TBL Approach

• one thing the video/article confirms about this approach being useful for business English

This tbl video demonstrates that the tasks-based approach can provide flexible and negotiable objectives to provide opportunities to set themes and linguistic content to suit the business English learner.

• one thing you learnt about this approach and how it can assist business English learners further

I learned that the instructor may set the tasks to mimic the real world needs of the language learner which allows for problem solving and coping skills to be practiced. However the focus of TBL is to use the language and focus on meaning or understanding and being understood.

• one thing you consider a weakness of this approach for business English learners

Without an extensive grammar or lexical focus the task-based approach may not best address highly technical new language expressions or vocabulary for a particular business English scope of focus. For example, a range of business tasks practice may not be enough to address the wide vocabulary perhaps necessary for financial reports reading and discussing among native English speakers or other task based needs of the learner.

• one thing you’d like to try from this approach with a group of business English learners

I think I would like to generate more student moderated final reports set on an online forum. I think my students are capable of collaborating more online and outside of class time and it might add the reading and writing real communication element that I find difficult to include in setting class based task activities when my focus is generating listening and speaking practice there. So that would be my learning goal: to assist students to generate more collaborative reading and writing tasks online outside of class time.