Others, like Prabhu in the Bangalore Project, thought that tasks were a way of tapping into learners' natural mechanisms for second-language acquisition, and weren't concerned with real-life communication per se.
[3] Prabhu noticed that his students could learn language just as easily with a non-linguistic problem as when they were concentrating on linguistic questions.
Major scholars who have done research in this area include Teresa P. Pica, Martin East, and Michael Long.
Willis (1996)[4] has defined a task as a goal based activity involving the use of the learners' existing language resources, that leads to the outcome.
He defines pedagogical task as a classroom activity that involves a student to understand and produce the target language while focusing on conveying the meaning and not being too concerned with form.
Although there may be several effective frameworks for creating a task-based learning lesson, here is a basic outline: In the pre-task, the teacher will present what will be expected from the students in the task phase.
Additionally, in the "weak" form of TBLT, the teacher may prime the students with key vocabulary or grammatical constructs, although this can mean that the activity is, in effect, more similar to the more traditional present-practice-produce (PPP) paradigm.
If a task is set to extend over longer periods of time, e.g. weeks, and includes iterative cycles of constructive activity followed by review, TBLT can be seen as analogous to Project-based learning.
The activity often involves selection of relevant information as well, and learners may have to meet criteria of completeness and correctness in making the transfer.
Harmer says that although the teacher may present language in the pre-task, the students are ultimately free to use what grammar constructs and vocabulary they want.
[13] In terms of interaction, information gap tasks in particular have been shown to promote negotiation of meaning and output modification.
[14][15] According to Plews and Zhao, task-based language learning can suffer in practice from poorly informed implementation and adaptations that alter its fundamental nature.