SYSTEM

System 27 (1999) 3348

Task as context for the framing, reframing and unframing of language1

M. Bygate*
University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK Received 20 May 1998; revised 20 September 1998; accepted 8 October 1998

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how tasks can be used systematically as a context for developing learners' knowledge about language, their skill in using language, and our ability to teach it. It begins by outlining a role for tasks in language learning, identies a limitation in previous studies of tasks to promote learning, and suggests the need for tasks to lead learners to integrate uency, accuracy and complexity in communication. It draws on data from a number of recent studies to illustrate how tasks can aect learners' language focus and their language processing. The paper concludes by showing how data from learners working on tasks can provide a basis for developing professional thinking. # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Task; Speaking; Skill; Fluency; Accuracy; Complexity; Development; Repetition

1. Introduction Levi writes that we know things through working with them, through experiences ``marked by love and by hatred, by silent, furious battles, enthusiasm and weariness, victory and defeat, resulting in more and more rened knowledge'' (1988, pp. 76 77). Learners learn language by working with it on tasks; teachers learn about tasks by working with them in the classroom, and varying them to see what happens. This paper presents an approach to improving our understanding of tasks by trying to see how they work.
This is a revised version of a plenary paper given to the 32nd International Annual Conference of IATEFL, Manchester, April 1998. * Tel.:+44-0113-233-4545; fax: +44-0113-233-4541; e-mail: m.bygate@education.leeds.ac.uk 0346-251X/99/$see front matter # 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII: S034 6-251X(98)0004 8-7
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A pedagogical task essentially sets demands in order to promote learning. On communication tasks the demands are communication problems which are to be solved through using language. This can be represented in Fig. 1 (but cf also Nunan, 1989). The task consists of rubric and input. The term `language features' includes all aspects of language including discourse and pragmatic features that are used on the task. `Processing' refers to the ways in which learners attend to the language. Tasks are not necessarily oralFig. 1 is equally relevant for tasks that aim to develop reading and writing. This paper however concentrates on oral production tasks.

Fig. 1. Task, processes and outcomes.

Fig. 1 makes three important points. Firstly, language and processing cannot exist separately: one cannot be practised without the other. Language is not language unless someone processes it; linguistic processing cannot occur without language to focus on. Secondly, using tasks gives rise to learning, and what is learnt is both language content and processing capacities. Thirdly, Fig. 1 suggests how tasks can act as frames for the language to be exercised: rather the way a children's climbing frame oers opportunities for the exercise of growing muscles, tasks can develop linguistic muscles through the processing of linguistic responses. Seen from this perspective, encountering new tasks can lead to reframing familiar language in new contexts, and through reframing, learners can develop knowledge that can be applied across contexts and frames, knowledge that subsequently seems to be `unframed'. Frames then provide support for learning. Patterns can be seen in the way people try to use the frames: given the similarities between human beings, and the limitations built into a given task, a small number of ways of doing them are likely to be very widely followed (e.g. see Bruner et al., 1956 for a similar view of responses in problem-solving tasks). Hence we can usefully ask `what language work does the frame typically encourage, for what learning?' This may seem an unnecessary question. However, we cannot take for granted the relation between task and language without looking at what learners actually do. To

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make this point, the reader might attempt to guess the level of the students, and the task which is being carried out in the following extract (Bygate, 1988): Extract 1: A group in the nal stages of a task S11: he was on the corner of yours S12: yah he was on the corner 'n and a truck was er S10: was passing S12: passing the corner S9: he's been crashed S12: he's been crushed (S10/9:mhm) S11: then you are S10: so yes OK so the bicycle was damaged and the man fall o' fall down fell down on the oor and (S9:mhm) the other man who was going towards to help him S11: mhm S9: and now we have the manthe other man making the phone call and the ambulance is picking up the man OK Most experienced teachers guess that this task is intended to practise story-telling based on the oral sequencing of pictures, and that the group is roughly intermediate; they are right on the rst point, and wrong on the second. Three of the four students held the Cambridge Certicate of Prociency in English, and the fourth was studying for it at the time of the recording. Perhaps the diculty of identifying the level of the learners partly reects our limited understanding of the actual demands of dierent tasks. While this task is intended to practise story-telling, the learners' talk actually consists of a joint reconstruction of the story. The transcript produces several important uses of language, but it seems that if this type of task is to be used, either it should be for a dierent purpose from generating story-telling (such as to prepare for a story-telling task, or to practise the language of detectives), or else its design should be sharpened (so that it centrally requires the students to tell the story). In other words, as Foster (1998) has pointed out, what happens in the classroom may not be what the theory predicts should happen. Yet this example does show how a task provides a frame for language use and language development, and how transcripts can help us assess how far the tasks serve our purposes. Overall we need to ask: `Is the frame doing a useful job? Is it doing the intended job?' To answer these questions, we need a view of how particular tasks can develop communicative ability. There have been dierent views of the relationship between communication task and language development. A widespread justication for their use has been that they encourage uent and creative use of language resources (e.g. Allwright, 1984; Brumt, 1984). However, although such tasks can encourage creativity, people are not necessarily creative: they may fall back on familiar strategies or familiar language to express their meanings (Skehan, 1998). Furthermore, tasks will be needed for things other than creativity. Long (1981, 1985) proposed that the most important

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role for tasks is to confront learners with language problems in the act of communication. This would lead them to identify gaps in their language, and to negotiate appropriate input from interlocutors, enabling them to ll those gaps with relevant language at the precise moment that it lls a communicative need. This he termed ``negotiation of meaning'' (see Foster [1998, pp. 24] for a recent account and discussion of this view). While this use of tasks may have a contribution to make to learning, there are limitations: VanPatten (1996) argues that input tasks need to be carefully structured if they are to lead students to pay attention to grammatical features that are typically the most redundant features of language, and Foster (1998) reports that her second language learners are not particularly interested in negotiating for meaning. In any case, the input focus of tasks clearly neglects the important role they might have in leading learners to integrate what they know into their productive output. So while creativity and input are important, the relationship between tasks and learning needs more scrutiny. The relationship between task and response needs study where learning is the purpose, and not only in language education. Ericsson and Hastie (1994) comment on our ignorance about skill acquisition in everyday situations: When we review everyday activities in leisure and work, we nd little evidence for spontaneous engagement in deliberate practice or other related learning activities. In leisure activities, such as tennis and golf, individuals spend most of their time playing, under conditions in which new and dierent situations are constantly generated. There is no chance to interrupt the game to correct errors and mistakes, and there might be weeks until another similar situation emerges naturally. (p. 66) (my italics) For learners to concentrate on immediate results in constantly changing contexts is unlikely to be enough to develop a full range of abilities. What could be learnt from specic situations can easily be lost as one new situation is followed by another. In other words, for learning to take place, contexts should not be continually changed, but rather held constant. Similarly, in language teaching, an emphasis on uency and creativity in the context of continually varying tasks may not be enough. In such conditions, tasks may provide a poor context for developing language skills. Instead, learners are likely to achieve uency by ignoring accuracy, or by concentrating on a narrow repertoire of language. Learning, however, involves extending one's knowledge and skills, and integrating communicative uency and accuracy. For tasks to help in this, they need to be used systematically. Of course, people have long pointed out that both uency and accuracy are important (e.g. Fries, 1945; Mackey, 1965; Stern, 1983; Brumt, 1984). But the importance of integrating them has only surfaced relatively recently (e.g. Ellis, 1994; Willis, 1996; Seedhouse, 1997; Doughty and Williams, 1998; Skehan, 1998). Furthermore it is only recently that the context has started to be seen as a potentially important factor in achieving that integration. The question is how tasks can be used so that the various processes that are crucial to language learning can be integrated into

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communicative practice. If systematic eects of tasks cannot be found, then their pedagogic use would be essentially a `blind' pedagogy, weakening the case for a task-based approach. In what follows I consider four specic questions: 1. 2. 3. 4. Can tasks systematically target the use of dierent features of language? Can dierent tasks systematically aect the way language is processed? Can the implementation of dierent tasks contribute to language development? Is there a use for task data in professional development?

Answering these questions may help to `rene' our knowledge about language learning tasks, and their various contributions to communicative language development. In what follows I illustrate the discussion by referring to a series of studies. 2. Tasks and language learning 2.1. Can tasks target dierent features of language? We have already seen that tasks might not lead to the language or the interaction that we might expect. But this does not mean that they lack language focus. Extract 2 S10: OKi where which continent is that country S12: s south america S11: ehm south america is it eha the north part of south america or at the south part of south america south america S12: it's in the ahmmiddle yes in the middle S11: the centre S12: the centre S9: so perhaps ermis it a big oneor is it ermis it bigger than our country S12: no it's shor'er S9: it's shorter S10: er is it next to the ocean, or pacic ocean or atlantic oceanwhich ocean is it next toor it doesn'tit's not next to the to any ocean S12: no it's not Extract 2 is typical of the language produced by students at most levels of prociency on a 20-questions game (Bygate, 1988). The task practises verbsubject inversion. However, other patterns may be as important as verbsubject inversion: for instance, speakers get several turns; turns are short; the focus of each turn is on vocabulary items, especially semantically related items (here, geographical vocabulary); prepositional phrases tend to be used; and because the task is jointly constructed, learners often re-use each others' vocabulary. Hence we could describe this as a vocabulary uency task focusing on lexical sets; change the topic, and we change the lexical sets. Furthermore, the group can become involved in passing lexical items around, like coins in the market place.

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The language focus in Extract 2 contrasts with that of narrative tasks. In the Leeds Budapest project, we have been studying oral and written performance on oral narrative and discussion tasks in secondary school classes in Budapest. One issue concerns the dierences in the oral language used on the two tasks (Bygate, 19982); both tasks involved pairwork. In the narrative tasks students told each other a story from a picture. The discussion task involved prioritising from a range of choices and agreeing on the top three choices. We compared a number of aspects of the pupils' talk (Table 1).
Table 1 Summary of occurrence of features across two tasks Narrative task Words per t-unit Verb arguments Verb groupsb `I think' Noun tokensb
a b

Discussion task

na 67 15 15 15 15

+ + +

+ +

Sample size was reduced for the more detailed analyses. Counted as a proportion of the total number of words (+, signicantly more than on other task, p ` 0X01).

There were no dierences in the amount of language generated by the two tasks. However, there were signicant dierences in the incidence of language features. Firstly, t-unitsindependent clauses, whether simple or complexwere signicantly longer on the narrative task. Secondly we looked at verb argumentsclause elements such as subjects, adverbials, direct objects, indirect objects, BE complements and prepositional complementsaround the verbs. A speaker producing SVO, SV, SVC, SVAdv clauses produces clauses with just one or two verb arguments. SVOdOi, SVOAdv, SVAdvAdv clauses use three verb arguments. In our comparison the narratives systematically generated more verb arguments than the discussion tasks. This was conrmed on comparing the numbers of types of words used on the tasks. Signicantly more nouns were used on the narrative task. This makes sense if on narratives the students produced more verb arguments. Meanwhile the discussion task involved more verbs. Also, although there was no dierence in the amount of subordination, given the higher number of `I think' expressions, we suspect that there may be more nominalisations in the discussion task and more relative clauses in the narrative task. Others (e.g. Brown and Yule, 1983; Tarone, 1987; Yule, 1997) point out that narratives also encourage attention to grammatical features that help cohesion, although we did not look at this. Hence, we are able to show the dierent patterns of language that narratives and discussions seem to produce. The patterns which emerge following comparison of a 20-questions task, a narrative task, and a discussion task, are shown in Table 2. So dierent tasks seem to activate dierent linguistic muscles; some tasks may be more lexical, others more syntactic; some may be more verby, others perhaps more
2

Project funded jointly by the British Council and the Hungarian Ministry of Education.

M. Bygate / System 27 (1999) 3348 Table 2 Summary of features occurring across three tasks Task 20-questions Discussion Narrative Features more lexical sets, fewer clauses, more phrases more verbs, and fewer verb arguments; more nominal `that' clauses more nouns, more verb arguments, more focus on cohesion; more relative clauses

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nouny; or using a dierent metaphor, it may be a bit like dietary balance. Feed people with narrative tasks and they will crunch up some aspects of language in one way, sharpening certain linguistic teeth, i.e. cognitively mapping certain types of language against certain types of communicative demand. Feed them dierent tasks, and dierent linguistic teeth might develop. More research is needed on this, but there is credible evidence of distinct patterns of language on dierent task types. 2.2. Can dierent tasks systematically aect the way language is processed? We have seen that tasks can aect the language content, but also that language cannot be present without processing. The next question, then, is whether tasks can also aect how learners process the language. When we produce language we use processing capacity in two main ways: to manage the content (sorting out what to do); and to execute plans by connecting meanings to forms (doing it) (Levelt, 1978; Bialystok, 1990). These are probably two fundamental and inseparable elements in most human activities. Shifting the bulk of attention to the content generally slows down production; whereas, prioritising speed of production generally limits attention available for the selection and handling of content. Tasks provide an opportunity to attend to both, and might inuence the importance of either. In language processing, prioritising content can, to use Levelt's (1989) terminology, include conceptualisation, i.e. attending to the message content (checking that all the relevant information content is included, checking that it is adequately organised), formulation (attending to the ways in which the information is expressed), and articulation (checking on the pronunciation, and intonation). Prioritising speed of production concerns uency. It is perhaps worth pausing for a moment to consider content and uency a bit more closely. Attending to content eectively means attending either to the accuracy of one's performance, or to its complexity. `Accuracy' refers to two considerations: one is the extent to which the speaker's message conforms to the information that is to be conveyed; hence all speakers have to monitor their formulation and articulation to check that they are keeping to their intentions. A second aspect of accuracy is the extent to which a speaker's selection of the formal features of the language (vocabulary, idiomatic phrases, grammatical morphemes, pronunciation patterns) corresponds to patterns that a representative section of the target population of speakers would nd normal, and avoiding what they would nd abnormal, for the meanings being conveyed. This builds largely on Hymes' (1979) account of native

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speaker norms. Language learning is inescapably concerned with the learning of new norms, and accuracy is the quality of being congruent with those norms. Complexity is the second aspect of content, and this too can have two senses. One is the complexity of processing of the information content and of matching content to adequate formulation. A second aspect of complexity reects the quality of the structures used in the communication, in terms of the number of words clustered within structures, and the extent to which structures themselves are clustered together. In the rest of this paper, accuracy and complexity will refer to the qualities of formulation, not of conceptualisation. Processing the content, then, can involve attention to accuracy and a capacity for complexity. Finally, there is the attention to the processing of the task, which concerns the speaker's capacity for uency. Fluency is the quality of smoothness of execution of the performance. Accuracy, complexity and uency are assumed to be intrinsic qualities of performance in all kinds of tasks. To take an analogy: a brick wall could be built with varying degrees of simplicity/complexity, with varying degrees of precision in the placing of the bricks, and with varying degrees of speed. Or in athletics, the action of a hurdler may be more or less intricately structured, carried out with greater or lesser precision, and implemented more or less evenly and quickly. We know that complexity can vary in language according to conditions. Chafe (1982) reports that in written language, where language users have more time and uency is less of an issue, grammatical structure is commonly (though not necessarily) more complex (`integrated'). Speech, on the other hand, which is produced under greater time pressure and with a uency requirement, is typically more `fragmented'. These three qualitiesuency, accuracy, complexityare always present to varying degrees in all performances, and all three draw on the capacity of the performer. Skehan (1998) points out that there is a tension between them; what he calls a ``trade-o'' eect. Pawley and Syder (1983), for instance, give an a example of an extract of relatively complex and precise speech, involving longer more sustained syntactic structures and careful choice of vocabulary, which characteristically was accompanied by a slower tempo of production with more pausing. Hence, an increase in attention to one of the qualities can compromise performance on the other two. Attending to uency or accuracy would narrow the capacity for processing more complex structures. Centrally whether native or non-native speakers, it is dicult to distribute attention equally between uency, accuracy and complexity: so tasks or individual preference may aect our use of attention. Skehan (1998) in fact proposes that the dierent focuses of attention carry dierent implications for learning. Hence, a pre-occupation with accuracy is likely to lead learners to produce slower and perhaps less complex speech, so as to select language that they are condent of. A focus on complexity would lead learners to explore new combinations of language features, with the risk of making mistakes, while a willingness to focus on uency would lead to less attention to accuracy or complexity. Presumably, attention to all three can contribute to learning. Skehan and Foster (1997) found that speakers' performance varied in terms of whether they focused on uency, accuracy or complexity. Better performance on one aspect seemed to imply

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more limited performance on the other two. They also found that dierences in focus arise from dierent individual priorities, and may be encouraged by dierent tasks: more structured tasks encouraged an emphasis on accuracy and uency; less structured tasks encouraged an emphasis on complexity. While this account requires far more research before it can be properly evaluated or extensively applied, initial ndings suggest that it corresponds to facts about second language processing and the inuence of tasks on learner talk. From this there are some interesting implications in terms of learning and teaching: 1. learners may dier characteristically in their preferred direction of attention; 2. tasks may be used to emphasise one aspect of processing or another; 3. language prociency involves the integrated use of accuracy, complexity and uency of language processing; and 4. learning involves the development and integration of all three. This in turn implies that we need to nd ways to use tasks to lead learners to vary the type of processing they use, and to integrate their capacity for uent processing of accurate and complex language. The big challengefor language teaching in general as much as for task-based teachingis how this can be done. This is the topic of the next section. 2.3. How can the teacher's use of dierent tasks contribute to language development? Two ways of approaching integration of processing capacities are rstly through task repetition, and secondly through the use of pre- and post-task activities. 2.3.1. Varying focus through task repetition Task repetition may help develop this process of `integration'. Experience suggests that we improve our ability to handle communicative situations through repeated encounters with similar demands (e.g. service encounters, small talk, telephone conversations, professional encounters). Typically we rst focus on the message content, scanning our memory for appropriate language to cope with the task. This establishes familiarity with useful message content and language knowledge, and provides a basis for handling the task. On subsequent occasions this familiarity gives us the time and awareness to shift attention from message content to the selection and monitoring of appropriate language. By enabling a shift of attention, learners may be helped to integrate the competing demands of uency, accuracy and complexity. In Extract 3 (Bygate, 1996) consider the performances of a learner on a task repeated 2 days apart. She was asked to watch a short extract of a video cartoon and to retell ita simple unscripted communication task. There was no warning that the task would be undertaken or repeated, it was not part of a class, at no point was any teaching directed towards the task, there was no discussion between learner and sta, and no-one else performed the task, so it could not be discussed with informed peers.

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Extract 3 T1 I saw a little lm about a cat and a mouse and the cat would like to eat the mouse and there was a board covered over and overF F F F F Fwith plate and and bowls and the mouse put it down and the cat was afraid that the plates are break damaged and in the end there was er a big a big er I don't know a big hill with the dishes and then she took the tail of the cat as a towel and she gave her erm she touch her with her feet and all the plates and the bowls break and go g down and all the things was damaged and the landlady took the cat and go to punish to give punishment to the cat

T2 (2 days later, without warning) I saw a very nice cartoon about Tom and Jerry and er the cat tried to catch the mouse the mouse er run up to a cupboard and there were a lotF F F F F Fof dishes especially plates and the mouse put up the plates and taked down because he had fear that the dish will get break and in the end there is a lot and um very high just like a hill and after that she used the tail of the cat as a towel and she kicked the cat and all the dishes falling down and all the plates are broken and she picked up the cat to give her a terrible punishment

The sample shows a striking change in accuracy at time 2 (T2), in terms of vocabulary, idiomaticity, grammatical markers and structure. There were also signs that the speaker became more uent: at T1 she used a lot of repetition before producing words and phrases; at T2 she repeated rather to self-correct after producing words and phrases. That is, at T1, hesitation occurred generally to nd formulations; at T2 it occurred more to check formulations. This all suggests a greater capacity for form on the second occasion. In a bigger study3, I compared the performances of learners on two types of task, narrative (based on a video cartoon) and interview. The learners all performed one version of each task; over 10 weeks, one group of learners then practised narrative tasks, while the other group practised interview tasks; after the 10 weeks, we studied three things: the second performance of the tasks that had been performed 10 weeks earlier; performance of a new version of the type of task they had practised over the 10 weeks and of the task type they had not practised; and overall performance across the two types of task (Table 3). Firstly, comparing performance on the new exemplars of the two types of task, the 10-weeks practice on just one of the task types did not have any signicant
3 Study funded initially by the Centre for Applied Language Studies, University of Reading (19934), and subsequently by ERSC (19978).

M. Bygate / System 27 (1999) 3348 Table 3 Study of task familiarity and task repetition (10-week interval) n=32 Task type practice eect Specic task repetition eect Task eect Narrative group ns + + Interview group ns + +

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+, Eects signicant ( p ` 0X05) for measures of uency and complexity, but not for accuracy; ns, not signicant.

eect. In `contrast, the performance of both groups is more uent and more complex on the repeated tasks than on the new tasks, whether or not they had practised the task type over the 10 weeks. In other words, speakers were helped far more by the fact that they had already done precisely the same task 10 weeks earlier, than by having practised a task type. This strongly conrms the ndings of the earlier study regarding the eects of task repetition. Furthermore, results also showed an interaction between specic task familiarity and group practice: students who had exposure to interview tasks did even better on the repeated interview task, while those who had exposure to narrative tasks did better on the repeated narrative task. This was more marked for the interview group, suggesting that the interview format is particularly conducive to encouraging students to build on their previous working of the material. Disappointingly, however, learners did not show the transfer of any benet from generic task practice to performance on new tasks. The absence of this generic practice eect needs further investigation. Meanwhile, it does seem that task repetition can be a powerful help for learners to integrate uency, accuracy and complexity, and that generic practice can have some eect. Hence developing ways of using task repetition may be worth consideration. Since exact task repetition is usually unlikely to be the best way of implementing this in classrooms, a range of ways of repeating tasks in class could be a valuable pedagogic resource (a procedure explored, albeit somewhat dierently, by Willis (1996)). 2.3.2. Pre- and post-task phases for integrating uency and accuracy Task repetition is not the only way of aecting task processing. Skehan and Foster (1997), following Ellis, 1987, and Crookes, 1989, found that planning can increase the uency, complexity and accuracy with which tasks are carried out: detailed planning giving rise to greater complexity, and undetailed planning giving rise to greater accuracy. More generally, Willis (1996) argues that pre- and post-task activities can help learners to develop task performance by altering their focus of attention via the distinct phases of rehearsal and performance. Altering focus of attention in this way may help learners to integrate accuracy and uency on tasks. Similarly, the studies I have been reporting provide evidence that task repetition can lead speakers to bring together the uency with which they deal with the content and forms, and the accuracy with which they nd and use the words and expressions they need. Taken together, the various studies suggest that thoughtful use of tasks in the classroom can help promote language development.

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2.4. Is there a use for recorded extracts in professional development? The preceding discussion needs to be validated by other professionals. As a step in this direction, in this nal section I wish to show that task-based performance data can help professional development. At Leeds we were contracted by a local secondary school to work with subject teachers on their strategies for teaching their subjects to speakers of English as an additional language (EAL). The teachers gave us permission to use the recordings for professional purposes4. The main problems teachers raised concerned their pupils' in-class understanding, involvement, and achievement. We adopted a taskbased approach to the issues, considering potential problems around specic tasks that teachers had set the pupils. We taped and transcribed samples of teachers' and pupils' talk, and then discussed them individually with the teachers. One illustration is of an art teacher who had asked pupils to paint a picture, and was circulating around the class, commenting. Here is an extract from her comments (Cameron et al., unpublished data): Extract 4: Teacher concluding an extended comment on a year 8 EAL pupil's use of perspective in a painting task you've got the informationF F Fthat you want to give me it's all thereF F Fbut it's just that it's not in the right kind of places and you need to put it in a placeF F Fto make it meaningful and think about what you really see, think about where you're standing because I think that's half the trouble what you're doing is you're standing up here to look down on that table, and you're standing here to draw in front of you, and xxx that's lovely is that and you're stood there to draw that but we rarely stand in three dierent pla places when we're drawing a picture we normally stand in one and that's what's causing the confusion you've got to make your decision where you stand you want to be standing up there at the xxxxx that's ne but one place Together with the teacher, we discussed a number of potentially problematic points in relation to the task in question. These included ambiguity about the teacher's orientation point; diculty in conveying her main message; uncertainty about whether the pupil was focusing on the issue concerning the teacher; and lack of the use of strategies to check on the pupil's understanding. This analysis led to the
4 The data and ideas in this section beneted from the involvement of Lynne Cameron and Jayne Moon of the University of Leeds, Mark Robinson, now of the University of York, who helped with transcription, the anonymous school and the ten school teachers who participated in the project (19957).

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planning of a subsequent lesson. Due to timetable constraints, this was on a completely dierent topic: the use of sewing machines. The lesson was planned as a series of subtaskssome individual, some group, some led by the teacher, some notinvolving reading and labelling, observation, and hands-on operation. Through this sequence, pupils focused on content and later, increasingly, on formal expression. The lesson was recorded and similarly analysed. An extract is shown below (Cameron et al., unpublished data): Extract 5: Extract from closing phase of sewing machine lesson with form 8 pupils T: right EveF F Ftell me what the hand wheel does P: hand wheel T: yes P: it takes up the needle T: it takes up the needleF F Fthat's a pretty good explanation well doneF F Fer M. what is the free arm of the sewing machineF F Fcan you remember P: xxxxx T: a-a-aF F Fyou're not called M. SharonF F Fthe free arm M: Inaudible comment T: no P: xxxxxxx T: you rest your fabric on there thank you very much xxxxxxxxF F Fnow then what then is aF F FaF F Fwhat's the hinge coverF F Fnumber twenty fourF F Fwhat does that hide P: miss the bobbin T: what P: the bobbin T: the bobbin put the bobbin in there (continues for a further 14 turns) This extract matches names of three parts of the machine to three functions. The rest of the extract picks out a further three technical terms and two functions. A striking thing about the transcript is that emerging at a similar stage of the lesson to the previous extract, the teacherpupil talk here is far more interactive and more focused. It seems probable that this change is due to the clarity that everyone has about the purpose of the task; that clarifying the function of the task resulted in clarifying the structure of the lesson; and that the clarity of structure of the task washes back into the teacherclass interaction. Shared task familiarity has provided the basis for interaction. In other words, being explicit about the purpose of the task seemed to have been benecial for teacher and pupils. A further and more general point is that studying the transcript provided a useful perspective for teacher development5. This may well be because studying specic learners' responses on the earlier task brought us perhaps as close to the `heart' of
5 The use of task data for teacher development is discussed more fully in Cameron (1997). and Cameron et al.

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the teaching enterprise as it is possible to getthe shared understanding of learner and teacher: a central point for the teacher to work on. The teachers' talk in the subsequent class was rooted in her clearer attention to the learners' work on task. Thinking about the task might, of course, also help the learners themselves by getting them to consider the demands of the task and how they respond to it. Perhaps also, as teachers we too can benet from task repetition. 3. Conclusion In this paper I have asked whether tasks can enable targeting of language and processing capacities, and provided some evidence that they can. I have argued that integrating processing capacities must be important for language development, and that this can be promoted through the use of task repetition and of pre- and posttask phases. I have suggested that this may provide recurring frames in which learners can gradually shift their attention from content to form, integrating their accuracy, complexity, and uency within specic performances. Subsequent reframing of abilities can lead to a point where those abilities can become context-free. I have proposed that tasks might provide some interesting connections between teacherclass talk and learner focus. I have also suggested that the notion of framing, reframing and unframing may apply as much to the work of teachers and other language professionals as to that of learners. Observing tasks can help us all to get a better grasp of the tools we are using.6 In 1980 Brumt called for numerous small-scale studies of innovations, as a way of building up a qualitatively revealing data-base about the way learning takes place in a wide range of classrooms. Although data-based studies have become far more numerous, we are still far from having the evidence which we need to illustrate learning on dierent types of task, and with dierent types of pre- and post-task activity. A substantial and accessible data-base is needed for professional development, as well as for materials writers, curriculum developers, inspectors, testers, teacher trainers (analogous perhaps to the case studies of trainee doctors, or the way lawyers study past legal cases), and for learners themselves. It would enable us to relate teaching to learning more fully and more systematically. Data of the kind I have been discussing here are intended to make this kind of contribution. Above all, data is needed to relate theories to the classroom. In a recent paper, Leung (1993) comments that principles of language teaching are couched at too high a level of generality to be of use in the classroom. We need to connect principles more closely to practice to investigate how they work. Instead of relying on metaphors to guide language teaching methodology, perhaps a task-based approach can focus us more closely on real language use and real language learning.
6 A lot more research is possible and I think desirable around these issues. I have not discussed the crucial issues of task and level of prociency; task and learner perceptions; or the issues of awarenessraising or new language acquisition through tasks (see Crookes and Gass, 1992; Swain and Lapkin, 1996; Doughty and Williams, 1998 for discussion of some of these issues).

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Levi (1998) warns us about the dangers of analogies when he considers some alternatives: Should the educator take as his model the smithF F F, or the vintnerF F F? Is it better for the mother to imitate the pelican, who plucks out her feathers, stripping herself, to make the nest for her little ones soft, or the bear, who urges her cubs to climb to the top of the r tree and then abandons them up there, going o without a backward glance? F F F Beware of analogies: for millennia they corrupted medicine, and it may be their fault that today's pedagogical systems are so numerous, and after three thousand years of argument we still don't actually know which is best. (p. 77) Perhaps a task-based approach can turn our attention away from corrupting analogies to concentrate instead on what actually happens in our classrooms. Of course, data-based work can never precisely predict what will happen in any classroom. Yet teaching and learning themselves need to be data-based, and without data-based studies, the reports and explanations of language learning will only be very approximately related to the daily classroom data which teachers and learners are involved with or to the pedagogic procedures that teachers use. Some will say that it is not possible to avoid the use of metaphor entirely: that we can't interpret real events without appealing to some form of metaphor, whether in research, or in classroom pedagogy; maybe not, but a concern for what actually happens is crucial if our metaphors are to remain in touch with reality. Acknowledgements I am grateful to David Block and Virginia Samuda for their critical comments.

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