What is a task?

There are many definitions of the ‘task’ in task-based language teaching (TBLT). These typically involve a
focus on language use, and the negotiation of meaning in order to complete some real world purpose.

In this article, Richard Kiely describes how linguistics researchers define and describe tasks.

What is a task?

One definition that is particularly useful is that of Rod Ellis, because it focusses on the task as:

i) an activity managed by the teacher in the classroom, and

ii) an instrument used by researchers to understand classroom interaction and processes of language
learning.

‘A task is a workplan that requires learners to process language pragmatically in order to achieve an
outcome that can be evaluated in terms of whether the correct or appropriate propositional content has
been conveyed. To this end, it requires them to give primary attention to meaning and to make use of
their own linguistic resources, although the design of the task may predispose them to choose particular
forms. A task is intended to result in language use that bears a resemblance, direct or indirect, to the
way language is used in the real world. Like other language activities, a task can engage productive or
receptive, and oral or written skills, and also various cognitive processes’ (Ellis 2003:16).

The definition specifies three major characteristics of tasks.

 First, the primary attention to meaning is emphasised in terms of propositional content and
pragmatics.

For example, a task might consist of looking at a picture story (a story told through a series of pictures)
and then considering the initial meaning of the pictures and what they represent. Learners might also
consider the appropriateness of the images for their own cultural context or background. A teacher or
researcher using a picture story, would also need to consider whether the images themselves, and their
implied meaning or ‘story’ were appropriate for their particular institution or age-group of learners.

 Second, there is an emphasis on language forms. In using linguistic resources and choosing
particular forms, the students, with or independently of the guidance of the teacher, engage in
decisions such as the tense to be used in telling a story, or the particular adjective to represent
happiness or sadness.

Such engagement serves as a reminder to students of the complexity and situated nature of language
use.

 Third, there is a focus on how language is used in the real world. This sets a challenge for the
teacher in setting up a task: the activity should ideally correspond to how the students use
language already, or how they might aspire to using the target language.

For example, if using a picture story task in a context where students are preparing for an examination
in which grammatical accuracy is an important criterion, the task outcome might focus on writing an
account. In another context, students might focus on telling the story as an anecdote in a social
situation, or re-constructing the actions depicted in the story.

In such contexts, students might rehearse, present, record, transcribe, improve, all as part of the
experience of language learning with a focus on how language is used in the real world.

The Ellis definition ends with a reference to various cognitive processes. This is a link to the mechanisms
of language learning that have been identified as important in second language acquisition (SLA)
research.

This research emphasises the value of meaning-based language use (Skehan 1998). Within this language
use, learning is facilitated by ‘pushed’ language production (Swain 2005): a sense of engaging with a
communication challenge which reminds the students that the current stock of grammatical structures,
or words is not enough.

This provides opportunities for noticing (Schmidt 1990), a phenomenon where students identify new
structures or words in texts which they feel they can use, or identify in their own language use, specific
gaps they need to fill. Many of these cognitive processes of language learning through language use are
captures in what Merrill Swain calls ‘languaging’:

‘When language is used to mediate problem solution, whether the problem is about which word to use,
or how best to structure a sentence so that it means what you want it to mean, or how to explain the
results of an experiment, or how to make sense of the action of another … then languaging occurs’
(Swain 2006: 96).

Conclusion

To conclude on the question of what a task is: it is in the first instance, a workplan, which has the
potential to promote language use in the classroom.

In actual implementation, it is an effective task if it captures the imagination of the students and
engages them in being both creative and compliant: in using the language in novel, entertaining and
convivial ways, while at the same time conforming to the requirements of the task outcome, and to the
accuracy and appropriateness of language forms.

References

Ellis, R. (2003) Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press Schmidt, R.
(1990) The role of consciousness in second language learning. Applied Linguistics, 11, 129-158.

Skehan, P. (1998) A cognitive approach to language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Swain, M. (2005) The Output Hypothesis: Theory and Research in E. Hinkel (Ed) Handbook of research in
second language teaching and learning. New Jersey, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, pp. 471-483.

Swain , M. (2006) Languaging, agency and collaboration in advanced second language proficiency. in H.
Byrnes (Ed.) Advanced Language Learning: The contributions of Halliday and Vygotsky. New York:
Continuum, pp 95-108
© University of Southampton / British Council 2014