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Research perspectives
This study is informed by three specific, complementary research perspectives: TBLT, classroom-based research, and SCT. I will briefly deal with each in turn.
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The TBLT paradigm
Central to the TBLT paradigm is the second-language pedagogic task itself. This has been defined variously by Breen (1989), Bygate, Skehan, and Swain (2001), Candlin (1987), Ellis (2003), Lee (2000), Long (1985), Nunan (1989), Prabhu (1987), and Skehan (1998). Samuda and Bygate (2008) have taken a critical look at Ellis’s (2003) comprehensive criteria for a task and produced a working definition: “A task is a holistic activity which engages language use in order to achieve some non-linguistic outcome while meeting a linguistic challenge, with the overall aim of promoting language learning, through process or product or both” (p. 69). With this definition of the task in mind, Samuda and Bygate (2008, p. 196) go on to identify the central characteristics of TBLT in this way:
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Tasks define and drive the syllabus; Task performance is a catalyst for focusing attention on form, and not vice versa; Assessment is in terms of task performance; Task selection is shaped by real-world activities of relevance to learners and their target needs; • Tasks play an essential role in engaging key processes of language acquisition.
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TBLT is founded on theory developed by Long (1981, 1996) and Swain (1985). In his Interaction Hypothesis, Long posited that learners learn lexico-grammatical forms as they attend to them in resolving a communication problem and that they resolve it through negotiation for meaning, which Long defined as a process by which two or more interlocutors somehow overcome a communication breakdown, e.g., with a clarification request (Long 1981, 1996). In Long’s system, as learners engage in interaction, they are also guided toward a focus on form, which is defined as learners attending to particular language forms during a meaning-oriented activity (Long, 1981, 1996). Within this process of spoken interaction, Swain put forth the Output Hypothesis, by which second language learning is promoted when learners are pushed to produce language that is accurate and precise (Swain, 1985). It is this theoretical underpinning provided by Long and Swain that has generally informed task-based teaching and research.
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