectives

from Hong Kong. System, 35, 595–608.Carless, D. (2009). Revisiting the TBLT versus P-P-P debate: Voices from Hong Kong. Asian

Journal of English Language Teaching, 19, 49–66.Cortazzi, M., & Li, J. (1996). Cultures of learning: Language classrooms in China. In H. Coleman

(Ed.), Society and the language classroom (pp. 169–206). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Deng, C.R., & Carless, D. (2009). The communicativeness of activities in a task-based innovation in Guangdong, China. Asian Journal of English Language teaching, 19, 113–134.

East, M. (2012). Task-based language teaching from the teachers’ perspective: Insights from New Zealand. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Fullan, M. (2001).The new meaning of educational change. 3rd edition. New York: Teachers

College Press.Loschky, L., & Bley-Vroman, R. (1993). Grammar and task-based methodology. In G. Crookes &

S. Gass (Eds.), Tasks and language learning: Integrating theory and practice (pp. 123–167). Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Markee, N. (1997), Second language acquisition research: A resource for changing teachers’ pro-fessional cultures?. The Modern Language Journal, 81, 80–93.

Ministry of Education (2003) Putong gaozhong yingyu kecheng biaozhun [English Curriculum Standards for Senior Secondary School (trial version)]. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press.

Newby, P. (2010). Research methods for education. Harlow: Pearson Education Limited.Nunan, D. (2004). Task-based language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



Zheng and Borg 17

Orafi, S.M.S., & Borg, S. (2009). Intentions and realities in implementing communicative cur-riculum reform. System, 37, 243–253.

Richards, K. (2009). Interviews. In J. Heigham & R.A. Croker (Eds.), Qualitative research in applied linguistics (pp. 182–199). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Samuda, V., & Bygate, M. (2008). Tasks in second language learning. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Scrivener, J. (2011). Learning teaching. 3rd edition. Oxford: Macmillan.Snyder, J., Bolin, F., & Zumwalt, K. (1992). Curriculum implementation. In P.W. Jackson (Ed.),

Handbook of research on curriculum (pp. 402–435). New York: Macmillan.Van de Branden, K. (2006). Introduction: Task-based language teaching in a nutshell. In K.

Van de Branden (Ed.), Task-based language education: From theory to practice (pp. 1–16). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Wang, Q. (2007). The national curriculum changes and their effects on English language teach-ing in the People’s Republic of China. In Cummins, J. and Davison, C. (Eds), International handbook of English language teaching: Volume 1 (pp. 87–106). Norwell, MA: Springer.

Wang, W., & Lam, A.S.L. (2010). The English language curriculum for senior secondary school in China: Its evolution from 1949. RELC Journal, 40, 65–82

Wedell, M. (2009). Planning for educational change: Putting people and their contexts first. London: Continuum.

Willis, D., & Willis, J.R. (2007). Doing task-based teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Wyatt, M., & Borg, S. (2011). Development in the practical knowledge of language teachers:

A comparative study of three teachers designing and using communicative tasks on an in-service BA TESOL programme in the Middle East. Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching, 5, 233–252.

Yan, C. (2012). ‘We can only change in a small way’: A study of secondary English teachers’ implementation of curriculum reform in China. Journal of Educational Change, 13, 431–447.

Yan, C., & He, C. (2012). Bridging the implementation gap: An ethnographic study of English teachers’ implementation of the curriculum reform in China. Ethnography and Education, 7, 1–19.

Zhang, Y. (2007). TBLT-innovation in primary school English language teaching in Mainland China. In K. Van den Branden, K. Van Gorp, & M. Verhelst (Eds.), Tasks in action: Task-based language education from a classroom-based perspective (pp. 68–91). Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars.

Zhang, Y., & Hu, G. (2010). Between intended and enacted curricula: Three teachers and a man-dated curricular reform in mainland China. In K. Menken & O. García (Eds.), Negotiating lan-guage policies in schools: Educators as policymakers (pp. 123–142). New York: Routledge.

Zheng, X. (2005). Pedagogy and pragmatism: secondary English language teaching in the People’s Republic of China. Unpublished PhD thesis, The University of Hong Kong, China.

Zheng, X., & Adamson, B. (2003). The pedagogy of a secondary school teacher of English in the People’s Republic of China: Changing the stereotypes. RELC Journal, 34, 323–337.

Zheng, X., & Davison, C. (2008). Changing pedagogy: Analysing ELT teachers in China. London: Continuum.



Documents

Task-based learning and teaching in China: Secondary school teachers' beliefs and practices