TASK - Volume 4, Issue 1, 2024

In this interview, Kris Van den Branden (TASK Co-Editor) and Matt Coss (TASK Editorial Assistant) invited international experts Dr. Roger Gilabert and Dr. Aleksandra Malicka to discuss their scholarship and recent thinking on areas of TBLT including needs analysis, syllabus design, task sequencing, and task design.

Despite the growing number of second language adult learners with limited education, few classroom-based studies have investigated how teaching can be better adapted to the characteristics of this population, many of whom have emerging literacy skills (Penning de Vries et al., 2020). This study aims to fill this gap by implementing input-based tasks in an intact French L2 language and literacy classroom (N = 13). The input-based tasks, targeting household items and number marking, were variations of ‘listen-and-do’ tasks that minimize reliance on print or school-based strategies to achieve task outcomes (Shintani, 2012). To assess whether the tasks provided opportunities for form-meaning connections, we examined learners’ self- and other-directed speech during task performance. Results showed multiple opportunities for form-meaning connections suggesting that input-based instruction could be a useful technique for this context.

This study triangulated multiple data sources and methods to identify the real-world needs of undergraduate students in a French as a second language program. Graduates (N = 130) and current students (N = 67) rated the importance of a series of written production, interaction, and mediation tasks detailed in the CEFR Companion Volume (Council of Europe, 2020). A subset of alumni (N = 5) participated in focus group interviews. Results indicated that all participants placed primary importance on writing for personal communication (i.e., correspondence, forms, creative writing, relaying information, online interaction). Similarly, interviewees discussed the importance of non-academic writing in their work and daily lives, and highlighted challenges associated with correspondence, writing teaching materials, and academic writing. Findings suggest a need for writing instruction in diverse real-world genres for both personal interaction and academic writing.

Recent research examining adult and young learners have concluded that pairing method (self-selected vs. proficiency-matched pairings) may affect learning opportunities operationalized as language-related episodes (LREs). But how it influences previously known language (PKL) use during task-based interaction is an under researched topic. This study sets out to explore whether the pairing method (self-selected vs. proficiency-matched pairings) during speaking and speaking+writing tasks completed by 10 to 11-year-old children has an effect on the amount and functions of PKLs. The study found that, in both tasks, self-selected pairs generated a greater amount of two functions: minor turns and vocabulary discussions. In the speaking+writing task specifically, self-selected pairs had greater PKL and greater off-task talk.

This study compares the effectiveness of two instructional interventions on the uptake and transfer of relative clauses (RCs) during picture-based oral narrative tasks: (1) Focus on Form (FonF), which involves incidental focus on language problems as they arise naturally in learners’ language during meaning-focused task-based communication, and (2) Focus on Forms (FonFs), which involves explicit attention to specific forms felt by the teacher or materials planner to be natural, useful or essential to the performance of a task (Long, 2015). A third treatment, focus on meaning (FonM), which involved no form-focused instruction at all, provided a baseline to compare the relative effects of these two instructional interventions. Thirty-six Chinese ESL learners participated in the study. The study employed a pre-test, post-test, and delayed post-test design. Results revealed that FonM did not promote uptake or transfer of RCs, and that FonFs and FonF had comparable effects on the uptake, stability, and transfer of RCs to novel versions of oral narrative tasks. The study demonstrates that: (1) form-focused instruction was essential in promoting uptake and transfer of challenging task-relevant language; and (2) FonF was at least as effective as FonFs for promoting Chinese ESL learners’ use and acquisition of task-relevant structures. The results of the study provide support for the use of FonF in instruction as consistent with the principles of task-based language teaching.