Tasks, experiential learning and meaning making activities: a functional approach

It is important for task-based learning and teaching research to focus on academic content tasks that involve form and meaning, language and content, and academic discourse and disciplinary knowledge. This is needed to address problems such as low academic achievement by English language learners. We argue that the SFL approach to language, particularly in the area of ‘field’ and ideational meaning, can support a rich model of experiential learning in the wider context of socio-semantic meaning-making activities that can illuminate issues regarding the analysis and development of language as a means of learning. We will illustrate this model with two contrasting examples: young children learning about magnetism, and college-level students learning about marketing. Disciplines Educational Methods | Language and Literacy Education Comments This is a manuscript of an article published as Mohan, B., Slater, T., & Beckett, G., & Tong, E. (2015). Tasks as meaning-making activities: A functional approach. In M. Bygate (Ed.), Domains and directions in the development of task-based language teaching: A decade of plenaries from the international conference (pp. 157-192). The Netherlands: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Posted with permission. This book chapter is available at Iowa State University Digital Repository: http://lib.dr.iastate.edu/engl_pubs/127 1 Tasks, experiential learning and meaning making activities: a functional approach. Bernard Mohan (University of British Columbia and King’s College London), Tammy Slater (Iowa State University), Gulbahar Beckett (Iowa State University) Esther Tong (Hong Kong Community College, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University)