FLB home News resources for undergraduates graduates faculty staff graduate assistants flb business office flb graduate student services   staff directory FLB directories UIUC home old browsers April 12, 2005 2004-2005/040 Language expert to discuss task-based teaching Mike Long, professor of second language acquisition and director of the School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures (SLLC) at the University of Maryland, College Park, will discuss “Current issues in Task-Based Language Teaching” on Thursday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m., in Room 314B, Illini Union, 1401 W. Green St., Urbana. The lecture is free and open to the public. Long will begin by providing an overview of the rationale for Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), and briefly review the six basic stages in designing, implementing, and evaluating a TBLT program: needs and means analysis, syllabus design, materials development, choice of methodological principles and pedagogic procedures, student assessment, and course evaluation. His focus will then shift to some current issues in research on TBLT of any kind: how to conduct a methodologically adequate task-based learner needs analysis; how to classify and sequence pedagogic tasks when constructing a task syllabus; and how to assess task-based language abilities. Long teaches courses and seminars in the M.A. and Ph.D. programs in second language acquisition. He is the author of over 100 articles and several books. His next book, “Second Language Needs Analysis,” (Cambridge) will appear this spring. Long’s visit is sponsored by the UIUC Division of English as an International Language.