Transcript Macro and micro evaluation of task

Presented by:Nastaran Rashidi,Mina
Keivanlo,and Mahsa Fallah
 Engaging
students in a series of
communicative tasks.
 TBLT is based on a view of language learning
that claims a L2 is best learned through
learner’s effort to communicate with it.
 Every
task has 4 criteria:
 1.it should be meaningful(semantic and
pragmatic)
 2.there should be a gap
 3.learners should rely on their own resources
 4.language is a means to achieve outcome
not as end
 Situational
grammar exercises satisfy the
criteria 2 and 3 which means there is a gap
and learners should rely on their own
learning but it doesn’t satisfy criteria 1 and 4
as the outcome is primarily the use of
correct language
 Task-based:requires
a syllabus consisting of
unfocused tasks,the content of the
instructional programme is specified in terms
of the tasks to be completed
 Task-supported language teaching:utilises a
structural syllabus and typically
involves(presentation,parctice,production)
 According to widdowson:task-supported
language teaching is likely to result in
encoded usage rather than realization as
purposeful use
 Unfocused
task:designed to help learners to
use language communicatively in general
 Focused task:are designed to help learner to
use language communicatively by using
specific language features
 Input-providing
tasks:engage learner in
listening and reading
 Output-providing tasks:engage learner in
speaking and writing
 Closed-outcme task:has limited number of
outcomes
 Oped-outcome task:has many possible
outcomes
 Macro-evaluation
can be defined as
evaluation that seeks to answer one or both
of the following question:
 1.to what extent was the
programme/project effective and efficient in
meeting its goals
 2.in what face can the programme/project
be improved?
 Is
an evaluation carried out for
accountability or developmental purposes by
collecting information relating to various
administrative and curricular aspects of the
programme including teaching materials
A
narrow focus on some specific aspects of
the curriculum or the administration of the
programme
 macro-evaluation may eventually emerge
bottom-up from repeated micro evaluations
 Bretta
,Davies sought to compare the
learning outcome of learners involved in
the project(experimental group)with
those in traditional classes(control
group).
 Tests
that favoured the experimental
group (task-based test)….those that
favoured the control group(structuretest)…and 3neutral test(contextualized
grammar,,,dictation,,,reading/listening
comprehension)
 In
the neutral test ,the experimental group
scored higher than the control group.
 on the group –biased test the experimental
group did better on the task-based tests and
control group scored higher in the structural
test.
 they conclude that the results of the
evaluation support the claim that task-based
instruction produce different results from
form-focused instruction. And this is
reflected in the task-based learners superior
acquisition of the structure that havenot
explicitly taught and also in their ability to
deploy what they have learned more readily.
bretta collected historical narrative from 15
teacher and then rated it:

1)orientation:( lack of understanding task
based and failed to implement it)

2)routine: understanding the rationale and
implement it)

3)renewal (adopt a critical perspective and
demonstrate the weakness and strengths).
 Bretta found that 40 percent of the teacher
were at level 1 ,47 percent at level 2 and
13percent at level 3.
 he finally concluded that what he had done in
the project cannot be assimilated by regular
teacher and this is because lack of proficiency.

 there
have been a number of evaluation:
 the study by Li:
 context: the introduction of communicative
language teaching into secondary school in
south korea where traditionally a
grammatical syllabus has been used.
 purpose: to investigate the perception of the
teacher of south korea of implementation of
CLT.
 evaluation method:questionnaire:with likert
scale items and open question administered to
18 secondary school teacher
 Finding:report
difficulties in using CLT in
korea:
 1)difficulties caused by teacher.
 2)student
 3)educational
 4)CLT
system
 The
study by Mitchell and Lee:
 Context: two settings explored:
 1)11-12 year old English students in
secondary school learning french
 2)10-11 year old students in a korean
primary school learning english
 Purpose:to
examine how the communicative
approach was interpreted and how the role
of good language learner was constructed.
 Evaluation method: twenty recorded
lessons- interviews and back up
documentation.
 Findings:both
teachers reflected a weak
interpretation of CLT:
 1)They aimed to provide learners with a
fixed body of predetermined expressions and
little opportunity for creative language.
 2)teacher
E adopted an
egalitarian,undiffrentiated approach whereas
teacher K privileged the more able students
to provide the good model
 The
study by carless:
 Context: primary school classrooms in
hongkong.the three teacher in these
classroom implement task-based syllabus
 Purpose:what
are the teachers attitude and
how they are attempting to implement taskbased syllabus?
 Evaluation
method:1) classroom
observation-field notes and transcriptions
 2)six-semi structured interview
 3)an attitude scale(data analysed
qualitatively)
 Findings:the
tasks represented language
practice activities rather than genuine
practice .they identified 3 key issues:
 1)use
of mother tongue
 2)discipline
 3)target
challenges
language production
 The
study by Butler:
 Context:the
governments of
korea,japan,taiwan have introduced english
teaching with the expectancy that the focus
will be on the oral communication.
 Purpose:to
identify teachers concerns
regarding communicative activities
 Evaluation
method: multivocal ethnography
involving presenting teacher with
videotaped scenes.
 Findings:1)teachers
in different countries
employed similar activity with different
motives which led to different activities
 2)teachers
expressed concerns about how to
develop communicative activities that were
suitable for higher grade students
 3)class
harmonisation seen problematic
especially in japan
 The
study by Mcdonough and chaikitmongkol:
 Context:
replace the traditional form
focused course with task-based course in
Thailand.key focus of course was the use of
English for international communication.
 Purpose:1)
what were Thai teacher and
learner reactions toward task-based course?
 2)if
they had any concerns how were these
concerns addressed?

Evaluation method:task evaluations-students
kept learning notebooks-observations by teacher
and participant-course evaluation-interviewsfield notes

Findings:A)teacher and learner reaction:
1)increased learner independence
 2)course content
 3)real world relevance
 B)addressing participants concerns:

1)revision undertaken to help participants adjust
to the course
 2)providing learner support
 3)managing course materials.


An inspection of (purpose)column suggests that
these evaluation studies had 2 general aims:

1)to identify teachers perception and attitudes
to task-based teaching.

2)to examine how the teacher implemented
TBLT.
Butlers observation support sociocultural view
of task-.
 task : the actual materials that compromise the
workplan for the activity
 activity:the learners behaviour that ensues when
learners perform tasks

 Carless
reported that teachers he
investigated had mixed and confused the
notion of (task)
 McDonough and Chaikitmonkgol have the
most to say about materials. one of the
problem they identified is how to interlink
task-based materials that specifically
developed for the university level with the
materials from commercial book.another
issue is the quantity of material.they
conclude that it’s the curriculum that
dictates the use of textbook not the
textbook.
 Finally
we conclude that such macroevaluation shed light on the viability of
TBLT,it offers little insight into effectiveness
of specific tasks or types of tasks and it is for
this reason that there is a need for microevaluation
 In
Elis he outlined a procedure for
conducting a micro micro evaluation of a
task
 1.starting point Is a description of a task in
terms of its objectives
 2.the next to plan the evaluation by deciding
on the objectives and purpose-the scope of
the evaluation
 3.the timing-the types of information-the
data for the evaluation are collected
 Simons(1997)
evaluated an unfocused in
 formation-gap task.the task was performed
in pairs it required to students A to describe
a route marked on the map and student B
could draw in the route on his or her map
but the 2 maps were not identical and
students’ A map included some information
that was missing from student B’s map thus
creating a number referential differences
Simons aim was simply to establish whether
the task was successful in eliciting
meaningful communication
 1.telling
 2.questioning
 3.acknowledging
 4.responding
 5.miscellaneous
 Simons
concluded because of the referential
differences of this information gap task was
an effective device for including learners to
use the second language communicating
 Freeman
set out to evaluate a dicto_gloss
task.this required students to a listening text
three times
 First they were asked to answer a multiple
choice question
 The second , the students were told to note
down the key content words
 The third different students should focus and
take notes on the use of different linguistic
forms
 Freeman’s
aims of evaluation was designed
to establish both accountability and to
provide information about how to improve
the task so freeman concluded that the
students were largely successful in achieving
the outcome of the task





Conducted by yuan (1997) examined two decision
_making tasks
He was interested in investigating the effect of
implementation of variable pre_task planing and the
analysis focused on syntactical complexity
,syntactical variety and lexical variety
The results: an interesting finding is that the
opportunity to plan did not affect the learner ‘s
performance of the tasks in the same way.
All three evaluations were concerned with
establishing whether the tasks achieve what they
were designed to achieve but only one (freeman) also
considered how the task might be improved.
Only freeman’s study included a student_based
approach so it was the best among these evaluations
 Is
a good introspective opportunity for
evaluating teaching tachniques an materials
 This
chapter has examined the case for
carring out both macro-and microevaluations of the task-based teaching and
has reported examples of both types.