This article will discuss the thoughts, models and views of different scholars upon designing a task based course. Task based courses are designed to engage and interact with students in lessons.
Nunan (2001) states that, to develop a syllabus based on tasks, who designs must analyze the needs of their students in terms of developing tasks they have to face in the real world, such as in the case of this research, academic library research report. Considered three classifications and / or organizations to task for course design applied in this research: proposed by Nunan (2001), raised by Estaire (2004) and suggested by Skehan (2008).
Nunan (2001) classified the tasks into two groups: real-world tasks or tasks objective (real - world or target task) and pedagogical tasks (tasks pedagogical.) The first refers to a type of communicative task is accomplished in the world, outside the classroom. The second are those in which students work in the classroom comprising, producing or interacting language (or language), while his attention is mainly put on the meaning rather than form.
Estaire (2004), meanwhile, proposed a classification of tasks according to their function within a language course: communication and language support. The first is a unit of classroom work focusing on meaning, i.e., in what is said rather than how (do not forget that the meaning and form are closely linked, so that cannot be broken up entirely). The seconds are units of work that have as core the development of linguistic content (grammar, vocabulary, speech, etc..), So the attention of the students is in the form of communication in the language itself such aspects.
These two types of tasks are framed within a teaching unit. This consists of a number of class hours, aims to develop a pair of instrumental knowledge and formal and allows, through a coherent structuring of tasks, assess learning throughout the process.
Finally, Skehan (2008) suggests a classification in three stages: the pre-tasks, processing tasks and post-tasks. Although the first and third phases are not mandatory, they can play an important role in the effectiveness of the methodology.
The pre-task (pre-task phase) aims to prepare the student for performing the process tasks. There are two options at this stage: to emphasize the cognitive demands or put emphasis on linguistic factors.
The stage of the process tasks (task during phase) can be divided into two types: development options and the processing options. Within development options can distinguish three considerations: first, if require students to perform the task under time pressure or not; second, whether to allow the student access to information input while holding; and third, if you introduce some element of surprise. The processing options refer to the way in which the discourse that emerges from the task is represented. These refer to decisions on line both the teacher about how to conduct the discourse to reflect the instrumental knowledge of the student; and the student, who expresses his beliefs about language learning and about a specific task.
