Task-Based Language Teaching: A Reader

In his opening plenary at TBLT 2005 (‘From Theory to Practice: First International Conference on Task-based Language Teaching’, Leuven, Belgium, 21–23 September 2005), Long (2005) depicted the TBLT project as ‘a journey along a road as yet unbuilt’ (p. 15). He told the story of the man who had coined this metaphor, José María Arizmendiarrieta (Arizmendi), the Catholic priest who had inspired and promoted the successful cooperative movement in Spain's impoverished Basque country early in the last century. For Long, the task-based language testing (TBLT) journey is carefully negotiated between what he described as an overly interventionist teaching orthodoxy that relies on both synthetic syllabuses and methods based on a focus on forms, on the one hand, and an ‘irresponsibly, wholly’ non-interventionist one that involves a pure focus on meaning, on the other (ibid.). The message, in part, is that TBLT represents an attempt to forge something principled and practicable that avoids the pitfalls of past efforts. As with Arizmendi's cooperatives, Long points out, we have in TBLT a work in progress under the control and ownership of the people directly involved who are endeavouring to steer clear of the extremes of past efforts. Thus, ‘we build the road as we travel’ (ibid.), and judging by this book, Task-Based Language Teaching: A Reader, we are well on our way.