This blog post is part of the Sponge Chats video series.
For those avid Sponge ELT fans, you will all know that some time ago I reviewed Daniel O. Jackson’s brilliant Cambridge Element – Task Based Language Teaching. After this, I was lucky enough to get in touch with Daniel, and he agreed to come on for a Sponge Chat to talk about all things TBLT. As you can imagine, I was very excited!
In this Sponge Chat, we looked at the what of TBLT, but it was a little different to my chat with Martin East. With Daniel, we went a little bit deeper into certain themes present within the TBLT literature, namely analytic and synthetic syllabi, and implicit and explicit learning. We also touched on a fairly new research area, teacher noticing, and Daniel was also kind enough to provide teacher educators with some advice for implementing TBLT. And, for those that are looking to take on a PhD in the future, we spoke briefly about his doctoral journey.
And, of course, there were book recommendations! Here they are:
- Daniel’s Cambridge Element
- Language Aptitude Theory and Practice – Edited by Edward Wen, Peter Skehan and Richard Sparks
- English Language Teaching Now and How It Could Be – by Geoff Jordan and Mike Long (Just FYI, I actually have a copy, and when I have time I will be looking to finish reading it and get a review out to you guys!)
- Language Teacher Noticing in Tasks – by Daniel O. Jackson
Once again, the IATBLT task bank came up. Be sure to check this out.
I had a lot of fun with this Sponge Chat – as you can probably tell by the length! More than that, though, I learnt a lot, and so I hope you all find value in the chat as well. If you do, please let me know – I’d love to hear your thoughts!
SPONGE ELT 