Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom

Cambridge Language Teaching Library

by David Nunan

Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom provides a balanced introduction to both the theoretical and practical aspects of communicative task design, and is aimed at all second and foreign language teachers who want to develop their own tasks, or adopt/adapt those of others. The major purpose is to integrate recent research and practice in language teaching into a framework for analysing learning tasks. This framework should help teachers select, adapt or create their own communicative tasks. The ideas presented are relevant to teachers working in or preparing for a range of teaching situations with a variety of learner types.

Genres: Linguistics

224 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1989

About the author

David Nunan is an Australian linguist who has focused on the teaching of English. His ELT textbook series "Go For It!" is the largest selling textbook series in the world with sales exceeding 1 billion copies.

Nunan's academic and student textbooks are published by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press, and the EFL publishing division of Cengage Learning. Nunan is Academic President of Anaheim University based in Anaheim, California. Nunan serves in a concurrent role as Dean of the Graduate School of Education and Professor of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) at Anaheim University where he has worked since 1996.

In 2000, Nunan served as President of TESOL Inc., the world's largest language teaching association, and was the first person to serve as President from outside North America. Previously Nunan has served as Chair and Professor of Applied Linguistics at the University of Hong Kong and has been involved in the teaching of graduate programs for such institutions as Columbia University, the University of Hawaii, Monterey Institute for International Studies, and others.

Nunan began his career in Teaching English as a Second Language (ESL) at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, where he learned Thai. Nunan has received numerous awards throughout his career for his contributions to the field of English Language Teaching.

Awards:

In 2002 Nunan received a congressional citation from the United States House of Representatives for his services to English language education through his pioneering work in online education through Anaheim University. In 2003 he was ranked the 7th most influential Australian in Asia by Business Review Weekly, and in 2005 he was named one of the top "50 Australians who Matter". In November 2006 Nunan was awarded the Convocation medal for outstanding achievement and contribution internationally to the profession of Teaching English as a second language, from Flinders University, where he earned his Ph.D. in Education and Linguistics. In December 2006 Nunan was invited by the Australian Prime Minister to attend the Advance Leading 100 Global Australians Summit in Sydney, Australia. Nunan is a distinguished advisor to the [Asian EFL Journal].

Reviews

[Sandy Millin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I feel like this book is very much of its time, and doesn't seem to have much for a reader now. It was written nearly 30 years ago, and while it has occasional interesting features, generally I didn't feel I learnt much from it. It has most interest as a historical document, with some units of work in Appendix A which contain approaches to task design I haven't seen elsewhere, and a useful summary of 70s/80s methods. Nothing likethe focus on tasks and TBL which I was hoping for, though if I'd seen the publication date I probably would have realised that!

[David Hunter · Rating 3 out of 5]

This books definitely shows its age. While it does contain a lot of useful background information about task design and analysis, the field of language teaching has advanced greatly since the 1980s and many of the discussion points will be well-known to more modern teachers, curriculum designers, or language course administrators.

[John Hayward]

Read this as part of my MA in TESOL programme.