This comprehensive, forward-looking text is the first holistic research overview and practical methods guide for researching the role that affective and conative factors play in second language learners’ task performance and language acquisition. It provides a long overdue update on the role of the learner in task-based language teaching (TBLT). The book brings together theoretical background and major constructs, established and innovative methodological and technological tools, cutting-edge findings, and illuminating suggestions for future work. A group of expert scholars from around the world synthesize the state of the art, detail how to design and conduct empirical studies, and authoritatively set the agenda for future work in this critical, emerging area of language learning and instructional design. With a variety of helpful features like suggested research, discussion questions, and recommended further readings, this will be an invaluable resource to advanced students and researchers of second language acquisition, applied linguistics, psychology, education, and related areas.

In addition to the approaches and methods covered in the first edition, this edition includes new chapters, such as whole language, multiple intelligences, neurolinguistic programming, competency-based language teaching, co-operative language learning, content-based instruction, task-based language teaching, and The Post-Methods Era.

A comprehensive account of the research and practice of task-based language teaching.

The book seeks to enlarge the theoretical scope, research agenda, and practices associated with TBLT in a two-way dynamic, by exploring how insights from writing might reconfigure our understanding of tasks and, in turn, how work associated with TBLT might benefit the learning and teaching of writing. In order to enrich the domain of task and to advance the educational interests of TBLT, it adopts both a psycholinguistic and a textual meaning-making orientation. Following an issues-oriented introductory chapter, Part I of the volume explores tenets, methods, and findings in task-oriented theory and research in the context of writing; the chapters in Part II present empirical findings on task-based writing by investigating how writing tasks are implemented, how writers differentially respond to tasks, and how tasks can contribute to language development. A coda chapter summarizes the volume’s contribution and suggests directions for advancing TBLT constructs and research agendas.

This book offers an in-depth explanation of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) and the methods necessary to implement it in the language classroom successfully. Combines a survey of theory and research in instructed second language acquisition (ISLA) with insights from language teaching and the philosophy of education Details best practice for TBLT programs, including discussion of learner needs and means analysis; syllabus design; materials writing; choice of methodological principles and pedagogic procedures; criterion-referenced, task-based performance assessment; and program evaluation Written by an esteemed scholar of second language acquisition with over 30 years of research and classroom experience Considers diffusion of innovation in education and the potential impact of TBLT on foreign and second language learning

This volume extends the Task-Based Language Teaching: Issues, Research and Practice books series by deliberately exploring the potential of task-based language teaching (TBLT) in a range of EFL contexts. It is specifically devoted to providing empirical accounts about how TBLT practice is being developed and researched in diverse educational contexts, particularly where English is not the dominant language. By including contributions from settings as varied as Japan, China, Korea, Venezuela, Turkey, Spain, and France, this collection of 13 studies provides strong indications that the research and implementation of TBLT in EFL settings is both on the rise and interestingly diverse, not least because it must respond to the distinct contexts, constraints, and possibilities of foreign language learning. The book will be of interest to SLA researchers and students in applied linguistics and TESOL. It will also be of value to course designers and language teachers who come from a broad range of formal and informal educational settings encompassing a wide range of ages and types of language learners.

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has been attracting the attention of researchers, curriculum developers, teacher trainers and language teachers for many years. However, much of the available literature and research has been from a psycholinguistic perspective, driven by the desire to understand how people acquire a second language. Far less research has been carried out as to whether TBLT works for real teachers and real learners in a classroom environment. This book aims to offer a unique contribution by uniting a discussion of task-based pedagogical principles with descriptions of their application to real life language education problems. It provides an account of the many challenges and obstacles that the implementation of TBLT raises and discusses the different options for overcoming them. The book contains a substantial body of research from Flanders, where the implementation of TBLT has been a nationwide project for fifteen years in primary, secondary and adult education.