Dr Fan Jing Hua

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Abstract

The paper takes the perspective of Chinese as a second language and investigates how pragmatic intervention on language form in task planning in task-based language teaching (TBLT). TBLT is a highly designed but also highly flexible approach, and although definition of task has different emphasis and the steps in task cycle designing vary, the result of a task is unanimously emphasized (Skehan 1998, Willis & Willis 2001, Ellis 2003). Along with the emphasis on the result is the emphasis on the realness of the tasks. However, from the perspective of Gricean maxims of conversation, especially L. Horn's Q-principle and R-principle developed upon Gricean maxims, the interlocutors in a conversation tend to use direct and omitted utterances. This brings difficulties in task designing in TBLT, and one of the difficulties is that pedagogical tasks have to be so designed that the learners should focus on language forms while at the same time ensure communicative authenticity.

Form-focused practice is an essential link in the task cycle to ensure the quality and appropriateness of language. Usually, this is integrated into the pre-task design. Among the complexities in teaching tasks according to Skehan, code complexity can be dealt with in pre-task design. Code complexity consists of linguistic register and communicativeness, the former of which covers the linguistic varieties such as formality related to the power-relationship between the interlocutors while the latter of which is related with Gricean principle of quantity. The complexity of language form is often overlooked in TBLT due to the emphasis on the fulfillment of tasks, while interlocutors in communicative tasks that emphasize on authenticity tend to fulfill the task by using the most direct and simple form of language.

In real-world situation, the complexity of tasks may increase greatly because of the unfamiliar pragmatic context. On the one hand, to increase stylistic variables in the pre-task design from the perspective of pragmatics and integrate these variables into the main pedagogical task may strength the form awareness of language learners and prepare the learners for the real-world communication. This will counteract the negative impact of Gricean quantity-principle on language use in pedagogical tasks. On the other hand, to increase the complexity of pragmatic context may help to better integrate pedagogical tasks with authentic tasks and to lower the cognitive complexity in the future real-world tasks. This will increase the language learners' cultural awareness, to which TBLT has not yet pain sufficient attention.

Keyword(s) :task-based language teaching (TBLT); Gricean maxims of conversation; register variables; pedagogical task; real-world task