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How does foreign language learners' agency emerge at the micro-level of classroom activity during the enactment of digitally-enhanced tasks, and how do these learners exercise their agency digitally within and beyond the classroom? Drawing on research in task-based and computer-assisted language learning, this mixed-methods study uncovers key dimensions of "learner agency" - a newcomer to the field of language teaching methodology and applied linguistics. The analysis centers on three case studies of teenage students' perceptions and handling of digitally-enhanced language learning tasks. These are complemented with a Germany-wide questionnaire survey among participants in the U.S. Embassy School Election Project - an intercultural, blended language learning project that has drawn over 15,000 participants since 2012.
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Joannis Kaliampos
EFL Learners’ Task Perceptions and Agency in Blended Learning
An Exploratory Mixed-Methods Study on the ‘U.S. Embassy School Election Project’
Lüneburg, Universität, Dissertation, 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.24053/9783823395676
© 2022 • Narr Francke Attempto Verlag GmbH + Co. KGDischingerweg 5 • D-72070 Tübingen
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Στους γονείς μου,Αθανάσιο και Παρασκευή
Acknowledgments
Agency is never just a property of the individual—it hinges on social and interactional relationships with one’s environment. Consequently, bringing this study to fruition would have been impossible without the support provided by many different people. First and foremost, I wish to thank the students and teachers who welcomed me into their classrooms and allowed me to learn from their engagement in the ‘U.S. Embassy School Election Project.’
Prof. Dr. Torben Schmidt supervised this study at Leuphana University and has helped to introduce my work to the research community. I am indebted to Prof. em. Dr. Michael K. Legutke, whose critical thought and genuine passion for teaching motivated me to conduct this study in the first place, and who served as a co-examiner. I sincerely thank Prof. Dr. Christiane Lütge, who always asked the right questions during our encounters and, without hesitation, agreed to join the committee as a co-examiner. Many thanks are also due to Prof. Dr. Anne Barron for chairing the doctoral defense.
I am grateful for the financial support I received through a doctoral scholarship and multiple travel grants by the Leuphana Graduate School. This monograph is the slightly revised version of my dissertation thesis I submitted to the Faculty of Education at Leuphana University in September 2020 in partial fulfilment of the of the requirements for the degree of Doctor philosophiae (Dr. phil.). I am grateful to the editorial board of the Gießener Beiträge zur Fremdsprachendidaktik, especially Prof. Dr. Jürgen Kurtz, for accepting this study for inclusion in the series. It is thanks to Kathrin Heyng at Narr Francke Attempto Verlag and her colleagues’ patient support that this book finally could go into print.
Likewise, I would like to thank the U.S. Embassy Berlin and the U.S. Department of State for funding the school project at the center of this study and providing the conditions for a stimulating exchange between researchers, educators, and classroom practitioners. This provided the fertile ground for the inception of Teach About U.S.—a hub for transatlantic project work, which has facilitated pedagogical innovation across hundreds of classrooms on both sides of the Atlantic. Many thanks are also due to the colleagues I have had the pleasure to work with at the Institute of English Studies at Leuphana University, LIFE e. V. Berlin, the U.S. Embassy and consulates in Germany, the Transatlantic Outreach Program at the Goethe-Institut in Washington, D.C., and our project partners and teacher network in Germany and the United States. They are too many to name individually. I thank Mallory L. King for proofreading this study’s manuscript and Jana-Luise Bimkiewicz for helping me with the video transcription. Dr. Karin Ernst and Katja Krüger allowed me to profit from their wealth of experience in digital and exploratory pedagogy. Dr. Martina Kohl encouraged me to do things I never knew I could achieve and rooted for me ever since we started working together. This study was made possible by all of you.
I especially thank my friends, who constantly reminded me that life beyond academia exists and provided me the necessary balance to complete this study. Most important of all, I am grateful to my parents and my family for their unwavering moral support and trust in me. Thank you for everything you have taught me, σας ευχαριστώ από καρδιάς!
1Introduction
Digital technology increasingly penetrates and transforms virtually all aspects of life. Young people today are increasingly socialized into a dizzying array of digitally mediated practices ranging from leisure and entertainment to learning and professional purposes. The annual JIM survey (Jugend, Information, Medien [Youth, Information, Media], MPFS, 2019) of German teenagers’ digital practices paints the image of an ever more connected and digitally adept generation, always online, with nearly universal access to digital devices. They habitually communicate and engage with friends, family, and wider peer communities by using multimodal tools, streaming foreign language music, films, and TV series for entertainment, reading the news on web-based media outlets, shopping online, and engaging in online gaming, amongst other practices—for a daily average of 205 minutes. At the same time, this generation, more than in previous years, employs their informally gained digital literacies, social relationships, and foreign language skills to advance causes they are passionate about, such as matters of social and environmental justice. A sociological study on the life-world of young people aged 12 to 25 in Germany, entitled ‘A generation speaks up,’ recently concluded, “[a]s part of their personal search for a secure and autonomous place in society, they [i.e., young people] adapt to prevailing circumstances so that they can seize opportunities that open up to the best degree possible” (Hurrelmann et al., 2019, p. 13). With this, the authors capture critical tenets of what is subsequently investigated as learner agency: the desire for self-actualization, the skillful realization and exploitation of affordances in a given environment towards personally meaningful objectives, individual action and responsibility vis-à-vis the social environment, and reflective awareness of one’s actions.
These developments fundamentally impact what it takes to learn a foreign language and to be proficient in it. Today, language learning is not confined to the physical classroom but occurs intentionally or in passing, informally, in practices as diverse as streaming a video, engaging in civic action, or playing online games. Being proficient in a language, similarly, involves using multimodal semiotic resources, such as GIFs, emojis, non-linear texts, hashtags, and more, besides merely understanding and producing spoken and written language.
The goal of foreign language education is commonly conceptualized as discourse competence (Hallet, 2008), which entails sociocultural participation in personally relevant discourses for advancing one’s own objectives, from a local to an increasingly international and global scale (Lütge, 2015), using English as a lingua franca. Digital platforms of the social and semantic Web, as well as LMS, extend and qualitatively transform the opportunities for meaningful foreign language discourse participation and learner agency (Redecker, 2009; Reinhardt, 2018; Vandergriff, 2016). In a world ever more connected through digital practices for communication, collaboration, and self-expression in professional, entertainment, and play contexts, learners’ access to as well as their participation and proficiency in these technology-mediated discursive genres represent opportunities for personal development and well-being (Hargittai, 2002; van Dijk & van Deursen, 2014). To exploit such opportunities, EFL learners need agency, meaning they must be willing and able to regulate their behavior but also, in cooperation with their peers, seek and create learning opportunities spanning formal and increasingly informal learning contexts by employing foreign language and digital literacy skills in multimodal, multiuser, and multilingual contexts (Dudeney et al., 2014).
This study focuses on a school project which set out to achieve these goals in the context of the U.S. presidential election and, at the time of writing this study, continues to attract several thousand participants in Germany and other countries. The U.S. Embassy School Election Project—the context of this study—was designed as an innovative learning scenario by a partnership of public (U.S. Embassy Berlin, Leuphana University) and non-profit (LIFE e. V.) partners and curricular agencies (LISUM Berlin-Brandenburg) to connect the methodological principles of computer-assisted and task-based language learning as well as inter- and transcultural learning in a nationwide project context (Kaliampos & Schmidt, 2014; Kohl & Schmidt, 2014). With the increasing relevance of participatory Web-tools and social media in the field of political discourse and news reporting—examples of discourses which many of the targeted students already followed in their foreign language, English—the U.S. election was considered to provide an enormous linguistic, discursive, motivational, and intercultural learning potential and an authentic context for modeling and experimenting with digitally-mediated English-language discourses. Following the methodological rationale of task-based language teaching (TBLT), the project’s target task asked learners to adopt the perspective of the U.S. voters, predict one assigned state’s vote, and present it in the format of a digital artifact as part of a school competition—“this was no easy task” as the organizers concluded (Kohl & Schmidt, 2014, n.p.).
More specifically, this study is interested in the implementation of this large-scale project in the local context of the EFL classroom under the conditions of the participants’ daily school practice. To this end, it seeks to illuminate learners’ perception of and engagement in technology-mediated tasks and the moment-by-moment emergence of digital practices and EFL learning within this context. The focus, thus, is on the ‘how’ of task enactment in the socioculturally bounded classroom context. By adopting an exploratory orientation, the study asks how learners engage in blended learning EFL tasks, exploit their affordances and, crucially, how learners develop and exercise their agency during the enactment of technology-mediated tasks. To tackle these questions from complementary perspectives, the investigation relies on a mixed-methods rationale. A nationwide quantitative participant survey offers a macro-perspective on the project and generates research foci for the subsequent qualitative classroom-based research in three focal 11th-grade EFL courses.
Despite the purported affordances of the tools associated with Web 2.0 for foreign language learning (T. Schmidt, 2009, 2011; T. Schmidt & Strasser, 2018), projects like these still cannot be considered standard practice in German EFL classrooms. The reasons are varied, ranging from issues of access and availability of devices to curricular frameworks, as well as teacher beliefs and teacher training. Indeed, the implementation of technology-enhanced language learning seems far from being ‘normalized’ (Bax, 2003) as the state of emergency remote teaching and learning (Gacs et al., 2020) revealed during the COVID-19 pandemic and related school closures across Germany in the spring and summer of 2020 (Huber et al., 2020; Initiative D21 & Technical University of Munich, 2020). Therefore, this study aims to elicit insights into the implementation of EFL projects and the participation in authentic discourses with digital technologies from the learners’ perspective, and outline a theoretical framework rooted in affordance and agency, which can guide future investigations into technology use within and beyond the classroom:
Although the temptation to investigate the newest and shiniest new technology is hard to resist, we believe […] investigation that closely and incrementally builds on the pillars of previous research is the best way to grow our knowledge. Also, as our world changes with and because of technology, we need to keep examining our theoretical frames of learning and adjusting them to how people actually learn language in brick-and-mortar classrooms, online platforms, and in the physical world. (González‐Lloret, 2020, p. 15)
* * *
The following two chapters serve to situate this study theoretically, conceptually, and empirically in the fields of TBLT and computer-assisted language learning (CALL), which are increasingly overlapping and recently have been considered together as the converging field of ‘technology-mediated task-based language teaching’ (TMTBLT) (B. Smith & González-Lloret, 2020). Chapter 2 will introduce the theoretical and empirical roots of TBLT and delineate the construct of the task as a tool for eliciting interaction data and as a pedagogical instrument to engage students in language learning processes. The discussion then closes in on learners’ perceptions and reinterpretations of tasks, which represent this study’s central focus.
From there, chapter 3 will approach this study’s second theoretical pillar, CALL, by placing special emphasis on the pedagogical principle of blended language learning, the role of LMS, and research on the use of Web 2.0 and social media for language learning. Adopting insights from affordance and activity theory frameworks, the discussion seeks to establish theoretical, empirical, and pedagogical synergies between CALL and TBLT, and explore how learners transform theoretical task workplans into concrete processes and outcomes in the foreign language classroom.
The subsequent chapters will introduce the research study on learner perceptions and engagement in technology-mediated tasks. Chapter 4 will outline the research methodological framework of the study, which involves a qualitative-dominant quan→QUAL→quan mixed-methods approach consisting of a questionnaire survey among project participants and an orchestration of multiple observational and introspective classroom-based research methods. This discussion will touch upon issues of research quality and ethical safeguarding, in addition to the role of the researcher during the data gathering, analysis, and interpretation phases.
Next, chapter 5 establishes the research context—the U.S. Embassy School Election Project, which was implemented in the fall of 2012 in EFL classrooms across Germany. The discussion addresses the overlapping curricular goals of intercultural learning, sociocultural discourse participation, as well as developing digital literacy skills, and provides an in-depth analysis of the project’s LMS, its online curriculum, and the underlying blended learning approach, which seeks to introduce technology-mediated EFL practices in the participants’ classrooms.
In the scope of the study’s mixed-methods design, chapter 6, which presents findings from the pre- and post-questionnaire surveys among students and teachers in the school project, reflects the macro-perspective on the research question. Findings from these surveys paint an image of highly motivated project participants, equally attracted by the project’s subject matter and underlying technology-mediated approach, yet often lacking concrete experience with the use of educational technology. Their evaluations of the project implementation reveal intricate modifications of classroom processes and multiple layers of challenges effected by their project participation.
Complementing this bird’s-eye view on the participants’ project experience, the subsequent chapters introduce the micro-perspective of three focal cases—selected task cycles in three 11th-grade EFL classrooms—informed by the triangulation of qualitative research procedures. Chapter 7 delineates a series of pragmatic and research methodological sampling criteria guiding the selection of these cases. The three following cases trace the trajectory of focal task cycles through the stages of task-as-workplan, task-in-process, and task-as-outcomes, thereby allowing for an insight into the moment-by-moment enactment of task-based activity and capturing the focal learners’ agency at work. Chapter 8 takes the reader to Ms. Konig’s class, where learners engage in the task ‘Find titles for the cartoons,’ a collaborative writing task on editorial cartoons about the election. Chapter 9 invites us into Ms. Pfeifer’s implementation of ‘An interview with the candidates and their spouses,’ a combined web-research and role-playing task, which dynamically illustrates three focal learners’ differential enactment of the same task. Chapter 10 offers insights into Mr. Linnebeer’s lesson on the U.S. electoral system and a collaborative glossary task on defining thematic vocabulary.
Ultimately, insights drawn from both the questionnaire surveys and the three focal cases converge in chapter 11, which reiterates and discusses the emergent themes of the data analysis conceptually. In particular, this discussion includes an appraisal of the technology-induced challenges, the integration of face-to-face and online modes, and modifications to the teacher role, in addition to the main focus, a discussion of learner agency in technology-enhanced language learning tasks. Based on this study’s data, it is concluded that learner agency is technologically, socially, and psychologically mediated. The study closes with a discussion of implications and limitations as well as future research directions.
2Task-based language learning and teaching
Language learning tasks play a central role in this study in various forms. Disentangling the different understandings and functions of tasks, illuminating the conceptual rationales on which these understandings are based, and delineating their effects, therefore, is essential for advancing the study’s research interest. Specifically, tasks appear in this study as:
pedagogical tasks ‘on-screen’ designed as part of the investigated school project and distributed via the project’s LMS;
planned and instructed tasks from the perspective of the teachers who routinely adapt published tasks to their teaching approaches and their students’ perceived needs;
reinterpreted, reconfigured, and enacted tasks, or more accurately, processes from the learners’ perspectives, who interpret and enact tasks interactionally according to their perception of the classroom situation, the task demands and affordances, and their own histories, knowledge, and capabilities;
researched tasks, although primarily implemented out of pedagogical considerations, to elicit procedural data of learner perceptions and the enactment of tasks and to serve as the point of departure for introspection and reflection.
As this study’s empirical part shows (esp. chapters 8–10), these different guises of language learning tasks do not always coexist without tension, thus demanding transparency regarding the underlying understandings of the task as a pedagogical tool and research construct (Bygate et al., 2001).
This chapter will first introduce the approach of TBLT by situating it historically and conceptually in the language pedagogical movement of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and empirically in applied linguistic research on interaction (section 2.1). Subsequently, the construct of language learning tasks will be discussed conceptually, as the centerpiece of task-based pedagogy, and with reference to various task types (section 2.2). The discussion then closes in on this study’s research focus, learner reinterpretations of tasks, which involves the central notions of task-as-workplan, task-in-process, and task-as-outcomes (Breen, 1987), as well as concomitant implications for task-based research (section 2.3). The final part (section 2.4) will sketch a broader understanding of learners’ task perceptions, which—borrowing language from activity theory—is centered around learners’ agency at the interconnected levels of activity, actions, and operations during task enactment.
2.1Pedagogical and empirical origins of TBLT
TBLT is an approach built on broader pedagogical notions of learner-centeredness, experiential and democratic education, humanistic language teaching, and cultural psychology (Legutke & Thomas, 1991). While the origins of this approach are commonly identified in the Communicative Language Teaching movement beginning in the 1970s and second language acquisition (SLA) research on interaction in the 1980s (Ellis et al., 2020, p. 5), TBLT’s pedagogical antecedents go further back (Long, 2015; Samuda & Bygate, 2008). In order to contextualize the critical concepts of TBLT relevant to the investigated school project, the following two sections will first introduce the pedagogical antecedents of TBLT (section 2.1.1) and then summarize the empirical basis in research on language learner interaction in the field of SLA (section 2.1.2) as a foundation for the subsequent discussion of TBLT principles and learner perceptions of tasks.
2.1.1Pedagogical antecedents of TBLT
Although task-based language pedagogies represent a relatively recent exemplar in a succession of approaches and methods of foreign language teaching (cf. Richards & Rodgers, 2001), their conceptual, pedagogical, and philosophical antecedents can be traced back decades, even centuries. Researchers have placed the approach in the tradition of holistic and reform pedagogies associated with the works of Pestalozzi and Montessori, democratic and experiential education advanced by Dewey and later Freinet and Kolb, Kilpatrick’s project approach, emancipatory pedagogies of Freire, Bruner’s ideas on situated learning, Vygotsky’s approach to sociocultural mediation as well as humanistic education and Gestalt therapy (cf. Legutke & Thomas, 1991; Long, 2015; Nunan, 2004; Samuda & Bygate, 2008). Long (2015) recently argued that TBLT is underpinned by broader philosophical concepts of Éducation Intégrale, learning by doing, individual freedom, rationality, emancipation, learner-centeredness, egalitarianism, participatory democracy, and mutual aid and cooperation. There is no room to discuss these principles here. Nevertheless, they share a rationale of direct and mediated experience as a catalyst for learning. They also collectively emphasize personal relevance of learning materials and the learning situation as well as purposeful activity to mediate the learners’ life-world and the classroom, in addition to foregrounding the role of skill and competency building and positioning the learner as an active agent in their learning environment, thus highlighting the importance of learner centeredness in pedagogy (Samuda & Bygate, 2008, p. 18). These aspects are briefly outlined in the subsequent paragraphs and then connected to the approach of CLT as the foundation for TBLT.
In their book-length survey of TBLT, Samuda and Bygate (2008) foreground the significance of Dewey’s criticism on the disconnect between learners’ experience and their schooling, resulting from the transmission of isolated knowledge instead of enabling students to acquire competencies for sociocultural and democratic participation in society. In response, Dewey demanded teaching content to be more accessible, useful, and relevant concerning the learners’ levels of experience, allowing them to holistically engage in experiences of problem-solving, decision-making, negotiating, and skill performance. Consequently, learning should be situated and facilitate functional relevance by linking school-based learning to purposeful activity and the outside world, for instance, by participating in projects, thus helping students to perceive learning not as schoolwork, but as social human activity. Adapting these notions to foreign language pedagogy,
there needs to be a relationship between activity and learning. In second language education, this entails the creation of opportunities for learners to associate the target language with action and the need to achieve some goal, and through this, thought about how to accomplish it and reflection on the outcomes. (Samuda & Bygate, 2008, p. 36)
Influenced by Dewey’s work, experiential learning is commonly conceptualized as a cyclical process of concrete experience, subsequent reflective observation, abstract conceptualization, and active experimentation in new contexts, acting together as a springboard for new experience and reflective cycles (Kolb, 1984). These ideas of experiential learning and learning by doing have entered the discourse of language pedagogy and applied linguistics articulately in the work of Kohonen (1992), which Nunan (2004) describes as a “theoretical blueprint” for TBLT (p. 12). According to this view, pedagogy should encourage the transformation of knowledge within the learner rather than the transmission from teacher to learner. It should encourage collaborative engagement in small groups and pairs, embrace a holistic attitude towards the subject matter instead of a static, compartmentalized, and hierarchic attitude. It should further emphasize the process rather than the product of learning by calling attention to skill development, self-inquiry, social and communication skills, and finally encourage self-directed, intrinsically motivated learning (Kohonen, 1992, ctd. in Nunan, 2004, p. 12). Consequently, experiential learning positions learners as active agents who co-construct knowledge during joint activity in situated contexts and in direct interaction with the real world, creating connections between prior knowledge and new input—between abstract generalizations and concrete and complex experiences in the field. In essence, learners are not merely conceptualized in their institutional role as students, but more broadly as practitioners and participants in communities of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), whose situated and purposeful activity, in Bruner’s (1960/1977, p. 14, ctd. in Samuda & Bygate, 2008, pp. 29–30) view, does not differ from that of professionals in principle but in degree. As Long (2015) aptly concludes,
Actually doing a task, or, initially, a simple version thereof, is more relevant, comprehensible, and memorable than reading about someone else doing it. The basic, time-tested idea reflected in such contemporary slogans as “learning by doing,” “child-centered,” and “educating the whole person” is that practical hands-on experience with real-world tasks brings abstract concepts and theories to life and, because fully contextualized, makes the language involved more understandable and memorable. New knowledge is better integrated into long-term memory and more easily retrieved for use if tied to real-world events and activities. (pp. 68–9)
Although emphasizing the learner’s experience and point of view, this understanding of pedagogy also foregrounds the responsibility of the teacher in creating, facilitating, and scaffolding situated learning opportunities, which systematically mediate concrete individual and situated experience with more abstract generalizations of the learning content.
* * *
Informed by these educational principles, CLT emerged from parallel developments in Europe and North America as an innovative, yet loosely delineated approach to language education, based on functional-notional concepts of language use (Savignon, 2000). In Europe, for instance, increases in work-related migration and so-called ‘guest worker’ programs in the 1970s prompted the Council of Europe to develop a language syllabus consisting of functional-notional concepts of language use, based on an assessment of learners’ needs, and the definition of threshold levels of language ability in terms of can-do statements describing learners’ expected competencies (ibid., p. 125). Such an approach was highly relevant to the new field of language for specific purposes, which focused on the particular needs of adult language learners for their respective professional fields and daily activities (e.g., communicating with co-workers, being interviewed for a job, presenting themselves at agencies, or shopping for groceries). While this approach focused on the product of language education (i.e., communicative competence in specific work and leisure fields), a different argument was made in West Germany, influenced by the social-democratic reform movement for learner empowerment and the work of philosopher Jürgen Habermas, to reform the process of classroom-based (language) learning (cf. Legutke, 2008). In a radical departure from the predominance of synthetic syllabi, Piepho (1974), an influential contributor to this debate, stipulated in CLT, successful language acquisition requires a flexible and differentiated learning environment, which facilitates communication, sparks communicative intentions, provides linguistic resources and practice opportunities, as well as adamantly refuses to prescribe uniform learning paths (Piepho, 1974, p. 141). In essence, this impetus was a reaction to then predominant foreign language classroom practices that viewed language as a grammatical and linguistic rule system, not a communicative tool for sociocultural mediation. These classrooms criticized by Piepho were notorious for their lack of creativity, communication opportunities, learner autonomy, and cultural awareness (Legutke & Thomas, 1991). By contrast, communicative competence for Piepho (1974) essentially included linguistic competence (i.e., the ability to produce and understand language by using linguistic means and strategies appropriate to topic, interlocutors, and situation) as well as discourse competence (i.e., the meta-cognitive and reflective ability to evaluate the appropriateness of linguistic means and justify their use). Likewise, Hymes (1971) focused on language as social behavior and put forth an understanding of communicative competence, which necessarily combined knowledge of linguistic forms with an awareness of sociolinguistic appropriacy in concrete situations of use.
In the German context, the emergence of CLT and task-based approaches were closely interconnected as educators and teacher trainers grew increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of published instructional materials addressing the sociolinguistic, pragmatic, and intercultural notions of communicative competence and took it upon themselves to develop task and exercise compendiums (Candlin, 1978; cf. Hallet & Legutke, 2013). These publications advanced four critical arguments regarding the communicative foreign language classroom (Hallet & Legutke, 2013, pp. 140–1):
Classroom activities need to be differentiated or adjusted to the communicative needs of learners to support them in developing their communicative abilities in the foreign language.
Thus, it is not the individual activity that matters, but their sequential integration and interdependence in curricula to create opportunities for individual development in the foreign language.
Themes and contents need to be relevant, relate to learners’ experiences, and engage learners in meaningful interaction.
Systematic integration of various text types and media is called for, highlighting the interconnection of communicative tasks, relevant topics, and media.
In its historical context, this approach had to be seen as a radical shift from teacher-controlled transmission approaches to student-centered classrooms, from formal practice of linguistic structures to the enactment of personally relevant communication in the foreign language, from synthetic, a priori determined to a negotiated curriculum addressing specific learning needs of a given student population.
In the U.K., this development was paralleled by a reconceptualization of communicative competence by introducing notions of strategic, grammatical, and sociolinguistic competences as its constituent parts (Canale & Swain, 1980). If learners are to learn to communicate through communication, it was argued, they should develop the interactional tools necessary to ask for clarification, seek feedback, engage all communicative resources available to them, take risks, and apply coping strategies in order to stick to the communicative task (cf. Savignon, 2000, p. 125). Likewise, for communication inside the classroom to be authentic of real-world communicative tasks and relevant to the learners’ life-worlds, language curricula had to respond to learners’ needs and accommodate their psycholinguistic readiness to learn. The focus shifted from a proactive, interventionist approach to a more reactive one, emphasizing learner-initiated discourse and learners as active agents, capable of negotiating curricular processes and objectives (Breen & Candlin, 1980; cf. Long, 2015, p. 70). Teachers, hence, increasingly began to conceptualize the foreign language classroom as a social, cultural, and communicative resource, from which authentic communication could emerge:
The classroom is understood as a unique social environment with its own activities and conventions. If it is the goal of the classroom activities to enable learners to communicate in the target language outside of the classroom, then communication needs to be experienced, practiced, and analyzed in the classroom itself, realized in the L2. This radical turn towards the classroom as the location where the ability to communicate had to be fostered raised a number of crucial questions, such as: What are the appropriate topics for learners to engage with? What are the appropriate texts for learners to be exposed to? What are the conditions in terms of task management that would help learners invest their energy into finding ways of expressing their world views, their feelings and beliefs, while trying to use the L2? In short, the key question was: What conditions would help authenticate L2 practice and use as a way to foster communication in the classroom? (Hallet & Legutke, 2013, p. 141)
Hallet and Legutke (2013) pose a number of thorny questions, which address the very essence of what would later develop into the programmatic approach of TBLT. Although various versions of strong and weak CLT emerged in this discourse (Howatt, 1984), which are in many ways paralleled by task-based, task-supported, and task-referenced approaches today, this brief review shows that TBLT’s antecedents were primarily pedagogical, conceptual, and philosophical in nature. Only subsequently did SLA research on the role of interaction begin to support the practices of TBLT empirically (Robinson, 2011). Thus, the next sub-chapter will outline the empirical basis of TBLT in interaction research. The questions raised by Hallet and Legutke will be addressed later in the discussion task concepts (2.2).
2.1.2Theoretical and empirical underpinnings: The role of interaction
The potential of CLT, and particularly TBLT, for the teaching and learning of language is supported by theoretical and empirical evidence on the role of interaction. Interaction generally refers to “mutual or reciprocal action or influence” (Merriam-Webster, n.d.) and, with language learning in view, may include “any type of two-way exchanges […] enacted through the use of linguistic or nonlinguistic means” (Chapelle, 2005, p. 54) to achieve a desired outcome, such as making a reservation, asking for directions, or engaging in small talk. Besides interpersonal activity between two or more speakers, interaction can be intrapersonal, thus referring to the mental activity of processing language and other information (Edmondson, 1998, p. 82; Ellis, 1999, p. 3). A third dimension of interaction, between a person and computer applications—referred to as ‘interactivity’ in popular discourse—is relevant to this study, though not subsumed under the SLA construct of interaction (Chapelle, 2005).
Interaction has occupied a central place in different research programs utilizing tasks to investigate language learning: psycholinguistic and sociocultural perspectives (Ellis, 2000).1 Psycholinguistic approaches adopt a computational model of SLA and employ tasks to provide learners with language data necessary for learning, and engage learners in cognitive processes believed to be conducive to learning, including attention, rehearsal, and restructuring of existing knowledge. As is discussed below (section 2.1.2.1), interaction in this view provides input, generates interactional feedback from interlocutors, offers opportunities for output modification, and activates and directs learner attention to linguistic elements of the discourse (Ellis, 2012, p. 238). This approach is interested in learners’ cognitive operations during task performance under ‘ideal’ (i.e., laboratory) conditions to infer generalizable features of tasks and task-based interaction, which potentially lead to learning. Psycholinguistic research assumes that tasks can determine learners’ language use and the learning opportunities arising during performance (Ellis, 2000, p. 193). Interaction, in sum, is a source of learning, but not necessarily the site of acquisition itself (Ellis, 2012, p. 240). Sociocultural approaches, on the other hand, assume that participants co-construct activity during task performance as well as knowledge and that skills originate from interaction with the social and cultural environment. Learning, from this perspective, emerges during participation in social interaction and subsequent internalization of social mediation. This approach emphasizes collaborative dialog as the process and site of acquisition, claiming that language learning occurs during interaction, not as a result of it. Thus, it adopts a procedural perspective and refrains from deterministic understandings of the relationship between tasks and language use (Ellis, 2000).
2.1.2.1Interaction in cognitivist SLA research
CLT posits that spontaneous learner interaction, often through talk, about contents of immediate and personal relevance, is both the product and process of learning a foreign language and necessary for competency development in a democratic and emancipatory pedagogy. The discourse analytical work on learner interaction by Hatch (1978) was among the first to fill the void of empirical evidence for CLT. She claimed participation in conversational interaction is a vehicle for acquisition, providing learners with opportunities to process and produce the target language, concluding that “language learning evolves out of learning how to carry on conversations” (p. 404). According to the understanding of learner discourse emerging from studies by Hatch and others (e.g., Widdowson, 1978), the analysis of language use could not only inform conceptions of language acquisition but as well teaching and learning practices. Krashen’s influential Monitor Model (Krashen, 1981, 1982, 1985; cf. Shehadeh, 2013) derived insights from infant L1 acquisition, speculating adult L2 acquisition is a mostly subconscious process which occurs incidentally and builds on the acquisition of implicit L2 knowledge through the processing of comprehensible input. He argued, “people acquire second languages only if they obtain comprehensible input and if their affective filters are low enough to allow the input in” (Krashen, 1985, p. 4).
Yet, Krashen’s claim that input predominantly accounts for the process of language learning was questioned. Long (1981, 1983a, 1983b), studying the discourse structure in conversations between native and non-native speakers, observed how interlocutors repair communication breakdowns by making adjustments of linguistic form, conversational structure, and message content. While input modifications refer to adjustments to linguistic forms directed at language learners, interactional modifications are subsumed under the rubric negotiation of meaning, which includes the “modification and restructuring of interaction that occurs when learners and their interlocutors anticipate, perceive, or experience difficulties in message comprehensibility” (Pica, 1994, p. 494). This was subsequently operationalized in studies on learner discourse as comprehension checks, clarification requests, and confirmation checks (cf. Long, 1983a, pp. 136–7; Philp, 2013a, p. 459). Comparing interaction sequences among language learners and between language learners and native speakers, Long (1983a) showed how interactional modifications were drastically more useful in ensuring conversation continues and is comprehensible. Input modifications, by contrast, only satisfy immediate communicative needs while interactional modifications, in line with the concept of communicative competence, allow learners to keep up the flow of communication.
Comprehensible input and interactional modification by themselves were not found to facilitate learning. Swain (1985, 1991) observed that Canadian secondary immersion learners of French, despite extended exposure to comprehensible input, showed a plateauing effect in their productive skills while achieving native-like proficiency in listening and reading. She concluded, while input comprehension primarily involves semantic use of language, output production urges learners to move beyond mere syntactic use of language. Producing comprehensible output in conversational interaction was thus seen as necessary to achieve higher levels of linguistic accuracy. Learners not only need ample opportunities for output but must be sufficiently pushed for grammatical accuracy (cf. Izumi, 2013). Swain furthermore demonstrated how, through output, learners were able to notice the gap between their communicative intentions and current ability; they test hypotheses by taking risks and experimenting with language, make it subject to feedback from interaction partners, and susceptible to reflection and self-assessment. Consequently, output itself is an essential aspect of language learning, not just the product or outcome (Izumi, 2013).
These claims associated with the Interaction and Output Hypotheses are only provisional, however, as they only describe potential learning outcomes hinging on learners’ cognitive variables, particularly conscious attention and noticing of linguistic form and form-meaning connections: “Overall, we can safely say that negotiation provides learners with opportunities to attend to L2 form and relationships of form and meaning. Whether they indeed do cannot be observed, or even inferred, most of the time” (Pica, 1994, p. 520). Investigating this very aspect of learner attention, R. W. Schmidt (1990) found that L2 learners failed to acquire common linguistic forms despite ample input and opportunities for interaction. For input to enter working and long-term memory and become intake, it is assumed, a minimal level of consciousness at the level of attention is necessary, which leads learners to notice linguistic features in the input (cf. Philp, 2013b). The Noticing Hypothesis, which is based on findings in psychology, acknowledges learners’ attention is limited both in scope and capacity, but partly subject to voluntary control and may thus be used selectively by learners to attend to formal elements of language. Noticing relies on prior knowledge and schemata as learners require some element of awareness of what to look out for in interaction. Attention rests on several learner-internal and external variables, and noticing does not directly lead to learning. Their relationship is incremental and recursive. Nevertheless, noticing can be supported by manipulation of the task materials (i.e., input enhancement, input flooding) or procedures of the task (i.e., increased planning time, teacher- or learner-initiated focus on form) (Philp, 2013b, p. 465).
These insights on the roles of input, output, and noticing during conversational interaction, often elicited in the context of tasks, were summarized in the updated Interaction Hypothesis, stating,
negotiation for meaning, and especially negotiation work that triggers interactional adjustments by the NS [i.e., native speaker] or more competent interlocutor, facilitates acquisition because it connects input, internal learner capacities, particularly selective attention, and output in productive ways. (Long, 1996, pp. 451–2)
This approach has established itself as a widely accepted framework in SLA research and theory (cf. García-Mayo, 2013, p. 332; Mackey, 2007). These contributions have sparked concerted empirical research on language learner interaction, as visible by multiple meta-analyses on the effectiveness of interaction (Keck et al., 2006; Lyster & Saito, 2010; Mackey & Goo, 2007; Russel & Spada, 2006), which corroborate its conducive effects on language learning. However, this research has a validity problem due to most studies having been conducted in tightly controlled experimental settings with limited representativeness of the complex reality of the foreign language classroom.
2.1.2.2Interaction in sociocultural theory-informed SLA
A different line of research into interaction and tasks adopts sociocultural theory (SCT) as a framework, which will be introduced first before discussing the relevant interaction-based research it has informed. SCT is largely based on cultural psychologist Lev S. Vygotsky’s work, which was rediscovered by proponents of CLT decades after his passing. Rejecting the dualism between nature and nurture, between mind and culture, SCT views human behavior and cognition neither as exclusively mentalistic nor as a function of the social and cultural environment but emphasizes the interconnectedness of both planes (Atkinson, 2013, p. 586). According to this view, development of the individual originates in social interaction. SCT posits that higher-order thinking presupposes adequate neurobiological resources, yet important forms of human cognition develop through constant interaction with the social, cultural, and material environment (Lantolf & Thorne, 2007, pp. 201–2). Hence, Vygotsky proposed what he called the ‘genetic law of cultural development:’
Every function in the child’s cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level, and later, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological), and then inside the child (intrapsychological). (…) All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between human individuals. (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 57)
Learners thus gain access to historically formed semiotic and cultural tools of the environment through interaction with other human beings. These tools become available for future activity through the processes of imitation, understood as the voluntary and intentional reconstruction of models in the environment, and internalization, whereby learners traverse through the stages of other-regulation, object-regulation, and eventually self-regulation (Lantolf, 2006; Lantolf & Thorne, 2007). At this latter stage, higher mental functions are either mediated by verbal thought, visual or other forms of mental representation, or completely automatized. Language, as the most pervasive cultural tool, is incorporated to regulate the mental activity of the individual. It introduces historically formed mediating artifacts into thought processes and transforms communicative language into inner speech and verbal thought (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996, p. 196; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p. 153).
Regulation, internalization, and imitation occur within the zone of proximal development (ZPD), which Vygotsky (1978) defined as “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (p. 86). The ZPD thus facilitates a dual focus on what learners have achieved and can currently do by themselves, and their potential for learning in the future (Mahn, 2015; Thorne & Hellermann, 2015). In this sense, the ZPD “gives researchers a window into the future” (Negueruela-Azarola et al., 2015, p. 234) by capturing learners’ functions as they are still in an “embryonic state” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86). Vygotsky argued that two children may solve the same standardized task designed for their chronological age, but may produce different results when offered skilled help, thus revealing developmental differences between them, despite otherwise similar results on individual non-scaffolded test formats (cf. van Lier, 1996). The ZPD can also differ within a learner doing the same task at different times or engaging in different areas or subjects (cf. section 2.3). These processes are most commonly researched adopting some type of genetic analysis, which is interested in uncovering the genetic origins of competencies rather than their external appearance (Lantolf & Thorne, 2006, p. 29).
The sociocultural approach has informed task-based interaction research and theory in multiple ways, most notably concerning the role of scaffolding at the ZPD, languaging, collaborative dialog, and private speech. While psycholinguistic approaches (cf. section 2.1.2.1) view interaction as a source of input, feedback, and opportunity for output modification as well as activating cognitive processes conducive to acquisition, sociocultural research understands interaction as the site and process where learning takes place through ‘acquisition-as-participation.’ Where interactionists conceive of language acquisition as the product of interaction, sociocultural researchers describe the very act of participation in social discourse as the process of learning (Ellis, 2012, p. 238). These notions are subsequently introduced and exemplified with reference to research on the role of interaction in tasks from the perspective of SCT.
A growing research body has investigated the role of the ZPD in language learning contexts. For instance, studying tutor-tutee exchanges on grammatical errors, Aljaafreh and Lantolf (1994) provided evidence of how scaffolding within the ZPD must be graduated and contingent to support learning within the ZPD and facilitate increasing self-regulation. Feedback, furthermore, must be dynamic and carefully adjusted to the individual learner, especially since different learners were shown to have different ZPDs during the same task context. As a consequence, learner development is traceable in the quantity and quality of the mediation necessary for successful task completion, in addition to overt task outcomes. Poehner (2007, 2008) describes how dynamic assessment, based on Vygotsky’s critique of non-scaffolded testing tasks, is carried out with instructors actively mediating learners’ performance of progressively more complex tasks (‘transcendence activities’) rather than merely observing individual assessment tasks. He concludes, interactional mediation fosters learner development if it is sensitive to learners’ changing needs, coheres around their ZPD, and addresses linguistic concepts so they can be internalized. The amount and quality of support provided to learners during these tasks can indicate learner development and make visible differences among learners, even if their overt task performance is similar.
Closely related to these studies are investigations that conceptualize interaction as collaborative dialog or peer and teacher scaffolding, thereby contributing to language learning in the ZPD. In contrast to expert-novice interactions, Donato (1994) explored how peers provide scaffolding to each other through interaction, contending that knowledge building can occur in these interactions, although both learners may not be able to solve a task individually by themselves. While engaging in collaborative dialog, “the speakers are at the same time individually novices and collectively experts, sources of new orientations for each other and guides through this complex linguistic problem solving” (ibid., p. 42). Learners, for instance, collaboratively constructed verb forms neither partner had known before the task and were even able to reproduce these forms in a post-test, providing evidence of a transition from other to self-regulation through internalization of previously interpersonal scaffolding.
Research informed by SCT reveals that interaction and especially output carries more functions than assumed by cognitivists. Swain (2000), revisiting the functions of output, writes how interaction serves more purposes than merely providing comprehensible input or feedback to the learner and does not necessarily arise from communicative breakdowns, as is the case in negotiation of meaning. Specifically, collaborative dialog on tasks is a semiotic tool mediating physical and mental activities and a cognitive tool regulating others and the self. The two L2 French learners in Swain’s study verbalize alternative gender forms of a noun. This output can be looked at as ‘saying’—a process in which the speakers are engaged in collaborative meaning construction, and as ‘what is said’—an externalized product that both learners can now respond to and reflect upon (Swain, 2000, p. 102). Both learners’ collaborative performance, like in Donato’s study above, outstrips what either can do alone and may entail subsequent internalization. These functions, collective knowledge construction and cognitive mediation, and the fact that language learning occurs during interaction rather than as a result of it are not sufficiently captured by the Interaction Hypothesis.
One particular branch of sociocultural interaction research investigates the occurrence and functions of meta-linguistic dialog during task performance. When learners incidentally shift their attention to linguistic form during task performance and ‘talk it through’ by explicating L2 rules and hypotheses, this may mediate cognitive activity and facilitate the internalization of higher-order thought from the inter- to the intrapersonal plane (Swain & Lapkin, 2002, p. 286). This meta-talk, referred to as ‘languaging,’ is defined as “the use of language to mediate cognitively demanding/complex activities (e.g., solving problems about language)” (Swain & Suzuki, 2010, p. 565). It can involve paraphrasing, inferencing, analyzing self-assessment, and re-reading, which can be stimulated with external feedback within the learners’ ZPD (Knouzi et al., 2010), and is associated with noticing and accurate, more in-depth understanding of language forms (Swain et al., 2009). In a series of studies, Swain and colleagues (Brooks et al., 2010; Brooks & Swain, 2009; Knouzi et al., 2010; Lapkin et al., 2008; Swain et al., 2009) could show that learners engage in languaging to externalize mental processes by verbalizing their thoughts, which helps them to notice the gap between current and potential proficiency, facilitate self-monitoring, seek feedback, and subsequently internalize these semiotic tools:
by externalizing their thoughts (i.e., by using language to mediate their cognitive processes), students came to understand what they did and did not know, what information they had to seek out to complete their understanding and what inferences they needed to make to have a coherent conceptual understanding. (Swain et al., 2009, p. 21)
In verbalizing their thoughts, learners essentially ‘self-scaffold’ their language learning through language use (Knouzi et al., 2010). Moreover, languaging helps students restructure what they already know about language, to develop a more systematic understanding of previously spontaneous concepts of language, and it indicates to teachers and researchers where “the long, twisting path of internalization was started” (Brooks et al., 2010, p. 107).
Finally, sociocultural interaction research has investigated private speech, which refers to “speech that is social in origin but which is cognitive in function. That is, it is used by individuals to organize and regulate their own mental behavior” (Lantolf & Beckett, 2009, p. 460) and subsequently is internalized as inner speech, essentially a form of self-regulation. Private speech thus may support learners in mediating their thought processes (Gánem-Gutiérrez & Roehr, 2011; Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000; H. J. Smith, 2007), facilitate text comprehension (Appel & Lantolf, 1994; Roebuck, 2000), and be employed to produce oral narratives (Frawley & Lantolf, 1985). Studying the acquisition of language learning strategies, Donato and McCormick (1994) demonstrated that learning strategies could be seen as by-products of socialization into language learning communities through dialog with the self and the teacher. Ohta (2001) recorded private speech of language learners in a classroom setting and noticed that they engaged in self-dialog in support of internalization, for instance, by making ‘vicarious responses’ (pp. 39–54) to questions directed at others. Besides serving as a source of language acquisition, private speech in this study revealed learners’ attention to incidental learning opportunities not originally planned by the teacher (cf. section 2.3.2). Studies have also focused on the role of gesture in mediating internal cognitive activity and thus functioning as a non-verbal form of private speech, besides its obvious communicative function (Choi & Lantolf, 2008; McCafferty, 1992).
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What do these different understandings of interaction mean in the context of task-based pedagogies? On the one hand, the review of psycholinguistic and sociocultural approaches reveals sweeping differences between both views. Firth and Wagner (1997) captured this rift in their programmatic critique on the psycholinguistic SLA project as overly “individualistic,” “mechanistic,” and unable to “account in a satisfactory way for an interactional and sociolinguistic dimension of language” (p. 285), while calling for enhanced awareness of contextual and interactional dimensions of language use, increased emic sensitivity in research, and a broadening of the traditional SLA database. And yet, despite conceptualizing the construct of interaction differentially, points of contact can be discerned, especially concerning the role of tasks in both views, as Ellis (2012) pointedly concludes:
Both [i.e., psycholinguistic and sociocultural theories] have explored the role played by interaction through research based on tasks. Both perspectives emphasize the importance of attention to linguistic features in the course of performing tasks. Both also recognize the value of talk directed at developing awareness at the level of understanding. Both acknowledge that both expert and novice interlocutors can help shape the kinds of interactions that promote learning. Both acknowledge the important role played by feedback (although they differ in how they see feedback contributing to learning). Both research traditions have explored the contribution to learning made by consciousness-raising tasks. (p. 267)
2.2Language learning tasks in research and pedagogy
The previous section approached TBLT from the historical and conceptual perspectives of CLT and foreign and second language interaction research. The terms CLT and TBLT are not synonymous, and we are reminded that “CLT cannot be found in any one textbook or set of curricular materials” (Savignon, 2000, p. 128). Instead, as can be inferred from the cursory discussion of pedagogical antecedents (cf. section 2.1.1), CLT represents a broader philosophical approach resting on research in applied linguistics, pedagogy, education, psychology, and sociology. TBLT can be seen as a realization of CLT at the levels of methodology and syllabus design (Nunan, 2004, p. 10). Likewise, while tasks have been central to different branches of interaction research, the link between the research reviewed above and pedagogical tasks and task-based syllabi is not a direct one. A reductionist understanding of TBLT as a principled, top-down application of insights derived from SLA would be simplistic, if not utterly misconceiving the complexity and situatedness of task-based classroom practices (Samuda et al., 2018, p. 7). According to van den Branden (2015), the applicability of this research at the classroom level can be described as follows:
