Language Teaching (2020), 53, 275–288

doi:10.1017/S0261444820000014

FIRST PERSON SINGULAR

PO S I T I O N PA P E R

Some directions for the possible survival of TBLT as a real

world project
Martin Bygate
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Email: m.bygate@lancaster.ac.uk

Since Brumfit’s landmark definition of applied linguistics as the theoretical and empirical study of real
world problems in which language plays a central role (Brumfit, 2000), there have been periodic calls
for applied linguistics to engage with problems experienced by people in real world contexts (such as
teaching, health, business, law, social services, business or family), rather than problems of research
methodology originating in the research community, and to work to address them, both in policy
and practice (Bygate, 2004; Tarone, 2013, 2015; Shuy, 2015; Widdowson, 2017). This principle may
well apply to all areas of applied linguistics, but in this piece I would like to explore it in relation
to task-based language teaching (TBLT). This is because while TBLT is characteristically defined in
terms of the needs and interests of language teachers and learners, it is also informed by research,
which is heavily shaped by the priorities of the academy, an influence which can lead it away from
some of its real world objectives. Yet if proponents fail to adequately address the priorities and needs
of classroom stakeholders, proposals will be doomed to failure, a point acknowledged by many (see
inter alia Gatbonton and Segalowitz (1988, 2005), Edwards and Willis (2005), Thornbury and Slade
(2006), van den Branden (2006), Eckerth (2008), Andon and Eckerth (2009), Ellis (2009), Gatbonton
(2015), Long (2015) and Samuda, Bygate, and van den Branden (2018)). That is, research needs to
engage not just with models of second language acquisition (SLA), but with the practices, demands,
pressures, and perspectives of stakeholders in real world language classrooms.
Elsewhere (Bygate, 2016, 2018a, 2018b, 2018c) I have argued that since tasks are intended as a cen-
tral means of shaping learning and teaching, it is necessary to understand the language learning
opportunities offered by particular tasks (what might be termed ‘task content’) so that they can be
combined in a principled way, and systematically supported and complemented by other learning
activities. In this paper, however, I suggest that three further issues need to be addressed if TBLT is
to survive as a serious basis for orienting the teaching of languages: first, to demonstrate how tasks
offer a genuine portal for learners to access the broad scope of a target language; second, to provide
a fuller account of how the use of tasks can facilitate the broad range of language learning processes
and strategies generally recognised as effective and liable to be used; and third, to develop a dynamic
whereby TBLT research can evolve into an ongoing collaborative project involving the stakeholders on
whom the future of TBLT as an educational project depends.

1. The problem
TBLT can be thought of as a project (van den Branden, Bygate, & Norris, 2009) that proposes the use of
communication tasks as the main element to structure a language curriculum and its implementation
(Long & Crookes, 1993; Skehan, 1998; Ellis, 2003; Samuda & Bygate, 2008; Long, 2015). It has been seen
as relevant not only for short intensive courses, but for entire national curricula worldwide. Thus the
proposal is ambitious. However, although one strand of research reports implementation of TBLT
within ongoing language programmes (e.g. van den Branden, 2006; Müller-Hartmann &
© The Author 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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 276 Martin Bygate

Schocker-von Ditfurth, 2011; Gatbonton, 2015), currently the project is mainly underpinned by research
into how tasks potentially activate SLA processes. Although this has generated several valuable lines of
research following early work by Long (1983), Pica and Doughty (1985), Varonis and Gass (1985) and
Pica (1987), its strengths and limitations are starting to become clearer, and so despite the volume of
publications to date, TBLT is yet to fulfil its promise as a free-standing approach to second language
education, endorsed not only by researchers but also by teachers and other stakeholders. For example,
concluding an investigation into experienced teachers’ attitudes to TBLT, Andon (2018) wonders what
would be needed to convince them that TBLT is worth adopting. Reflecting the experience of working as
a teacher educator, Baralt (2018) reports on some of the challenges she found in moving from being a
successful TBLT researcher to initiating and supporting teachers in the adoption of TBLT.
From these and other studies (e.g. Carless, 2003, 2004; Nguyen, 2012; Erlam, 2015), it is apparent
that there is a fundamental challenge in translating the TBLT project from research and theory to the
widespread practice that its proponents claim for it. It is not my purpose here to convince the reader
that TBLT should be widely adopted, since the case for TBLT has been extensively debated elsewhere.
Instead, I wish to argue for the need for research to better address the needs and concerns of those it is
intended to be used by. And so, although it is right to celebrate the achievements of TBLT research, it
is appropriate and timely to consider what it is that research has NOT so far managed to address, and
what might be needed if the project is to progress.

2. Some limitations in TBLT research agendas

A central problem concerns the narrowness of the scope of research into TBLT. Although research
programmes are bound to limit their focus, a project such as TBLT must be accountable not just to
particular theories of language acquisition, but also to the wider responsibilities implicated in the
teaching of a language, in particular how the approach facilitates access to the language curriculum;
how it can help activate the broad range of learning processes useful in learning a language; and
how it engages with the socio-professional context it aims to serve.

2.1 Limitations of TBLT research in relation to the language curriculum

To convince teachers and other stakeholders about the adoption of TBLT, a first concern must be to
show how the approach can facilitate access to the different aspects of the target language – that is to
the language curriculum. However, the various aspects of language to be learnt (pronunciation, gram-
matical resources, vocabulary, conventional discourse patterns) have not been a prior concern in TBLT
research. For instance, Interaction Hypothesis (IH) research, widely cited in SLA-based studies of
TBLT, has predominantly explored patterns of interaction likely to have an impact on acquisition,
resulting in a focus on the impact of ‘negotiation for meaning’ sequences or recasts on acquisition,
and their relationships with factors such as working memory capacity. This focus is largely indifferent
to the aspects of language being negotiated, and studies on the learning of particular features of a lan-
guage have been rare (though see Mackey, 1999). Instead IH studies were always intended to investi-
gate the impact of interaction patterns on language learning in general rather than how tasks might
facilitate access to – or activation of – particular domains of a target language. This is perhaps not
surprising given that Long (e.g. 2015) among others has consistently argued that tasks should NOT
be used with a language agenda in mind, on grounds of the readiness hypothesis (Long, 2015)
(which argues that many grammatical features should not be taught until the learner is ready to
learn them), and that therefore particular language features should only be focused on reactively at
an individual’s point of need during communication (an approach which of course poses practical
problems in classrooms where at any given time each learner could be at a different level of readiness,
and thus at odds with the structuring of any syllabus or language curriculum). And Long’s position is
endorsed by Skehan, who labels the use of tasks to target domains of language ‘structure-trapping’.

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However, avoiding structure-trapping is not incompatible with an account of how tasks can map to a
full range of language domains, an issue I return to later.
Another example of the narrowness of much widely cited TBLT research can be found in the com-
plexity, accuracy, lexis, fluency (CALF) studies which have focused on how the complexity, accuracy,
lexis and fluency of a learner’s language is influenced in the performance of particular tasks under
different processing conditions (the most well known being the presence or absence of planning
(Ellis, 2005)). However, the measures used in CALF studies are generic, so that they report only overall
fluency, accuracy and complexity scores with little attention to the acquisition of particular domains of
language. This too contributes to a potential disconnect between research and practice. Other strands
of TBLT research do not escape this criticism. One instance is task repetition (TR) studies, in which I
have personally had a long interest: few TR studies to date have been concerned with the scope of lan-
guage with which TR cycles are able to engage learners.
Another example of how the activation of specific domains of language has been neglected is found in
complex/dynamic systems theory (C/DST) research, where the main concern is to study patterns (such
as the occurrence of plateaux, regressions, or the appearance of new structures) in the evolution of a lear-
ner’s language over time. Thus the focus is on the processes of change rather than the problems posed by
particular domains of a language. This limitation is also found in TBLT research undertaken from a
socio-cultural theory (SCT) perspective, where interest is in the co-construction processes that arise
in communication between learners, or between learners and teacher, and the gradual processes of
appropriation arising as learners progressively internalise language co-constructed with an interlocutor.
A further instance of the lack of attention to language domains is in research carried out from a usage-
based linguistics (UBL) perspective, which explores the importance of actual usage in the acquisition and
shaping of language knowledge, highlighting the nature of the acquisitional process (how the use of lan-
guage in general can impact on learning) rather than the relationship between tasks and the language
curriculum. The fact is, of course, that all these approaches to TBLT research are more interested in
the underlying processes of language learning than in how tasks might help learners access the breadth
of a target language. This is not to denigrate the value of such work, but rather to raise questions about
the adequacy of its explanatory scope as a basis for the adoption of TBLT in real world contexts.
It could of course be argued that the main reason for this state of affairs is that all these orientations
are varieties of SLA research and thus inevitably prioritise a focus on learning processes, over any con-
cern with the aspects of the language being learnt. Yet an interest in acquisitional processes is not by
definition incompatible with understanding how they engage with different domains of language –
how, for instance, cohesive features of discourse, or framing of stories, the formulation of bargaining
moves, the expression of apologies or requests, the functions of aspects such as the present perfect, or
the use of prosodic features, can be learnt by working on tasks. All are essential concerns for language
teaching programmes. It is an important limitation in research aspiring to promote the use of tasks for
language teaching that it has neglected to explore how tasks can offer a portal enabling learners to
engage with the topography of a target language.

2.2 Some limitations of TBLT research in relation to learning

TBLT research has also adopted a restricted perspective on language learning. In line with much SLA
research over the last 45 years, TBLT researchers have sought to understand how a language can be
acquired through communication, on the assumption that learning language for communication
depends on learning it through communication. To this end, TBLT has focused on tasks as a
means of promoting communication in the target language, and specifically on the extent to which
engagement with tasks requiring communication for their completion can facilitate effective language
development. Yet in exploring communication in such contexts, how far has TBLT research really
engaged with the breadth of human language learning?
Here a thought experiment might be useful, in response to a simple question: how far can a teacher
be expected to rely on the learning processes explored by the strands of TBLT research summarised

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 278 Martin Bygate

above for teaching a language? One’s response is bound at the least to be uneasy. For instance, how far
would one as a learner or teacher be willing to entrust the learning of a language to processes explored
in IH research? How much of our (or our learners’) time would we be willing to devote to negotiating
meaning and deriving input and uptake through recasts? How long could we maintain the process of
negotiating meaning, or managing recasts in a single lesson? And indeed how much faith would we
place in our learners’ ability to retain the language that was negotiated or recast? These questions are
not intended to imply that recasts and negotiation for meaning are unhelpful, but rather that the IH
cannot be expected to bear the whole load of the language learning process (for a similar argument,
see Swan, 2018, pp. 253–255 and his remarks about a ‘simplicity bias’ (2018, p. 255)). Indeed, as
Ellis (2016) has recently shown, the conceptualization of focus on form that is now adopted by IH
researchers has in fact broadened to include a wide range of other learning processes (such as
accepting the value of intentional learning, the use of explicit grammar rules, and of acquisition
being not simply interaction based (p. 408)). More recently Ellis (personal communication) argues
for a broadening of the way we research the impact of teaching procedures such as providing corrective
feedback, by using what he refers to as an ‘idiographic approach (longitudinal, contextual, with a focus
on the individual teacher and students)’ in order to explore more thoroughly the complex ways in
which a pedagogic procedure can function. Although learners and teachers would not be surprised
at this broadening, they might be surprised by the relative recency that it has been taken on board
by researchers.
By the same token, the same questions apply to the pedagogic use of co-construction, the focus of
SCT research, or in the CALF studies to the use or withdrawal of planning time to promote the com-
plexity, accuracy, and fluency of second language learners’ language. And while language learning does
certainly involve the complexification and increasing control of a learner’s different communicative
capacities, fluency, accuracy, and complexity are nonetheless all qualities of surface performance,
and hence their development says little about many of the underlying learning processes that teachers
and learners are likely to be interested in, such as inferencing, predicting, analogysing, repeating,
rehearsing, contextualising, and memorising.
Robinson’s (2015) complexity hypothesis is also structured around a single aspect of learning – the
complexification of skill mastery. His is one of the few theories to offer an account of how a learner
might increase fluency, accuracy and complexity through a sequence of increasingly complex versions
of a task. One virtue of this approach is that it provides an account of how acquisition can progress
within the context of a communicative activity. Nonetheless like other SLA-derived TBLT theories, this
perspective engages a relatively narrow range of learning processes, ignoring many of those enumer-
ated above. The focus on the communication-based aspect of a task as motor for language develop-
ment precludes attention to other potentially valuable learning processes.
Finally, turning to usage-based linguistics (UBL), in Eskildson’s words this approach proposes that
‘long-term language learning is best conceived of as an embodied, frequency and saliency-based process
of accumulating and appropriating a variety of semiotic resources, that is, form–meaning pairings […],
on the basis of concrete exemplars encountered and put to meaningful use in real-life situations’ (2015,
p. 34). UBL is an approach then that sees tasks as providing contexts in which different unit-chunks can
be encountered and internalised – indeed a methodological principle proposed by Long (2015, pp. 307–
317). This perspective on language learning highlights among other things the importance of meaning-
ful repetition – something which would have clear implications for the selection and sequencing of tasks.
Yet although this is obviously an important pedagogical principle, once again it does not – nor does it
intend to – address the broad range of learning processes that can be expected to be needed and activated
when learning a language.
Thus each of the SLA-based approaches to TBLT research has in its own way prioritised a particular
perspective on learning. This is not necessarily a failing on the part of any particular group of
researchers. Yet when seen in relation to the needs, background knowledge, and expectations of the
real world community of teachers and learners, these limitations amount to a potentially critical
gap between TBLT research and real world stakeholders. It could be objected that research perspectives

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are bound to end up addressing only part of the puzzle of language and language learning, yet any lack
of congruence is bound to complicate the relationship between theoretically driven research and real
world practice. Any such difficulties become particularly glaring when we consider the problematic
nature of the relationship between research and real world pedagogic contexts, my third concern.

2.3 Some limitations of TBLT research in relation to pedagogic contexts

In 1993 Crookes and Gass co-edited a volume of studies entitled Tasks in pedagogic context intended
to highlight the educational orientation of TBLT. However, despite this intention and the title of the
volume, only one of the six chapters is an empirical study of tasks within a classroom context, and that
one (Samuda & Rounds, 1993) does not make explicit that key data did indeed come from groups
working on regular materials in a regular class. One other of the chapters (Murphy, 1993) acknowl-
edges the notion ‘that teachers should investigate aspects of what goes on in their classrooms’ (p. 139)
– but then presents non-classroom-based data so that in the end, as Murphy admits, the report ‘does
not represent an examination of TBL per se’ (pp. 139–140). The remaining chapters, although all still
important today in the TBLT literature, are essentially programmatic.
The lack of classroom-based research found in that 1993 volume of researching TBLT in practice
has persisted. The title of García Mayo’s (2007) edited volume entitled Investigating tasks in formal
language learning suggests a collection of papers investigating TBLT in institutional contexts. Yet
none of the papers in the collection explicitly claims to study TBLT as taught with regular materials
in regular classes, and most make clear that they adopt experimental designs.
Some more recent volumes such as McDonough and Mackey (2013) (again significantly entitled
Second language interaction in diverse educational contexts) come close to meeting the criterion of
exploiting ‘regular materials in regular programmes’ but fall short, with few of the task-based studies
(notably those by Kim, 2013; Wagner & Toth, 2013; Collentine & Collentine, 2013; Sauro, 2013) gather-
ing data from regular intact classes, though even two of these (Kim and Wagner & Toth) used specially
designed materials that were not part of the regular curriculum. Leaving aside those chapters which do
not involve the use of tasks, the remainder use either specially designed activities, volunteer students,
and/or special pairings of students sometimes on the basis of a preliminary language test. So although
collections such as this do engage genuine cohorts of learners on activities that are, or could be, used in
regular classes, their overall focus is on task-based performance and outcomes of activities specially
designed and administered. The same applies to many of the studies in the recent special issues of
Language Teaching Research (2016) and TESOL Quarterly (2017) devoted to TBLT.
Of course, there are powerful influences which make it hard to undertake TBLT research in ongoing pro-
grammes. Programmes using TBLT or setting up the particular phenomena of interest to researchers may
not be accessible, and teachers usually have little spare capacity to participate in research projects. Yet
exploring TBLT in real life pedagogical contexts is not impossible: studies such as those reported by
Lynch and Maclean (2000, 2001), Shintani (2016), Kobayashi and Kobayashi (2018), Lynch (2018) and
Nitta and Baba (2018), were carried out by teacher-researchers focusing on activities that formed part of
normal ongoing language programmes, while some have engaged with TBLT in taught programmes,
such as van den Branden (2006), Müller-Hartmann and Schocker-von Ditfurth (2011), Andon (2018)
and Vandommele, van den Branden, and Van Gorp (2018). In relation to the bulk of research such studies
are rare, but the ones cited here do offer a way forward.

3. Addressing the problem

3.1 Broadening TBLT as an approach to language
3.1.1 Teaching approaches and the target language topography
In trying to move forward, it can be useful to recall how language teaching methodology evolved in
part so as to gradually account more adequately for the nature of language. This dynamic can help

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 280 Martin Bygate

explain developments from the grammar-translation approach, through audiolingualism, the situ-
ational approach, then via approaches that were structured around the notions and functions of lan-
guage, to those which were essentially discourse oriented e.g. the Reading and thinking in English
course books (Widdowson, 1979–1980; Swales’s, 1990 genre approach), as well as approaches
which claimed to be lexically driven (see also Long, 2015, chapter 2).
This historical evolution can be interpreted partly as a struggle to offer learners an increasingly
inclusive experience of language. Thus while grammar-translation was organised largely around
texts of a literary nature, audiolingualism focused on ensuring systematic coverage of the structural
repertoire of a language. Despite its thoroughness, a significant part of the reaction against audiolin-
gualism could in turn be seen as a response to the impoverished picture of language that the approach
offered. Structures were essentially isolated from typical discourse environments, and contextualised
mainly within stimulus-response-feedback sequences. In contrast, subsequent approaches then
aimed to embed grammatical structures in potential real life situations (as in the situational
approach – see Brown 2007a), or incorporate them into interpersonal and discourse functions
(notional-functional approaches, Brown 2007a) or into the context of real life discourse genres.
This evolution can be seen at least in part as a sustained attempt to offer learners a progressively
more comprehensive language curriculum, contriving to do justice as fully as possible to our
understanding of the nature of language.
Given this – often quite hard-fought – evolution, it is not unreasonable to ask proponents of TBLT
how their approach can provide the breadth and depth of coverage of the language curriculum that
had been the preoccupation of so many other approaches. And yet much work on TBLT is curiously
ahistorical in terms of its relationship to this aspect of the evolution of language teaching pedagogy: it
seems to assume that whatever the task, the fact that communication is task-based is sufficient to
ensure learners will explore the topography of the target language.
As noted earlier, despite the importance for learners and teachers of this issue, it has not been a
concern of much TBLT research to date, reflecting a disconnect between theory and practice. While
accepting that predicting the language potential of tasks could lead teachers to use them to ‘focus
on forms’ rather than on ‘form’ (Long, 2015), groups of students and their teachers will still want
to know how the tasks on their programmes can help to activate the different domains of language
and language skills. Arguing that tasks can be profitably selected to engage learning but without con-
cern for their language potential is surely an untenable position. In other words TBLT has to be
accountable in some way or other for its ability to make accessible as much of the length and breadth
of the target language as students need and have time to acquire.

3.1.2 Predicting language use in tasks

Exact prediction of language on unscripted tasks is impossible by definition. The question then is how to
delineate the relationship between tasks and language in ways that might be useful for teachers. It is one
thing to agree that the verbatim language on tasks, the exact sequence of utterances, and the precise
choice of formulation cannot be predicted, but it is quite another to claim that the DOMAINS of language,
at least in terms of lexical fields, grammatical areas, and pragmatic discourse moves and genres, cannot
be anticipated (Bygate, 2018a, 2018b offers empirical support for this claim). Some studies illustrate
what might be possible here. Samuda (2001) has shown that tasks can be designed which activate stu-
dents’ engagement with the domain of epistemic modality, in discussing the likely significance of an
array of objects, even if the students remain free to decide what levels of certainty they wish to commit
to, and about precisely which objects. Earlier, Tarone and Parrish (1988) found that discourse type can
affect article usage, while Yule and Macdonald (1990) investigated learners’ navigation of tasks designed
to require them to negotiate reference. Swales (1990) reported studies of how narrative structures typical
of case studies were essential to the reading needs of law students, and the nature of simple and complex
narrative structures in task performance was explored by Skehan and Foster (1997, 1999), Tavakoli and
Foster (2008) and Foster and Tavakoli (2009). Bygate and Samuda (2005) reported how across repeti-
tions of a task, students used patterns of increasingly elaborated talk involving notably the use of

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adverbials of place, cause and effect, and purpose. In a more systematic proposal, Robinson (2009)
schematises a range of domains of language under his ‘resource-directing’ dimension, identifying con-
ceptual domains such as ‘here and now’, ‘spatial reasoning’, ‘causal reasoning’, ‘intentional reasoning’,
and ‘perspective taking’. Individual studies then have raised the issue of the relationship between tasks
and domains of language and identified some patterns without fear of ‘structure-trapping’. Working
from studies such as these, a fuller mapping between task design and domains of language would be
a significant step forward in making the TBLT project more transparent to teachers.
This should be possible. Numerous linguists (e.g. Gumperz, 1983; Leech, 1983; Halliday, 1995;
Croft & Cruse, 2004) have shown the richness of language as a resource. If TBLT is proposing that
tasks can be effectively used to engage with and acquire significant parts of this resource, we should
be able to show HOW the use of tasks can help to achieve this. For instance how representative tasks
might engage learners in exploring tense, aspect, mood, and modality. Learners need to be shown get-
ting to grips with comparison, handling reference, understanding and managing a range of conjunc-
tive and adjunctive meanings (additive, adversative, causative, temporal, purposive), and learning the
patterning of lexical relations. Studies need to be published of how learners work with tasks that acti-
vate their management of different kinds of discourse structures. In other words, we need studies that
investigate how tasks of different degrees of difficulty and sophistication can open up different facets of
a target language. Unless TBLT can do this more comprehensively, and in a variety of learning con-
texts, it risks failing to convince key stakeholders of its genuine potential as a full-blown language
teaching approach, or of its potential to achieve manageable goals within the limited timescales
most learners and teachers have to work to. If teachers and learners needed convincing in the past
of the high surrender value of the courses they worked on, this surely still applies today.

3.2 Broadening TBLT in its approach to learning

Despite the merits in studying learning from the range of SLA theories discussed in the first part of this
paper, there are grounds for suggesting that as with the focus on language, TBLT has been ignoring the
long history of attempts within language teaching methodology to enrich the range of learning processes
mobilised within programmes. The pervading assumption that all and only the processes of communi-
cation are required for effective language learning has limited the range of human learning processes of
interest to TBLT, even in relation to learning processes reported in the broader SLA literature. SLA
research (as reported by e.g. Ellis, 1985; McLaughlin, 1987; Skehan, 1989; DeKeyser, 2005; Mitchell,
Myles, & Marsden, 2013; Ellis, 2016) embraces a wide variety of processes involved in the learning of
languages, going well beyond those arising within communication. This range is echoed in publications
on language teaching methodology (e.g. Stevick 1976/1996; Levelt, 1978; Widdowson, 1978, 1983;
Brumfit, 1984; Richards & Rodgers, 2001; Brown, 2007a, 2007b; Lightbown & Spada, 2013). It is
clear that TBLT needs to engage with this.
Even regarding communication-based learning, it is well attested that successful language learning
includes processes such as inferencing and category induction, and assimilation of new features to (as
well as accommodation of) existing phonological, lexico-grammatical, and pragmatic categories (e.g.
Dakin, 1973; Widdowson, 1983; Celce-Murcia & Goodwin, 1991; Stevick 1976/1996). It is also
accepted that associative learning is important in building up knowledge of how lexico-grammatical
features behave, particularly within different discourse domains and registers (DeKeyser, 2005;
Lightbown & Spada, 2013). Further, we know (DeKeyser, 2005, 2018) that repeated encounters
with sequences of language in similar meaningful contexts enables progressively more successful pars-
ing, interpretation, retention, preparation for future use, and gains in accuracy and fluency. We also
know that there are differences in learning styles. For instance, Skehan (1989) has shown that some
learners are significantly more analytically oriented than others, so a robust and comprehensive
approach to language pedagogy will need to provide activities that enable both analytical learning
and chunk learning (Long, 2015). Important learning opportunities also arise OUTSIDE of contexts of
communication, which need relating to a TBLT approach. For example, we know that the use of

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dictionaries and other reference sources can be a powerful way of accessing systemic knowledge that
may not be consistently apparent in the context of specific tasks, yet which should not be neglected
within TBLT. There is also research which demonstrates the value of transcription (either of oneself
or of others) and of self-correction (Lynch, 2018).
Although not usually discussed in TBLT circles, memorisation, which often plays an important role
in learning – and not just in language learning, but in other domains such as chess, tennis, the training
of air pilots, medicine, and the law (DeKeyser, 2005, 2018; Ericsson, 2009) – should not be neglected.
For instance, it can help learners to internalise idiomatic lexico-grammatical sequences which are not
easily or logically predictable or recoverable from their first language, from the input or from derived
rules; it can provide the material for the learner to rehearse and fine-tune likely output, enabling them
to get their head or tongue around the material; it can enable them to build up repertoires of expres-
sions; and in the process it can help provide a basis for fluent production. While it is clearly not suf-
ficient on its own, memorisation is clearly valuable, and can perfectly well be incorporated into
task-based activities, for example memorising a joke so as to be able to elicit laughter when telling
it, memorising a line to present as an interview candidate, or memorising a series of directions to
give someone without need of a cue card (Samuda, personal communication).
To summarise, despite the work of researchers and language teaching specialists (e.g. Willis, 1996;
van den Branden, 2006; Willis & Willis, 2007; Eckerth, 2008; Müller-Hartmann & Schocker-von
Ditfurth, 2011; East, 2012; Erlam, 2015), and publications by teachers (e.g. Edwards & Willis, 2005)
and published teaching materials (e.g. Swan & Walter, 2005), there are good grounds for arguing that
TBLT research has failed to connect systematically to the wide variety of learning processes that are
known to be involved in language learning. This failure runs the risk of giving educators the impression
that TBLT pins its faith on activating a very narrow range of learning processes which would be unlikely
to provide a successful basis for a comprehensive approach to language education. A convincing pro-
posal for TBLT as a fully developed approach to language education needs to show how tasks can be
used in ways that enable these various processes. That is, TBLT should not only bring something import-
ant to the language curriculum, it should also be seen as combining with and enhancing the variety of
learning processes and procedures that are already accepted. In other words, TBLT needs to be explored
as a resource to be harnessed to other important insights and procedures, and not as an end in itself.

3.3 TBLT as a collaborative applied linguistics

The limitations in TBLT research discussed so far concern matters of content and learning processes.
However, applied linguistics can also often have difficulty in addressing problems of real world stake-
holders rather than those of the academy. And thus a third major reason why our research may be
failing to address real world issues is the lack of engagement with teachers and learners in real
world classrooms in which language programmes are ongoing (a problem represented by Swan’s
‘invisible practitioner’ (2018, p. 252)). In order to persuade teachers and administrators to participate
in TBLT research projects, or adopt TBLT procedures in their classrooms, they need to be convinced of
its potential value in action.

3.3.1 Developing a relevant database

This implies we need a rich data-base that enables us to explore and better understand the range of
ways in which TBLT can work in different contexts and with different learners, and serve as illustra-
tion and guidance in teacher education. A database relevant for stakeholders should include evidence
of how tasks can be used through and across lessons as key elements of a lesson or scheme of work,
embedded into teaching with other supporting activities. It should also contain evidence of how
learners can respond to TBLT at different levels of proficiency. Some studies have appeared in primary
(Pinter, 2005, 2007; Shintani, 2016) and tertiary contexts (e.g. Lynch & Maclean, 2001; Byrnes, 2014,
2015; Kobayashi & Kobayashi, 2018; Nitta & Baba, 2018) though many of these have focused more on
the functioning of tasks and task types, than on how they can be used to mediate learning. We also

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 Language Teaching 283

need to know (and if they are to adopt TBLT, teachers themselves need to know) how novice and
experienced teachers can work with TBLT. We have some studies of this sort (e.g. in Edwards &
Willis, 2005; East, 2012; Erlam, 2015), but few with established teachers who have integrated TBLT
into their work, though van den Branden (2006), Müller-Hartmann and Schocker-von Ditfurth
(2011), Müller-Hartmann and Schocker (2018b) and Nguyen, Newton, and Crabbe (2018) are particu-
lar exceptions. Research of this kind would respond to Long’s (2015, p. 304, footnote) call for the accu-
mulation of substantial databases that can be used to inform and support pre- and in-service teacher
development, and provide us with the data that would enable us to adopt a discriminating approach to
the selection and use of TBLT procedures. There is likely to be widespread agreement that this would
be desirable. Yet the question remains: how to reach a point where TBLT is adopted in a critical mass
of programmes? In particular how to persuade teachers and administrators of the value of working
with TBLT? Clearly rather than imposing an obligation to adopt TBLT, we need to engage with tea-
chers’ current practices. So how might this unfold in practice?

3.3.2 Facilitating the adoption of TBLT in practice

It is well known that imposing an approach onto professionals from outside is fraught with risks.
Research makes clear that adoption of an innovation by third parties (here teachers and administra-
tors) depends primarily on their willingness to try out an innovative procedure, in a way that offers
participants and third parties a fair chance of seeing its strengths and weaknesses (Patton, 2015).
For this, teachers themselves need to have an interest in giving the procedures a chance: implemen-
tation of an innovation that the teachers (or indeed the students themselves) do not endorse is almost
guaranteed to fail. And, of course, as Patton (2015) makes clear, there will be various reasons why an
innovation may not be fully endorsed: for example it may not be properly understood until it has been
experienced; teachers will have prior experience of numerous approaches which they are either more
comfortable with, or which they know can work. The need for the innovation will often not be appar-
ent to the teacher, and in any case innovative practices will nearly always require more work and are
more subject to misfire. As in all walks of life, change is painful, time-consuming, unsettling, and can
undermine practitioners’ confidence, affecting the teachers’ relationships with their students. This
leads to the key conclusion that innovation of TBLT practices is likely best grounded in teachers’ cur-
rent practices and understandings, their current concerns and needs and the ways they formulate
them. A good starting point then is for the concept and uses of tasks to be introduced in response
to their current practices, concerns and needs, including the materials, textbooks, and procedures
they already use (Borg & Sanchez, 2015). This in turn implies the need to involve teachers as
co-participants in TBLT research.

3.3.3 Involving teachers as co-participants in TBLT research

Involving teachers as co-participants in TBLT research implies that the research questions driving the
research will need to answer questions raised by or endorsed by the teachers. Adopting this angle
enables the research to be of direct interest to the teacher, providing them with a stake in the project.
This also means that the questions can be shaped so that they have face validity for the participant
practitioner, in turn shaping the ways in which the research is carried out. A further pay-off of adopt-
ing this approach is that the research processes and its outcomes are likely to have more chance of
making sense to other practitioners and those on pre- and in-service programmes. Provided the pro-
ject is manageable, the findings are quite likely to generate a dynamic leading to further projects, since
one finding almost inevitably leads to other pedagogically interesting questions. In the process, tasks
would be likely to shift from being a tangential element in the teacher’s focus to something far more
central, and TBLT research would gain immeasurably in its outreach, and in the grounded character of
its findings.
An additional implication is that, in the process, TBLT research would become a collaborative
enterprise between researchers and teachers (and of course their institutions) – a conception of
TBLT research exemplified by Müller-Hartmann and Schocker (2018a, 2018b) which focuses on

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 284 Martin Bygate

teacher development in the context of ongoing dynamic relationships between teachers and teacher
developers. In similar vein, Newton and Bui (2018) report a two-phase project in which after an initial
observation and feedback phase the development team proposed a revised set of materials which the
teachers then taught. Interactive approaches of this kind can help to make TBLT into a genuinely
APPLIED linguistic activity, in which it roots TBLT in real world contexts with real world agents, and
defines itself in terms shaped and ratified by real world stakeholders. Both the development and
the impact of research such as that surrounding a project like TBLT is severely limited unless it is
approached as a collaborative project with the relevant real world community. Just as it would be futile
to expect research into the language of health care (Sarangi & Candlin, 2003) to be acted on by health
care professionals without their collaborative involvement in the research, so TBLT research without
the involvement of teachers would confine it to remain within a parallel non-applied academic world.
And in any case it is presumptuous to assume that practising teachers have little to offer the develop-
ment of an approach.

4. Conclusion
As I noted at the beginning, there is no doubt that the use of communicative tasks represents a highly
significant development in language teaching – I have even argued (Bygate, 2003) that it amounts to a
revolution. Yet the ambition of TBLT goes well beyond merely advocating the use of tasks for language
teaching: it aspires to developing a comprehensive researched approach to language teaching, in which
tasks are the foundation of the whole curriculum, as well as providing the structural underpinning to
lessons and schemes of work. It seems clear (to me at least) that this ambition can, in principle, be
achieved. TBLT CAN be a comprehensive approach in the sense that tasks embrace all the levels of lan-
guage identified by successive teaching approaches, and are compatible with all known learning pro-
cesses. Its potential is reflected in the fact that over 35 years after the earliest publications, it remains a
topic of lively interest and debate.
However, just as with any approach to the development of language pedagogy (cf. Borg & Sanchez,
2015), and indeed any applied linguistic project, for the theory to translate into practice, research
needs to bridge the gap between the research community and the real world of the language teacher
and the language programme by making its full potential VISIBLE. First, as I have been arguing, we need
to demonstrate how tasks can be designed and used as a portal enabling learners to engage with the
entire language curriculum (a major concern of mine since 1987/1988); next, to show how tasks can be
deployed in ways that mobilise the full range of processes known to be used profitably in language
learning; and, finally, we really should demonstrate empirically how this can be done by working
with practising teachers to address their own concerns within the context of ongoing programmes.
In other words, and to echo the arguments of Tarone (2013) and Widdowson (2017), TBLT needs
substantial and extensive engagement with the issues and realities of real world stakeholders if it is
to move out of the world of research and become part of a genuinely applied linguistics.
Otherwise, TBLT researchers will remain in their bubble, the teaching and learning parts of the
acronym will go by default, and the gap between theory and real world practice will continue to plague
us even as TBLT gives way to the next Big Thing.

Acknowledgements. I am very grateful to Graeme Porte and Language Teaching for the opportunity to submit this paper,
and especially to Gin Samuda for her unfailing encouragement and good-humoured critical feedback. Any remaining weak-
nesses can be easily traced back to me.

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Martin Bygate is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics and Language Education at Lancaster University. His main inter-
ests have been the teaching of speaking and the use of tasks, focusing especially on the language that learners use on tasks,
whether learners’ repeated encounters with tasks can help both learning and teaching, and the strengths and weaknesses of
different procedures. These interests grew out of his experiences teaching language in primary, secondary, and tertiary insti-
tutions, as well as in UK language schools, and were lastingly shaped by his time working with colleagues on the Reading
MATEFL, a programme which deliberately balanced and blended modules of theoretical exploration and practical applica-
tion. He co-edited (with Alan Tonkyn and Eddie Williams) Grammar and the language teacher (Prentice Hall, 1994), pub-
lished with Virginia Samuda Tasks in language learning (Palgrave, 2008), and edited Domains and directions in TBLT (John
Benjamins, 2015) and Task repetition in language learning (John Benjamins, 2018), also publishing articles on task perform-
ance and repetition, the teaching of spoken language, and the nature of applied linguistics. He was co-editor of Applied
Linguistics, President of AILA, and for many years co-edited a book series on TBLT (John Benjamins).

Cite this article: Bygate, M. (2020). Some directions for the possible survival of TBLT as a real world project. Language
Teaching, 53(3), 275–288. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444820000014

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0261444820000014 Published online by Cambridge University Press