By jonathanzludwig Last updated: October 2, 2023

8 Task-based Language Teaching Activities to Simulate Key Situations

Do you like to solve problems? Complete a puzzle?

Miss the days when you’d dump a big pile of Legos on the floor, figure out which pieces go with which and put them all together?

Do you see language learning as a riddle, an enigma, a challenge that you have to find a way to unravel and put back together again in order to make it useful and meaningful?

Do your students?

If so, you should try task-based teaching activities in your language classroom!

Why Use Task-based Teaching?
What Is Task-based Teaching?
What Are the Steps for a Successful Task-based Teaching Activity?
8 Favorite Task-based Activities

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Why Use Task-based Teaching?

In task-based teaching, the center of the learning process moves to the students themselves and allows them to come to the realization that language is a tool to tackle and (re)solve real-world problems.

The process of task-based learning itself teaches important skills. Students learn:

How to ask questions
How to negotiate meaning
How to interact in and work within groups. Within this group work, they are able to observe different approaches to problem-solving as well as to learn how others think and make decisions.

These are all skills that our students will need in order to be successful in the real world, regardless of which language(s) they use there.

In addition, task-based teaching provides students with the linguistic components they will need to accomplish these real-world tasks. These include:

How to introduce themselves
How to talk about themselves, their families, their interests, their likes and dislikes, their needs, etc. in the right socio-cultural context.

By moving the focus away from mechanical drills—although such drills do still have their place even today in language teaching, especially when teaching highly inflected languages—task-based teaching focuses on communication and interaction, using appropriate language at the correct time.

What Is Task-based Teaching?

Task-based language teaching is a student-centered approach to second language instruction. It is an offshoot of the communicative approach, wherein activities focus on having students use authentic target language in order to complete meaningful tasks, i.e. situations they might encounter in the real world and other project-based assignments.

These projects could include visiting the doctor, making a phone call, conducting an interview in order to find answers to specific questions or gathering information to make a poster or advertisement.

In task-based teaching the focus is not on grammar, but rather on helping students develop linguistic strategies for completing the assigned tasks within the constraints of what they know of the target language. Because the emphasis is on spontaneous, creative language use, whether spoken or written, rather than on absolute accuracy, assessment is based on task outcome.

What Are the Steps for a Successful Task-based Teaching Activity?

Before even stepping into the classroom and using a task-based activity, it is important to have a firm objective in mind: Why are you using this activity?

What steps do you need to take there in order for your students to succeed?

1. Start with a pre-task activity. This stage starts with the instructor explaining to her students what will be expected in the task cycle and post-task review stages. This is very much in line with the PPP (presentation, practice, performance) approach to instructional design.

In a lower-level class, it will likely include an introduction or review of key vocabulary or grammatical concepts the students will need to accomplish the assigned task.
In a higher-level class, where the grammar and vocabulary have already been introduced, the students might be asked to brainstorm as to what language and linguistic features they would expect to need in order to complete the task successfully.

2. Follow the actual task cycle.

In this stage, the students complete the task either in pairs or small groups. The instructor is generally reduced to the role of observer, stepping in only when the students seem to be going too far astray from the assignment at hand.

3. Classroom work ends with the post-task review.

This is where the students present their work in some fashion. They might:

Report their findings to the class as a whole.
Perform a dialog or skit.
Share their written story or video or poster with their classmates.

Depending on your goals and the time available, you can ask your students to perform some type of peer assessment at this point. This also assures you that your students pay attention to the presentations of their classmates!

4. Give a relevant homework assignment.

Unless the activity is the culmination of a unit, chapter or class, you will likely need to come up with an appropriate homework assignment and a logical follow-up to the activity just completed in class. This too can take a number of forms. Your students could:

Write an essay based on their in-class work.
Write a reflective piece, a self-critique about what they accomplished and learned.
Write an assessment of the others in their group, of the other groups or of the project as a useful learning mechanism.
Turn in their own version of the project, as they would have done it if they could have worked independently, explaining why they would have done things differently had they had the opportunity.

8 Favorite Task-based Activities

With some theoretical background and those practical steps in mind, let’s look at some task-based activities you might want to use in your language classroom.

1. Road Trip

For this task-based language teaching activity, you should have enough maps for each group in your class.

At the beginning of the class, you should ask each group what information they need from you in order to plan the perfect trip. This might include the number of days you wish to travel, your budget and what you like to do while on the road or in your free time.
Once your students have this information, set them loose with their maps and give them time to plan!
When they are done, have them present their trip to the entire class. Students can decide to include pictures or authentic videos to showcase their trip, such as those found on FluentU.

FluentU allows students to watch a curated library of authentic English videos, that are paired with interactive dual-language subtitles that they can click on if they don’t know a word and want to see a context-specific definition.

Your class, as a whole, can now vote on which trip you are going to take!

What about homework? Depending on the level of the students, there are a couple of options:

If it is a lower-level class, they could write a short postcard home, telling some key points of one day of the trip.
If it is a more advanced level class, they could write two or three days’ journal entries, similar to a postcard, but more detailed and, of course, using more language skills.

2. The Business Mixer

If you have a class of college students or professionals, they will have to assessment Why not help prepare them for this by doing a simulation activity in the target language?

For this activity, you will need to prepare in advance a number of cards that will tell students:

The name of their company
The product they sell or represent
Some basic information about the company they work for
What they are looking for. You should be sure that each card has at least one match for point (4). You do not want to set your students up for failure.

Before starting, you should ensure that all students know what a mixer or networking activity is and what it entails.

For the activity itself:

Students will walk around the room introducing themselves and engaging in some small talk, before discussing what it is they do and what they are looking for in a business deal or partner.
They should move from person to person until they have found the perfect match! If they find their match before everyone else, they can continue to engage in small talk with others until everyone has found their match.
At the end of the activity, they should return to their perfect pair, and each can explain why it is that they are the match for that person.

For homework, as in real life, your students can follow up with a brief handwritten note or short email message thanking their partner for their time and reiterating their interest in working together.

3. First Day of Class

How do you spend the first day of class?

The odds are pretty good that your students are in your class in order to learn how to speak and that they will want as many opportunities to speak as they can find. This task can help with that!

Start that first day of class with a game of 20 Questions, but with some modifications. Namely, instead of using the game to guess the identity of a famous person, ask your students, first in groups and then as a whole, to come up with 20 questions.
Once you have agreed on a list of questions, send your students back into their groups to put these questions into a logical order. Come back together again and agree upon an order.
At this point, each student should pair up with another student, preferably one from a different group. They should ask each other the questions, making note of the answers.
After your students have done this, they should then take their schedules and compare them with that of another student or students whom they might find interesting to converse with.
The final step in this exercise is for the students to determine whether they have compatible schedules or not, and, if so, agree upon a time to meet for weekly or twice-monthly conversation.

For this particular activity, you don’t need a specific homework assignment because the follow-up activity will be the actual conversations in which the students engage.

4. The Farewell Party

Everyone sees friends move away at some point in their life. Maybe when that happened to you, you planned a farewell party for them. Why not turn this into a task-based activity for your classroom?

Before class, you will need to make a shopping list and a separate stack of cards. On them will be the foods and drinks that appear on that list. Each student will get a list and a card.

The lists could be in the first language or in the target language, depending on what type of class you are teaching. The cards should be in the target language.

The first task for your students is to go around and identify, in the target language, who is bringing what to the party.
Once you have been assured that everyone has done this step correctly, you can divide the class into small groups and start the second stage: planning the actual party!
For this task, you will need to assign your students a number of questions to resolve: They will need to decide when is the best time for the party, what they will do at the party, what food to bring, etc. At the end, each group will present its party plan and everyone will decide who has planned the best party.

What about homework? One idea is for each student to take on the role of the friend who is leaving and, the day after the party and before leaving town, write a thank you note to his or her fellow students, thanking them for the party.

5. Department of Tourism

Many students who are studying a second language are doing so because they are either living in the country where that language is spoken or they want to visit that country. We can make a task-based activity that will prepare them for the latter!

Ask your students to brainstorm what they remember seeing either in print or on TV when a travel destination is advertised. What stuck out in their minds? What made them want to go there? If they went there, what did they do while they were there?
Now have them think of a place in a country where the target language is spoken that they might like to visit. What is it about that place that draws them to it? What do they think of when they think of that place?
Now you can create small groups. Each small group should decide where they would like to travel, if that has not already been determined, and what they would use in a poster campaign to advertise that locale based on what they know about the place.
The students will then design their own poster campaigns, complete with words and images, which they will then bring to the next class and present to their classmates as part of a tourism initiative.
As with other activities here, the students can vote on the best poster campaign.

Homework? Have your students write a letter to their parents asking for permission to go to the winning locale over Spring Break, being sure to explain why they want to go there, what they will do there and how, of course, being there will help their language to improve!

6. Scavenger Hunt

Think of the Scavenger Hunt as one big task composed of many smaller tasks.

For example, you can divide the class into two or three groups and instruct them to find “Golden Keys” (or any object of your choice) around campus. Each key opens a box that contains a mini-task. The group that completes all tasks first will be declared the winner and given an awesome bounty or reward of your choice.

Unlike previous examples of tasks that require days of practice and longer periods of preparation, the tasks involved here can be completed on the spot. For example, you can give tasks like:

Arrange the written numbers from smallest to largest.

Identify the person described in a paragraph of the target language.

Bring a red, round object or a brown, square one.

Bring an object that matches the adjective.

Translate three sentences correctly.

7. The Interview

This task should be done in pairs. One student will serve as the host or interviewer, the other will be the celebrity guest.

This can be done impromptu for advanced classes, but for beginners, you can give a day or two of prep where the students rehearse their Q&A. You can add spice to the task by giving key questions that the host should ask the guest. Questions like:

Who do you like in class?

Which Hollywood actor do you think you look like?

If a genie grants you three wishes, what will be your first wish?

8. Show and Tell

This task should be done individually and in front of the class. It will require some days of practice.

Ask students to share something personal about themselves. Popular choices would be:

“My Typical Day”

“My Ideal Mate”

“My Hobbies”

“My Pet Peeves”

“The Biggest Regret of My Life”

“The Happiest Day of My Life”

“The Real Reason I Want to Learn German/Italian/French/Spanish”

“Three Things You Don’t Know About Me”

The speech should be done in the target language, of course.

I hope you enjoyed these task-based foreign language activities and find them useful in your teaching!