The purpose of the book

This book began life as the second edition to Designing Tasks for the Communicative Classroom. The original volume was written in the mid- 1980s, and was published in 1989. At that time, task-based language teaching was beginning to arouse attention. Although it was more than a distant prospect, it was far from a mainstream concept. As with the original book, this volume is aimed at practising teachers in ELT and applied linguists (teacher trainers, language planners, and materials writers), as well as teachers in preparation.

When I began working on this volume, I quickly realized how far the field had come. It was brought home to me that I was embarking on the creation not of a second edition but of a completely new book, and that in consequence it deserved a new title.

Recently, I completed a study into the impact on policies and practices of the emergence of English as a global language (Nunan 2002, 2003). Data were collected from a range of countries in the Asia-Pacific region including Japan, Vietnam, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea and Malaysia. In interviews with teachers, teacher educators and ministry officials, and from a study of curriculum guidelines and syllabuses, ‘taskbased language teaching’ emerged as a central concept. At the same time, I was involved in preparing a publication proposal for China on behalf of a commercial publisher. I was given a reasonable degree of latitude in putting the proposal together, but was informed that in order to be considered by the Ministry of Education it had to contain ‘task-based language teaching’ as its ruling rubric.