Short-listed for the British Council Innovation Awards 2004 that promote and reward excellence in English Language Teaching Designing Language Teaching Tasks provides a research-based account of how experienced teachers and task designers prepare activities for use in the language classroom. It gives detailed information on the procedures which designers follow. The book is a description of research and will therefore interest applied linguists and students in the field. It is written in a clear and comprehensible way, and should appeal to all those who want to learn to write good language teaching materials.

This book integrates recent research and practice in language teaching into a framework for analysing learning tasks.

What is understanding and how does it differ from knowledge? How can we determine the big ideas worth understanding? Why is understanding an important teaching goal, and how do we know when students have attained it? How can we create a rigorous and engaging curriculum that focuses on understanding and leads to improved student performance in today's high-stakes, standards-based environment? Authors Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe answer these and many other questions in this second edition of Understanding by Design. Drawing on feedback from thousands of educators around the world who have used the UbD framework since its introduction in 1998, the authors have greatly revised and expanded their original work to guide educators across the K-16 spectrum in the design of curriculum, assessment, and instruction. With an improved UbD Template at its core, the book explains the rationale of backward design and explores in greater depth the meaning of such key ideas as essential questions and transfer tasks. Readers will learn why the familiar coverage- and activity-based approaches to curriculum design fall short, and how a focus on the six facets of understanding can enrich student learning. With an expanded array of practical strategies, tools, and examples from all subject areas, the book demonstrates how the research-based principles of Understanding by Design apply to district frameworks as well as to individual units of curriculum. Combining provocative ideas, thoughtful analysis, and tested approaches, this new edition of Understanding by Design offers teacher-designers a clear path to the creation of curriculum that ensures better learning and a more stimulating experience for students and teachers alike.

A comprehensive account of the research and practice of task-based language teaching.

"A comprehensively revised edition of Designing tasks for the communicative classroom"--Cover.

"Ideas in Action: activities for task-based learning provides EFL teachers with a balance of theoretical insights [...]. Activities for task-based Learning helps ensure that meaningful communication takes priority over focusing on pre-selected language forms. This book is primarily intended for the general English adult and teenage classroom [...]" -- A la contracoberta.

This book provides interdisciplinary perspectives on task-based language teaching (TBLT) and task-based language assessment (TBLA) in English as a second language (ESL) context. It discusses theoretical and experimental insights of TBLT and TBLA from cognitive, cognitive linguistic, and psycholinguistic viewpoints. The chapters, written by leading language teaching specialists in the field, introduce the reader to a comprehensive range of issues related to TBLT and TBLA such as curriculum design, materials development, and classroom teaching & testing. With interdisciplinary appeal, the book is a valuable resource for researchers in task-based language teaching and assessment. It is equally useful for teachers to whom it offers practical suggestions for designing tasks for teaching and testing.