Jane Willis

Articles

1996. Dave Willis, Jane Willis. Consciousness-raising Activities. Originally published in Challenge and Change in Language Teaching. (source - download)

1998. Task-Based Learning – What Kind of Adventure? The Language Teacher. (source)

2005 - 2007. Jane Willis. Six Types of Tasks for TBL. Teaching English. British Council. (source)

2006. Jane Willis. From Challenges of the Past to Waves of the Future. Presented at the 20th APPI Conference 2006. In English, British Council magazine for Teachers of English in Portugal. (source - download)

2006. Jane Willis. Activity-based Language Learning at Primary Level. Report of presentation at the Al Ain Nord Anglia E2L Project Event. (source - download)

2017. Jane Willis. Meaning-focused Activities. The Hands Up Project. (source)

2018. Jane Willis. A Flexible Framework for Task-based Learning - An Overview of a Task-based Framework for Language Teaching. Longman. (source)

Article Sources

Jane Willis

Recommended books

Towards an Analysis of Discourse

John McHardy Sinclair, Malcolm Coulthard

1975, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (source)

Sinclair and Coulthard’s research into the English used by teachers and pupils led me to research the language of TEFL classrooms, where I found very controlled teacher talk and hardly any instances of meaning-focused learner talk. Learners were getting a very impoverished experience of English in everyday use and little chance to communicate freely.

Memory, Meaning and Method: Some Psychological Perspectives on Language Learning

Earl W. Stevick

1976, Rowley MA: Newbury House. (source)

The book that really started me thinking about how to teach

Second Language Pedagogy

N. S. Prabhu

1987, Oxford: Oxford University Press. (source)

The person who introduced me to TBLT was N. S. Prabhu in 1983, who later reported his research in this book. The COBUILD project started us thinking about what we should be teaching, and the importance of words and their collocations. [See Dave Willis. 1990. The Lexical Syllabus Honely: Collins ELT, available free at www.birmingham.ac.uk › lexical-syllabus]

Rules, Patterns and Words: Grammar and Lexis in English Language Teaching

Willis D

2003, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (source)

Represents an amalgamation of all the above and demonstrates how TBLT – a meaning-focused approach – can incorporate a focus on form.

Place in HLT

While I was delighted to be asked to contribute a paragraph “to encapsulate Jane Willis’s relationship to HLT in her work, particularly with respect to TBLT”, the request created a dilemma. I’ve never been able to see the unique contribution of Jane and Dave to TBLT as anything other than a partnership, and so my comment here is applicable to both. One aspect of the Willises’ approach to TBLT that resonates with HLT is its emphasis on the concept of the resourceful learner. Too often, whether consciously or not, we project a deficit view of our learners, reminding them what they can’t do. Jane and Dave’s approach challenges the deficit view that TBLT exceeds lower-proficiency learners’ resources. They demonstrate that by collaboratively drawing on and pooling all their semiotic resources, learners can rise to the communicative challenges posed by TBLT.

— David Nunan

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