My interest in task-based language teaching (TBLT) dates back to the late 1970s when communicative tasks began to figure in language teaching. At that time, tasks were seen as a means of providing second language (L2) learners with opportunity for free oral practice in order to develop fluency. As such they were adjuncts to the ‘serious’ work involved in teaching language in traditional ways. Around the same time, researchers began to use tasks to investigate the strategies that speakers used to manage communication. It was not until a little later – the mid-1980s – that the first proposals for designing complete instructional programmes based on tasks appeared. A little later, researchers began to treat tasks not just as data-elicitation instruments but as objects worthy of study in their own right.

From these beginnings, TBLT has evolved into an ‘approach’ – in a sense a ‘movement’. Countless articles on tasks and TBLT have been published in leading journals. There is a long list of books dealing with TBLT – some theoretical and research-oriented, others more practical. One publisher (John Benjamins) has a whole series devoted to TBLT. An international association has been formed which sponsors a bi-annual conference. Not surprisingly, perhaps, TBLT has also spawned its critics. Some of these critics view TBLT as foisted on the teaching community by researchers. Others argue that TBLT is impractical in cultural contexts very different from North America and Europe where it originated.

My own work more or less spans the history of TBLT. In the late 1970s I used information-gap tasks in my early teacher-education work to illustrate how teachers could motivate spontaneous communication in the classroom. As I turned more to research, I used tasks to collect the data I needed to investigate L2 use and learning. As time passed I became immersed in the issues facing the design and implementation of task-based programmes. I wrote a full-length book on task-based language learning and teaching. I tried (and failed) to get a leading publisher interested in publishing a task-based course.