Learning Language Through Task Repetition

After more than 20 years of research, this is the first book-length treatment of second language task repetition – the repetition of encounters with a task that involve re-using the same content with the same overall purpose. The topic links task performance with the growing mastery of both the task and of relevant language, and constitutes a site with special potential to promote learning within and across language lessons, and for preparing students for assessment and of course real-world language performance. The volume assembles chapters that complement each other in interesting ways: significant background reviews, studies of patterns of change across task repetition iterations, and reports on the use and nature of task repetition in language classes in on-going programmes. Contributors draw on a variety of interpretive frameworks and report from a range of language educational contexts. The volume will be of interest to language researchers, teacher educators, teachers, and students, as well as others interested in the contribution of task repetition to learning.

A comprehensive account of the research and practice of task-based language teaching.

The current volume aspires to add to previous research on the connection between writing and language learning from a dual perspective: It seeks to reflect current progress in the domain as well as to foster future developments in theory and research. The theoretical postulations contained in Part I identify and expand in novel ways the diverse lenses through which the varied, multi-faceted dimensions of the connection between writing and language learning can be explored. The methodological reflections put forward in Part III signal theoretically-grounded and pedagogically-relevant paths along which future empirical work can grow. The empirical studies reported in Part II illuminate the myriad of individual, educational, and task-related variables that (may) mediate short-term and long-term language learning outcomes. These studies examine diverse forms of writing, performed in varied environments (including pen-and-paper and digital writing), conditions (writing individually and/or collaboratively), and instructional settings (academic settings – including secondary school and college level institutions – as well as out-of-school contexts).

Researching Pedagogic Tasks brings together a series of empirical studies into the use of pedagogical tasks for second language learning, with a view to better understanding the structure of tasks, their impact on students, and their use by teachers. The volume starts with an introduction to the background and key issues in the topic area and is then organised into three sections: the first section focuses on the language and learning of students on tasks the second on the use of tasks in the language classroom the third on the use of tasks for language testing Each section begins with a succinct section introduction, and the volume concludes with an afterword relating the theme of the volume to issues in curriculum development. The chapters include both experimental and qualitative approaches to the topic, some providing original accounts of specific studies, others offering overviews of linked series of studies.

The book seeks to enlarge the theoretical scope, research agenda, and practices associated with TBLT in a two-way dynamic, by exploring how insights from writing might reconfigure our understanding of tasks and, in turn, how work associated with TBLT might benefit the learning and teaching of writing. In order to enrich the domain of task and to advance the educational interests of TBLT, it adopts both a psycholinguistic and a textual meaning-making orientation. Following an issues-oriented introductory chapter, Part I of the volume explores tenets, methods, and findings in task-oriented theory and research in the context of writing; the chapters in Part II present empirical findings on task-based writing by investigating how writing tasks are implemented, how writers differentially respond to tasks, and how tasks can contribute to language development. A coda chapter summarizes the volume’s contribution and suggests directions for advancing TBLT constructs and research agendas.

Winner - British Council Innovation in English Language Teaching Award 2006 This book was written for language teachers by language teachers, with a view to encouraging readers to use more tasks in their lessons, and to explore for themselves various aspects of task-based teaching and learning. It gives insights into ways in which tasks can be designed, adapted and implemented in a range of teaching contexts and illustrates ways in which tasks and task-based learning can be investigated as a research activity. Practising language teachers and student professionals on MA TESOL/Applied Linguistics courses will find this a rich resource of varied experience in the classroom and a stimulus to their own qualitative studies.

The book examines how task-based language teaching (TBLT) can be carried out with young beginner learners in a foreign language context. It addresses how TBLT can be introduced and implemented in a difficult instructional context where traditional teaching approaches are entrenched. The book reports a study that examined how TBLT can be made to work in such a context. The study compares the effectiveness of TBLT and the traditional “present-practice-produce” (PPP) approach for teaching English to young beginner learners in Japan. The TBLT researched in this study is unique as it employed input-based tasks rather than oral production tasks. The study shows that such tasks constitute an ideal means of inducting beginner learners into listening and processing English. It also shows that such tasks lead naturally to the learners trying to use the L2 in communication. It provides evidence to support the claim that TBLT promotes the kind of naturalistic interaction which is beneficial for the development of both interactional and linguistic competence. The book concludes with suggestions for how to implement TBLT in Japanese school contexts.

Understanding how task complexity affects second language learning, interaction and spoken and written performance is essential to informed decisions about task design and sequencing in TBLT programs. The chapters in this volume all examine evidence for claims of the Cognition Hypothesis that complex tasks should promote greater accuracy and complexity of speech and writing, as well as more interaction, and learning of information provided in the input to task performance, than simpler tasks. Implications are drawn concerning the basic pedagogic claim of the Cognition Hypothesis, that tasks should be sequenced for learners from simple to complex during syllabus design. Containing theoretical discussion of the Cognition Hypothesis, and cutting-edge empirical studies of the effects of task complexity on second language learning and performance, this book will be important reading for language teachers, graduate students and researchers in applied linguistics, second language acquisition, and cognitive and educational psychology.