1VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HA NOI
COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES
POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
****** NGUYỄN THỊ THU PHƯƠNG

DESIGNING AUTHENTIC TASKS IN THE MATERIALS
DEVELOPMENT OF SECRETARIAL ENGLISH

THIẾT KẾ CÁC HOẠT ĐỘNG MANG TÍNH THỰC TIỄN TRONG VIỆC BIÊN SOẠN
GIÁO TRÌNH TIẾNG ANH VĂN PHÒNG

M.A THESIS
Course: #13 Field: Methodology
Code: 601410
July, 2007
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, I would like to acknowledge my supervisor, Nguyen Thi Vuong for her
precious advice, suggestions and especially generous assistance and continual
encouragement without which this thesis would not have been accomplished.
I am grateful to all the lectures of the M.A course at VNU for their teaching and
instructions which are of great value to my study and my thesis.
I am also appreciative of my colleagues at the English Department of Bac Ninh
Teacher Training College, and all the post-students of English for their cooperation in the
process of data collection for this thesis.
Last but not least, my heartfelt gratitude goes to my family for giving me endless
supports and encouragements during my three-year course at VNU and during the time I
carried out and fulfilled the research. Ha noi, 2007
NguyÔn ThÞ Thu Ph−¬ng
M.A #13
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ABSTRACT


CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW…………………………… ………………… 11
I.1. An overview of materials development in English Language Teaching …………… 11
I.1.1. Definition and categories of ELT materials………………… …………… 11
I.1.2. Materials development …………………………………………… 11
I.1.2.1. Definition of materials development……………………………… 11
I.1.2.2. Basic principles of Second Language Acquisition relevant to
thematerials development for the teaching of languages ………………….11
I.1.2.3. The process of developing materials…………………… ……… 16
I.2. Task authenticity as one of the core parts of materials development ………… 16
I.2.1. The nature of authenticity in ELT materials development………… 16
I.2.2. Authentic materials ………………………………… …… … 17
I.2.3. Authentic tasks … …………………………………… …………… 17
I.2.4. Task authenticity and input authenticity………………… 18
I.3. Materials development, syllabus design and teaching methodology…… 19
I.3.1. Materials development and syllabus design ……………… 19
I.3.2. Materials development of secretarial English and the adopted
teaching approach ……… 23
CHAPTER II: THE STUDY ……… 28
II.1. Background to the study ……… 28
II.1.1. The settings of teaching and learning 28
II.1.2. The teachers ……… 28
II.1.3. The learners and their needs 28
II 1.4. The overall objectives and purpose of the materials to be designed …… 29
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II.2. The problems and research questions 30
II.3. The surveys ……… 30
II.3.1. Selecting the population 30
II.3.2. Data collection instruments 31
II.4. Data analysis and discussion 31

SLA: Second Language Acquisition
TBLT: Task-based Language Teaching
TBL: Task-based Learning
List of Tables

Table 1: A summary of frequency of responses to question 1 for teachers…….………… 26
Table 2: A summary of frequency of responses to question 2 for students……….……… 26 List of Figures

Figure 1: The rating of teachers' answers to question 2 ……………………… 28
Figure 2: The rating of students' answers to question 3 ……………………… 28
Figure 3: Students’ rating to question 1……………………… 29
Figure 4: The rating of teachers' responses to question 3 & students' responses to question 4 30
Figure 5: The rating of teachers' responses to question 4 and students' responses to question 6 30
Figure 6: The rating of students' responses to question 5 31 8

PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale
As English language has become an important medium for international business, politics and

activities, among which learning tasks account for a very important part firstly in motivating
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and getting students involved in the lessons, then in helping them achieve the goal of using
the target language in real-life communication.
That is why the concerns of all EFL teachers share an agreement that it is essential to design
interesting classroom activities which can motivate the enthusiasm and involvement of
learners in an EFL classroom, and particularly for ESP learners such activities should be
useful and related to their future jobs. If so, the aims of the lessons will be achieved. As a
result, the quality of English language teaching and learning will be improved as well.
Things considered, the writer would like to conduct a mini-research on finding suitable
techniques to design authentic tasks in the materials development of secretarial English,
which is one of compulsory subject in the curriculum of the writer’s college to train English
majors. As the goals of teaching secretarial English is to give students intensive experience in
the use of general and professional English for the sake of their career, to help students to
develop their communication skills effectively, to express themselves confidently and to
provide students with the opportunity to gain first hand experience which can be adapted to
the future workplace situations. In order to achieve these aims, teachers should find ways to
create authentic tasks to increase the students’ confidence and ability in using English in such
environment and also develop their cognitive processing skills so as to enable them to
understand and express ideas, attitudes and feelings, to think and respond creatively. In other
words, students will get used to using the target language appropriately by performing
authentic tasks in contextualized situations, so that they will be capable of using the target
language effectively in their future workplace. In sum, everything is to be done with a view to
enhancing the quality of teaching and learning secretarial English.
2. Aims and significance of the study
This study aims at
- Investigating the attitudes of teachers of English and college/ university graduates working
as secretarial or administrative staff towards the effectiveness of techniques used to create
authentic tasks in teaching and learning English;


PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER I: LITERATURE REVIEW
I.1. An overview of materials development in ELT
I.1.1. Definition and categories of ELT materials
Most people associate the term “language-learning materials” with course books because
that has been their main experience of using materials. However, Tomlinson (1998) refers the
term to “anything which is used by teachers or learners to facilitate the learning of a
language”. Materials can obviously be in the form of textbooks, work books, cassettes,
videos, CD-Roms, dictionaries, grammar books, readers, workbooks or photocopied
exercises. They could also be any realia such as newspapers, food packages, photographs, or
even live talks by invited native speakers, instructions given by a teacher, tasks written on
cards or discussions between learners. In other words, they can be anything which presents or
informs about the language being learnt.
According to McGrath (2002), there are three main categories of materials as follows:
published materials; authentic materials and supplementary ones. The first kind includes
course books, students’ books, teachers’ books, workbooks, which can be utilized in a number
of ways. The second consists of plentiful materials which do have a place in language
learning such as newspapers, magazines, leaflets and brochures, videos and songs, etc. The
third type can also be very useful for teachers and learners. They are dictionaries, grammar
books, charts, games etc. Other types of materials used in language teaching and learning can
be grouped in the mode of perceptions and specific uses.
I.1.2. Materials development
I.1.2.1. Definition of materials development
Tomlinson (1998) refers materials development to anything which is done by writers, teachers
or learners to provide sources of language input and to exploit those sources in ways which
maximize the likelihood of intake: in other words the supplying of information about and/or
experience of the - language in ways designed to promote language learning.
Materials developers might write textbooks, tell stories, bring advertisements into the
classroom, express an opinion, provide samples of language use or read a poem aloud.

achieving impact the writer needs to know as much as possible about the target learners and
about what is likely to attract their attention. In order to achieve impact the writer also needs
to offer choice. The more varied the choice of topics, texts and activities the more likely is the
achievement of impact.
2. Materials should help learners to feel at ease and develop confidence
Research has shown … the effects of various forms of anxiety on acquisition: the less
anxious the learner, the better language acquisition proceeds. Similarly, relaxed and
comfortable students apparently can learn more in shorter periods of time. (Dulay, Burt and
Krashen 1982)
Materials can help learners to feel at ease in a number of ways. For example:
- are more at ease with texts and illustrations that they can relate to their own culture than they
are with those which are culturally exotic (and therefore potentially alien);
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- are more relaxed with materials which arc obviously trying to help them to learn than they
are with materials which are always testing them.
- informal discourse features (e.g. contracted forms, informal lexis);
- concreteness (e.g. examples, anecdotes);
- inclusiveness (e.g. not signaling intellectual, linguistic or cultural superiority over the
learners).
Most materials developers recognize the need to help learners to develop confidence but many
of them attempt to do so through a process of simplification. They try to help the learners to
feel successful by asking them to use simple language to accomplish easy tasks. This
approach is welcomed by many teachers and learners. But in Tomlinson (1998)’s experience,
he prefers to attempt to build confidence through activities which try to 'push' learners slightly
beyond their existing proficiency by engaging them in tasks which are stimulating, which are
problematic but which arc achievable too. It can also help if the activities encourage learners
to use and to develop their existing extra-linguistic skills, such as those which involve being
imaginative, being creative or being analytical.
3. What is being taught should be perceived by learners as relevant and useful

Most researchers seem to agree that learners should be given opportunities to use language for
communication rather than just to practice it in situations controlled by the teacher and the
materials.
8. Materials should take into account that learners differ in learning styles
Different learners have different preferred learning styles. This means that activities
should be variable and should cater for all learning styles. Styles of learning which need to
be catered for in language learning materials include
- visual (e.g. the learner prefers to see the language written down);
- auditory (e.g. the learner prefers to hear the language);
- kinaesthetic (e.g. the learner prefers to do something physical, such as following
instructions)
- studial (e.g. the learner likes to pay conscious attention to the linguistic features of
the language and wants to be correct);
- experiential (e.g. the learner likes to use the language and is more concerned with
communication than with correctness);
- analytic (e.g. the learner prefers to focus on discrete bits of the language and to learn
them one by one);
- global (e.g. the learner is happy to respond to whole chunks of language at a time and
to pick up from them whatever language she can);
- dependent (e.g:. the learner prefers to learn from a teacher and from a book);
- independent (~.g. the learner is happy to learn from their own experience of the
language and to use autonomous learning strategies).
9. Materials should take into account that learners differ in affective attitudes
Ideally language learners should have strong and consistent motivation and they should also
have positive feelings towards the target language, their teachers, their fellow learners and the
materials they are using. But, of course, the ideal learner does not exist and even if she did
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exist one day she would no longer be the ideal learner the next day. The fact is that no
materials developer can cater for all these affective variables but it is important for anybody

delayed
15. Materials should permit a silent period at the beginning of instruction
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Rossner (1988: 143), discussing teachers' expectations of materials, sees the impact of
communicative principles as being most clearly visible in the following. Materials will:
1. provide “comprehensible input” for generalized rehearsal of skills and “activation” of
learners' interlanguage repertoire;
2. raise learners' awareness about language, communication, learning, etc.;
3. provide experiences of communication in the new language similar or parallel to those
likely to be encountered beyond the learning situation
It is important to bear in mind that however reasonable such principles might seem, they do
not represent an objective truth. A set of principles for materials
design is therefore best thought of as a personal rationale: a key-point justification for the
decisions that are to be taken based on beliefs about learning and how this can best be
facilitated.
I.1.2.3. The process of developing materials A teacher’s path through the production of new or adapted materials Tomlinson (1998)
Most materials developers move in this direction and use some or all of the steps. If not
always precisely in this order: a movement from the identification of a need for materials to
their eventual use in the classroom.
I.2. Task authenticity as one of the core parts of materials development
I.2.1. The nature of authenticity in ELT materials development
Authenticity has been a controversial matter in ELT. Authenticity is felt to be important
because it gives learners a taste of the real world; an opportunity to rehearse in a sheltered
environment. Taylor and Breen argued the facets of authenticity in language learning and
teaching as follows:
Authenticity of text used as input data for learners

with the notion of task. Nunan (1988:4) defines authentic tasks as that takes real-world
behavior and learner need into consideration: “tasks which replicate or rehearse the
communicative behaviors which will be required of them in real world”. However, learners
may have different expectations of classroom activities and their real-world parallels. So what
makes a task authentic? Guariento and Morley (2001, p.350) note the importance of student
"engagement" in a task as essential in determining task authenticity. For example, when
students are given the task of reading a short text, sharing the contents with a partner,
listening to an explanation of what their partner has read about the same topic and then
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consolidating that information to share with a larger group of students, a variety of skills are
activated and engaged to communicate a specific outcome ensuring task authenticity.
Authentic tasks can be contrasted with pedagogic tasks (e.g. controlled grammar practice
activities such as gap-filling or transformation exercises), which focus on the development of
accuracy rather than language using.
William Guariento and John Morley argues that the issue of task authenticity is in fact
far more complex than Elliss’ rather vague reference to “real operating conditions” and so it
might be possible to identify principles to make tasks more authentic:
i. Authenticity through a genuine purpose: One of the crucial aspects of task
authenticity is whether real communication takes place and whether the language
has been used for a genuine purpose.
ii. Authenticity through real world targets: A task might be said to be authentic if it
has a clear relationship with real world needs.
iii. Authenticity through classroom interaction: All of the everyday procedures the
learning tasks types of data and the materials to be selected and worked on the actual needs
interests and preferred ways of working of all the people gathered in the classroom all provide
sufficient authentic potential for communication.
iv. Authenticity through engagement: Authenticity of task might be said to depend on
whether or not a student is engaged by the task. Unless students are genuinely interested in its
topic and purpose and they understand its relevance then they are somehow engaged by the

I.3.1. Materials development and syllabus design
The relationship between materials and syllabus can be represented in two basic ways. In the
first, the syllabus determines if not the selection of materials at least the way in which they
will be exploited for teaching purposes. In the second, materials are selected first, for their
intrinsic interest and general linguistic appropriateness, and a specific linguistic syllabus is
then derived from them. For the materials development of secretarial English, the former is
more preferred as it is described by Nunan (1991): “Materials, whether commercially
developed or teacher-produced, are an important element within the curriculum, and are
often the most tangible and visible aspect of it. While the syllabus defines the goals and
objectives, the linguistics and experiential content, instructional materials can put flesh on the
bones of these specifications”. Thus, the syllabus design should be taken into consideration
before developing the materials.
Designing a language syllabus is no doubt a complex process. It involves a logical sequence
of three main stages,
i) needs analysis, ii) content specification, and iii) syllabus organization.
i. Needs analysis
A needs analysis is usually seen as being most beneficial for ESP course.
Derwing and Schutz (1981) offer an eight phase plan for the assessment of needs as follows;
1. define the purpose, that is, have a clear idea of the goals and objectives of the programme.
2. delimit the target population, that is, determine the range of persons who the programme
will have an impact on.
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3. delimit the parameters of investigation for which the following information must be
sought from the population surveyed:
a. general background
b. occupational specialty or academic field
c. English language background
d. attitudinal and motivational factors
e. relevance of English to use in occupational or professional field.

ii. select language which can be used in a wide range of contexts; and
iii. taught language that is appropriate to the interest of the pupils and the situations in
which he might possibly use his linguistic knowledge.
But Shaw (1976) sees the selection of content to be concerned mainly with two questions:
i. how much can we teach or how much can be learnt by the learners in question; and
ii. which items should be included.
He suggests a criterion for selection based on the "relative usefulness" or "relative difficulty"
of the content matter. He argues that students' point of entry level and the duration of the
course provide a good indicator of how much should be included and how difficult the content
matter should be. Purposes and types would determine the usefulness of the content. Based on
this criterion, Shaw proposed the following general procedure for selection of content:
i. determine previous knowledge of learners,
ii. decide amount of content in general terms,
iii. list items in rough order of specific frequency,
iv. group for relative difficulty,
v. check that both functional and notional categories are present,
vi. check coverage of grammatical items.
iii. Syllabus organization
The objective of organizing a syllabus should be to promote learning, and not just to provide a
description of the language. Therefore, the content matter should be organized in such a way
so as to facilitate teaching and learning. The unit of organization should also suit the
particular purpose of learning.
The syllabus may be structured on the basis of a gradual move from the more general to the
more particular, a statement of a general rule to a statement of particular rules or exceptions
which incorporates the deductive process. The material can also be organized so that the
direction is from the particular to the general which is the inductive process.
According to Allen (1984), there are basically three approaches which can be utilized to
sequence and organize content:
1. the traditional, structural-analytic approach in which the highest priority is given to
formal grammatical criteria;

For the pedagogical factors criteria, earlier language is taught which
1. can be taught most effectively and efficiently given in the classroom situation,
2. can be used in teaching other languages,
3. is needed for classroom purposes,
4. is simpler in form or meaning.
The identified needs would impose the choice of syllabus content. The organization of
content is complex as it has formal and functional components.
* Syllabus Implementation
No matter how well developed a syllabus, it would not be able to achieve what it is
meant to if serious consideration is not given to its successful implementation.
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Various sources have cited a number of factors which need to be given consideration
in the successful implementation of a language syllabus. These factors would also affect the
choice of an appropriate syllabus for use.
Maley (1984) gives the following factors:
i. cultural
ii. educational
iii.
organizational
iv.
learner
v. teacher, and
vi. material
These very same factors would also have to be taken into consideration when selecting an
appropriate syllabus type to achieve the purpose desired.
* Types of language syllabuses
As for Robinson (1991), types of language syllabuses can be summarized as follows:
Language syllabuses
The choice of which syllabus to be designed depends on all the criteria relating to syllabus

CONTENT

SKILL

METHOD

Structural
focus
TOPIC

Informational
focus
Notional/ Functional focus

LANGUAGE

Receptive/
Productive
LEARNING

Skill
Acquisition
focus
PROCESS

Learning
Focus
Learner - led
PROCEDURAL


• A needs-based approach to content selection
• An emphasis on learning to communicate through interaction in the target language.
• The introduction of authentic texts into the learning situation.
• The provision of opportunities for learners to focus, not only on language, but also on the
learning process itself.
• An enhancement of the learner's own personal experiences as important contributing
elements to classroom learning.
• The linking of classroom language learning with language use outside the classroom.
* What is a task?
There are many viewpoints about the “task” and a lot of definitions of “task” exists. Nunan
(2004) draws a basic distinction between real-world or target tasks, and pedagogical tasks.
Target tasks, as the name implies, refer to uses of language in the world beyond the
classroom. Pedagogical tasks are those that occur in the classroom.
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As for Jane Willis (1996) a task is an activity "where the target language is used by the learner
for a communicative purpose (goal) in order to achieve an outcome."
In L2 teaching and learning, task is now often viewed as an outcome-oriented instructional
segment or as a behavioral framework for research or classroom learning
* Types of tasks
Jane Willis (1996) briefly mentions six types of tasks:
• listing
• ordering and sorting
• comparing
• creative tasks (project)
• sharing personal experiences
• problem solving.
* Components of a task
Nunan (1989) presented components of a 'Task' as shown below:


Input

Activitie
s

Setting