Designed as an introduction to the field of task-based language teaching (TBLT), this edited book provides the reader with a complete background in the central themes and characteristics of TBLT research and pedagogy. This volume is a carefully selected collection of 20 previously published articles that have been influential in shaping the field and that have encouraged educators and researchers to work with tasks. Divided into four sections, this book presents chapters that address the fundamental principles of the field, the challenges and considerations of implementing TBLT in education, the differential effects of task variables on learner outcomes and performance, and the use of task-based assessment in a variety of instructional contexts. Additionally, the editors seek to encourage further task-based research by concluding the volume with a helpful discussion of the connections between empirical investigations and pedagogical practice and by providing suggestions for future research necessary to continue to advance the field.
After a brief introductory chapter contextualizing TBLT within the larger field of language learning and teaching, the first section provides readers with the foundational principles and historical background of the task-based approach. Addressing the initial set of principles and ideas that helped to establish task-based learning as an important and viable educational construct, these chapters highlight the authors’ support for more refined and nuanced conceptualizations of tasks and their role in education. This section provides the reader with the conceptual foundations of TBLT. It includes the frequently cited chapter (in its original context as well as in this collection) by Long and Crookes, which proposes a strong approach to TBLT, in which pedagogic tasks are more authentic and connected to their real-world applications, as well as another well-known paper by Skehan, which argues for a weaker version of TBLT and addresses the need to counteract proposed trade-off effects between fluency and accuracy. Building on the themes introduced in the first five chapters, the second section addresses the ways these principles can be applied, bridging the gap between theory and practice by bringing TBLT into the classroom. Providing a representative sample of the variety of educational contexts, these diverse chapters interpret and apply the principles of TBLT in a range of ways that demonstrate the adaptability of the task-based approach. The third section presents empirical research examining the differential effects of a range of variables, such as task complexity or planning time, on learners’ production and comprehension. This section consists of seven chapters examining task, learner, and teacher variation, which provide the reader with empirical testing of previously proposed principles and ideas. These chapters discuss task-based research from a variety of perspectives, including Ortega’s qualitative performance measurements—grounded in learners’ perspectives rather than production assessment—and Foster and Skehan’s quantitative exploration of the effects of different task types and planning conditions on complexity, accuracy, and fluency. Finally, the fourth section addresses the ways in which tasks can be used for assessment purposes. The three chapters of this section address issues such as the use of authentic communicative task performance in assessment practice, the mindful process through which task-based assessment should be created, and the need to consider language tasks as measures of performance and progress.
This volume provides the reader with a clear sense of the principles and developmental progress of task-based language teaching, and introduces the central themes of TBLT throughout the past 20 years. One of the book’s strengths is the intuitive organization of the four main sections, which provides readers with an easy-to-follow and logical discussion of the emergence and development of the TBLT approach from theoretical foundations to empirical evidence and assessment practices. Professionals familiar with TBLT will find the material included in this reader to be a review of already well-known work, nicely organized and presented in one place. Researchers and students beginning their investigations into TBLT will find this volume to be an invaluable resource for key theoretical, foundational, and empirical discussions. Students and educators will appreciate the editors’ accessible writing style and the thought-provoking key questions that conclude each section and provide readers with interesting ideas to keep in mind as they go over each chapter. Overall, this volume is an excellent resource for students, educators, and novice TBLT researchers and would make an ideal textbook for an undergraduate or graduate task-based language teaching course.
