This course explores ways of teaching reading skills in English as Second and Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) using a task-based approach. You will be introduced to the concept of task and the key principles of task-based language teaching (TBLT) and learning. TBLT uses communicative tasks as the key unit for creating language learning activities. You will also examine the role of reading in real-life and in second and foreign language teaching and current thinking about the interface between TBLT and second language reading. You will explore how TBLT and teaching second language reading can be successfully integrated in practice through analysing task-based reading materials. The course culminates in creating task-based materials for teaching reading in your own language teaching contexts. After completing the course, you will be able to: 1. Explain the main components and tenets of a task-based approach to teaching language; 2. Explain the main issues involved in teaching reading; 3. Illustrate connections between TBLT approaches and the teaching of reading; 4. Integrate tasks into your own teaching; 5. Identify reading texts that are suitable for the construction of tasks; and 6. Construct reading tasks and sequences for use in your own classroom.
I learned so much from this course. It was a challenge to teach reading to ESL students but I learned great tecniques from this class and got so many ideas from my fellow students.
AS we know reading is a real challenge in classroom, but thank to this course we can take many ideas to follow in our schools.
This course has enabled me to work on this particular teaching style. I found different resources that could help me improve as a reader and as a teacher.
It is very useful and authentic learning with advance scope of knowledge under the high professional experts. Very recommended
The course upgraded my skills on how to teach reading purposfully and facilitate students in keeping them engaged in the reading process amd motivate them to becomming autonomous learners!
I really enjoyed this course and its contents. My only concern was that I would've liked more focus on tasks and ideas of tasks, especially for older students.
This course is reaaly useful and provides me with a deep understanding on how to design a task in teaching reading skills.
An exceptional course which brings up really interesting, thought-provoking ideas about pedagogy and ELT. Well-researched, easy to understand, and has some great assignment topics. Loved it.
I found this course absolutely fascinating. It's well designed with interesting videos which will keep you engaged. I will apply the principles to my lessonsChristopher Mo Szu Ti
I really enjoyed this course and feel that I have benefited from it! I've always been interested in the TBL approach, so this course was perfect for me. Thanks!
The course has refreshed me on how to do Task based teaching in my classroom. The professors and guest speakers are all very helpful in giving new ideas for lesson plan. I really enjoy the lesson.
It is a must for all the teachers to participate in this course. It helps you with the definition of tasks and tge current issues.
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I found this course absolutely fascinating. It's well designed with interesting videos which will keep you engaged. I will apply the principles to my lessons
Christopher Mo Szu Ti
I loved everything about the course content, but peer assessment is a TERRIBLE idea.
For one submission I could get both the highest and the lowest grade, without any feedback. Any internet troll could have taken the course and graded participants with the lowest grades possible. Not fun.
I have passed the course (89%), but I won't even try another peer assessment based course.
It's such an irony that (aspiring) teachers were not able to assess someone else's work properly.
I thought the course was interesting, although there was some discrepancy between what was shown in the interviews and the theory presented. For example, in week 6 the interview showed a business teacher. However, at no moment the tutors mentioned anything related to it in the theory presented... The videos were boring because it took too long for the tutors to explain simple things.
Terribly difficult to engage with 10+ min lectures in every lesson, plus unorganized presentations and interviews making extracting important information difficult; the lack of organization in the interview videos (which are SUPER long) made it very difficult to extract significant information for the course and assignements. I will say that the research and academic readings made available in the course were exceptionally helpful and full of great information, i just wished that that information was presented in a more engaging and interesting way, sometimes more organized as well. Furthermore, much of the referenced material should be made accessible within the course rather than simply cited; it looks fascinating but from places like China, databases and websites with such relevant sources are often wholly inaccessible. Please include links or entire documents.
I learned so much from this course. It was a challenge to teach reading to ESL students but I learned great tecniques from this class and got so many ideas from my fellow students.
An exceptional course which brings up really interesting, thought-provoking ideas about pedagogy and ELT. Well-researched, easy to understand, and has some great assignment topics. Loved it.
This course is awesome. I enjoyed every bit of it. It was highly engaging and a good recommendation for learning how to teach reading comprehension to L2 learners. Kudo's!
The course is not academically rigorous, nor are the assignment rubrics challenging. Some of the videos are less engaging - apparent as talking head, and interviews are disorganised.
The material in which the course was based is aged. We can find much more modern texts about TBLT online, i.e. on the British Council website. The videos present the theory in a very superficial way and most of the times the interviews are not related to the theory presented in that unit. I was expecting more from a course by the University of London.
The course has refreshed me on how to do Task based teaching in my classroom. The professors and guest speakers are all very helpful in giving new ideas for lesson plan. I really enjoy the lesson.
If you are new to teaching ESL, this is probably not a good course. I found the homework used topics that a beginner would not be familiar with. I did like how they used various links to supplement the course (ie a chapter from a interesting text book) to help illustrate points in topics. I may retake the course after I have a foundation.
Information and content of this course is kind of interesting. Nevertheless, after all weekly moduls you have to do a writing exercise which will be graded by other students. So you have to trust in other students to grade your work right in time or that they won't give you bad grades on purpose. I don't like that way of grading.
I really enjoyed this course and its contents. My only concern was that I would've liked more focus on tasks and ideas of tasks, especially for older students.
The information given in this course is really useful and it made me think depeer about how to construct my reading classes. However, I don't really like the idea of checking the assessments by peers because some people can shamelessly put 1 point because they want to. How can I get 3 points from 3 peers and 1 point from one peer? The only explanation is that he didn't check anything.
I definitely gained some useful information in this course and I liked that it made me think about how I design lessons and how I can improve upon that. However, I feel that the course would be much improved if the instructors spent at least a little time checking in, making sure the links all still worked, and actually interacted with the students taking this course. The instructors were completely absent as far as I could tell. Even just a few comments here and there in the discussions would be nice. Also, I don't really like that the entire course grade is based on peer reviews.
Most of the links weren't clickable and were no longer working. Would love to see more articles shared that we could read throughout that are free, not protected by Pay Wall.
This course was excellent! The material was scaffolded very well, and gave me a very good overview of TBLT, the teaching of reading, and how to create tasks for reading courses. I appreciated the mix of video, readings, interviews, and optional readings. This is the best MOOC I have ever taken, one of the very few MOOCs that I have ever completed, and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about TBLT, teaching reading, or being a better second/foreign language teacher in general.
Awesome! The assessments at the end of each module are super helpful to consolidate knowledge and apply the essential principles of each section. The videos are short but loaded with expert perspectives and current scholarly research. I learned a lot! Thank You UCL! Extremely valuable for EFL/ESL teachers, you will not regret spending your time in this course.
This course has helped me understand the ideas behind teaching reading with task-based approach. The methods are very useful and applicable to engage the students in learning process. The assignments in each module also encourage my critical thinking skills and reflection to my teaching experience.
It's one of the best, most useful and well-made online courses I've ever taken part in. I finally realised that my problem with online studying hadn't been my inability to concentrate but the lack of engaging and practical lessons and tasks! I'd recommend this course to any ESL teacher out there.