Guidelines for EFL Lesson Planning: A Context-Sensitive Task-based Approach

The aim of this study is to provide guidelines for the EFL teachers who try to implement a task-based approach in their classroom. To that end, the study first provides the theoretical background to help them understand what a task-based approach is and what is necessary to have it implemented in the EFL classroom, including discussions on language input, materials/activities, formal instruction, homework, and evaluation. The study then provides guidelines for lesson planning to implement the task-based approach as a supplement to the traditional way of teaching in the EFL classroom. Finally, the study presents a sample lesson plan for a high school EFL class. The basic assumption made in the study is that the teachers seek to teach their classes communicatively despite the various constraints they face in the EFL classroom. The argument made in the study is that any successful implementation of a new approach must take the contextual factors into consideration and task-based language teaching is no exception. Even though the guidelines provided in the study are far from being exhaustive, it is hoped that they can contribute to the development of EFL teachers’ insight into effective lesson planning to develop the communicative language ability in their students.