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TaskBased Language
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Article in Language Learning May 2011

DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9922.2011.00641.x

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 Language Learning ISSN 0023-8333

Task-Based Language Learning:

A Review of Issues
Peter Robinson
Aoyama Gakuin University

Theoretically motivated, empirical research into task-based language learning has been
prompted by proposals for task-based language teaching. In this review I describe
early and more recent proposals for how task-based learning can stimulate acquisition
processes and the theoretical rationales that have guided research into them. I also
describe taxonomies of task characteristics that have been proposed and claims made
about the effects of task characteristics on interaction, attention to input, and speech
production. I then relate the issues raised to findings described in the five empirical
studies in this issue concerning the effects of pedagogic task design on the accuracy,
fluency, and complexity of learner language; the influence of individual differences in
cognitive and motivational variables on task performance; the extent to which tasks, and
teacher interventions, promote the quantity and quality of interaction that facilitate L2
learning; and the generalizability of task-based learning research in laboratory contexts
to instructed classroom settings.

Keywords task characteristics; task complexity; task sequencing; taxonomic descrip-

tion; theoretical rationales; abilities; attention; conceptualization; interaction; speech
production

Over the past 30 years, proposals for task-based language teaching (TBLT)
have drawn on a variety of claims aboutand prompted further research into
processes thought to promote successful second language acquisition (SLA).
Many important contributions to task-based learning research addressing these
claims have appeared in Language Learning throughout this period (see, e.g.,
Gass, Mackey, Alvarez-Torres, & Fernandez-Garcia, 1999; Platt & Brooks,
2002; Seedhouse, 2005; Skehan & Foster, 1999; Yule, Powers, & Macdonald,
1992). Certain of these claims for SLA processes that task-work can facilitate
feature throughout the present review article and are the focus of the five recent
empirical studies published in Language Learning that follow it:

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Peter Robinson, Aoyama Gakuin
University, 4-4-25 Shibuya, Tokyo 150-8366, Japan. Internet: [email protected]

Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136 1


C 2011 Language Learning Research Club, University of Michigan
Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

Tasks provide a context for negotiating and comprehending the meaning of

language provided in task input, or used by a partner performing the same
task.
Tasks provide opportunities for uptake of (implicit or explicit) corrective
feedback on a participants production, by a partner, or by a teacher.
Tasks provide opportunities for incorporation of premodified input, contain-
ing positive evidence of forms likely to be important to communicative
success and that may previously have been unknown or poorly controlled.
Tasks provide opportunities for noticing the gap between a participants
production and input provided and for metalinguistic reflection on the form
of output.
Task demands can focus attention on specific concepts required for ex-
pression in the second language (L2) and prompt effort to grammaticize
them in ways that the L2 formally encodes them, with consequences for
improvements in accuracy of production.
Simple task demands can promote access to and automatization of the
currently emerged interlanguage means for meeting these demands, with
consequences for improved fluency of production.
Task demands can also promote effort at reconceptualizing and rethinking
about events, in ways that match the formal means for encoding conceptu-
alization that L2s make available.
Sequences of tasks can consolidate memories for previous efforts at suc-
cessfully resolving problems arising in communication, on previous ver-
sions, thereby strengthening memory for them.
Following attempts to perform simpler versions, complex tasks can prompt
learners to attempt more ambitious, complex language to resolve the de-
mands they make on communicative success, thereby stretching interlan-
guage and promoting syntacticization, with consequences for improved
complexity of production.
Additionally, all of the above happen within a situated communication
context that can foster form-function-meaning mapping and can do so in
ways that motivate learners to learn.

Research into task-based learning has followed a trajectory, with the first
four of the above-listed SLA processes being explored by early research into
the effects of the interactive demands of tasks on learning (e.g., Brown,
1991; Crookes & Gass 1993a, 1993b; Day, 1986; Doughty & Pica, 1986;
Gass & Varonis, 1994; Long, 1983; Long & Porter, 1985; Pica & Doughty,
1985; Pica, Young, & Doughty, 1987; Swain & Lapkin, 1995). Research into

Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136 2

Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

task-based interaction has continued into the present (e.g., Alcon-Soler & Gar-
cia Mayo, 2009; Gass, Mackey, & Ross-Feldman, this issue; Mackey, 1999,
2007; Mackey & Gass, 2006; Shehadeh, 2001), with the result that broad find-
ings for the effects of interaction and corrective feedback have accumulated
to the extent that meta-analyses showing the positive contributions of each
to SLA are now available (Keck, Iberri-Shea, Tracy-Ventura, & Wa-Mbaleka,
2006; Mackey & Goo, 2007; Russell & Spada, 2006).
In contrast, the latter six above-listed SLA processes are the focus of more
recent research into the cognitive demands and motivational impact of variously
classified task characteristics and their effects on speech production, uptake,
and longer term memory for input provided during task performance (e.g.,
Baralt, 2010; Bygate, Skehan, & Swain, 2001; Cadierno & Robinson, 2009;
Dornyei & Kormos, 2000; Ellis, 2005; Gilabert, 2005, 2007; Gilabert, Baron,
& Llanes, 2009: Ishikawa, 2007, 2008a, 2008b; Kim, 2008, 2009a, 2009b;
Kuiken & Vedder, 2007a, 2007b; Michel, 2011; Nuevo, 2006; Revesz, 2009,
2011; Robinson, 2001b, 2007c; Robinson, Cadierno, & Shirai, 2009; Skehan &
Foster, 1999, 2001; Tavakoli & Foster, this issue; Tavakoli & Skehan, 2005). No
comprehensive meta-analyses of the effects of task characteristics in these areas
of L2 production, uptake, and memory for input are available as yet, although
syntheses of the accumulating findings about the effects of task characteristics
contributing to their complexity on the accuracy, fluency, and complexity of
L2 speech production are beginning to appear (Jackson & Suethanapornkul,
2010) and promise to go some way toward resolving competing claims made
by Robinson (2001a, 2001b, 2005) and Skehan (1998, 2009b; Skehan & Fos-
ter, 2001) about the effects of simple versus complex task demands on each
(these claims and rationales for them are described in more detail in a sub-
sequent section of this article). Taken together, then, these early, and more
recently researched, SLA processes constitute a large part of what has been
called the cognitive-interactionist rationale for the effects of instruction on
SLA (see Ortega, 2007) and, in particular, for the positive effects of TBLT on
SLA. Although TBLT clearly calls upon much more than the SLA processes
described earlier, it is these processes and their contribution to task-based lan-
guage learning (TBLL) that are the focus of the empirical studies in the present
issue.
Researchers exploring sociocultural rationales for language pedagogy (e.g.,
Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; Negueruela & Lantolf, 2006; Swain, 2000; Swain,
Kinnear, & Steinman, 2010; Swain & Lapkin, 1995) also address many of the
issues raised above about how TBLT can facilitate SLA processes. From a
Vygotskian perspective, learning is a social, collaborative endeavor in which

3 Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136

Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

both expert and apprentice take part in a shared, goal-oriented activity.

Task-work provides a context for such activity and for interactional scaffold-
ing (Gibbons, 2009) of individual learners attempts to use the L2, by another
learner or by a teacher (see Toth, this issue). Task demands may also prompt
effort at reconceptualization of events requiring linguistic expression in the
L2, third language (L3), or other language being learned, leading learners to
think-for-speaking in ways characteristic of native speakers of the language
being learned (Han & Cadierno, 2010; Jarvis & Pavlenko, 2008; Odlin, 2008;
Robinson, 2007d; Robinson & Ellis, 2008; Pavlenko, 2011; von Stutterheim &
Nuese, 2003). This may be particularly so along those dimensions of L2 task
complexity that have been proposed to direct learners attention to the ways in
which the conceptual and communicative demands of tasks are linguistically en-
coded (Cadierno & Robinson, 2009; Robinson, 2003b, 2005, 2007b; Robinson
et al., 2009). Vygotsky argued that concepts are only internalized following
a period of mediational support provided by experience of the conceptin
conjunction with attempts to verbalize activities related to it with an interlocu-
tor. Lantolf and Thorne (2006) have argued, drawing on Galperins ideas for
putting Vygotskys ideas on concept development into L2 pedagogic practice,
that it is necessary to represent in a concrete material way the concepts to be
internalized (p. 305). Consequently, tasks (and material input to tasks) mak-
ing conceptual demands on learners provide opportunities for verbalizing and
internalizing concepts and for becoming aware of how their L2 scope and form
of expression may differ from their L1 scope and linguistic encoding.

From TBLT to Task-Based Learning Research

Although SLA research has subsequently informed it, TBLT was, initially, a
proposal for improving pedagogy with only a slight foundation in empirical
research into the SLA processes listed earlier. Arising out of pedagogic pro-
posals for a greater emphasis on communicative activities in language teaching
(see, e.g., Brumfit & Johnson, 1979; Skehan, 2003; Valdman, 1978, 1980;
Widdowson, 1978, for reviews), TBLT places the construct of task at the
center of curricular planning. As Cook (2010) recently noted, TBLT sees sec-
ond language learning as arising from particular tasks that students do in the
classroom. . . . In a sense it reconceptualizes communicative language teaching
as tasks rather than the language or cognition-based syllabuses of communica-
tive language teaching, and TBLT is the approach to language teaching that
has attracted most attention in the past decade (p. 512). Although attention
to proposals for TBLT still primarily comes from teachers and educational

Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136 4

Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

authorities charged with designing, implementing, and coordinating effective

programs of language instruction at local, national, and international levels
(e.g., Council of Europe, 2001; Leaver & Willis, 2004; Van den Branden, 2006;
Willis & Willis, 2007), utilizing an increasing range of available instructional
technologies (e.g., Thomas & Reinders, 2010), attention to TBLT has also
come from SLA researchers concerned with explaining the effects of design
features of tasks, and their implementation, on learning. SLA researchers often
draw implications from their findings for classroom learning, testing, and pro-
gram design. However, because much empirical SLA research into the effects
of tasks on learning has beenand continues to bedone in experimental
settings, there is a clear need to examine the generalizability of implications
drawn from this research to actual classroom language performance on tasks,
and the use of tasks for testing and syllabus design purposes. Kim (2009b) is
an example of such needed bridging research, examining the generalizability
of laboratory findings for the effects of task complexity on interaction-driven
learning and development to EFL classroom contexts, with learners at different
proficiency levels (see also Ellis, 1997; Gass, Mackey, & Ross-Feldman, this
issue).
This important caveat aside, many of the current lines of inquiry that SLA
research into task-based learning has pursued were originally prompted by the
earliest pedagogic rationales for the use of tasks in language teaching. These
were exploratory suggestions for connections between pedagogic practice and
the acquisition processes they may stimulate. For example, in an article entitled
Towards Task-Based Language Learning recapitulating points he had made
earlier (Candlin, 1984), Candlin (1987) argued for:
the introduction of tasks as the basis for classroom action . . . They serve
as a compelling and appropriate means for realizing certain characteristic
principles of communicative language teaching and learning, as well as
serving as a testing-ground for hypotheses in pragmatics and
SLA . . . task-based language learning is not only a means to enhancing
classroom communication and acquisition but also the means to the
development of classroom syllabuses. (p. 5)

What Candlin (1987) was arguing for was the adoption of tasks as the
units of syllabus design rather than linguistic units such as grammatical
structures, functional phrases, or vocabulary lists (see Long & Crookes, 1992;
Long & Robinson, 1998; Robinson, 2009; White, 1988, for reviews of units
of analysis for the purposes of syllabus design). Yet Candlin was also begging
the question of whether classroom tasks (designed and operationally delivered

5 Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136

Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

in various ways) could also be shown to serve as constructs that confirmed

theoretically motivated hypotheses about SLA processes and whether these
hypothesized processes were prompted or inhibited by performing any one
pedagogic task, in contrast to another, that differed along some dimension of its
design features and/or features regarding their implementation. This argument
is clearly still an issue at the heart of TBLL research (as the articles in this issue
testify). Candlin then went on to say:

Tasks must . . . be defined and their means of operationalisation explained.

It will be necessary to offer ideas for their classification and their
targeting. Above all their centrality to the syllabus cannot be taken for
granted without evaluating how they can be selected and sequenced in a
principled fashion. (p. 5)

This issue raised by Candlin (1987)of selecting tasks to be performed in

sequencesis also at the heart of much current SLA research (see Robinson,
2007b, 2010; Robinson & Gilabert, 2007), which promises both implications
for program design and insights into the acquisition processes that task-based
learning can promote, across the differing timescales that institutions and other
authorities set for language instruction. The sequencing issue involves con-
sideration not only of how differently designed tasks might affect opportu-
nities for learning in different ways but also of how sequences of tasksin
the different combinations that sequencing decisions afford, and across the
different timescales performing them requiresimpact upon these learning
opportunities.

Features of Tasks and Their Implementation

A necessary starting point for studying the influence of sequences of tasks on
learning, however, is to study their isolated impact on learning: in order to ana-
lyze how these effects (if they are found) are subsequently multiplied (or not) by
sequences in which different tasks, or versions of the same task, are performed.
This agenda requires both experimental research into task effects on learning
and parallel studies of these effects in language learning programs. With these
issues in mind, Candlin (1987) offered one pedagogically-operational definition
of task (for a summary of many other definitions that have subsequently been
proposed, see Samuda & Bygate, 2008, pp. 6270). A task, Candlin (1987,
p. 19) wrote, is one of a set of differentiated, sequencable, problem-posing
activities involving learners and teachers. Then Candlin went on to describe

Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136 6

Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

certain key features of tasks that task designers should be able to accommodate
and that teachers could provide, to optimally promote classroom learning:
Input. This is the written, visual, or aural information that learners per-
forming a task work on to achieve the goal of the task.
Roles. These are the roles that learners have in performing a task, such as
information-giver and information-receiver.
Settings. These are the grouping arrangements in and outside of classrooms
for which pedagogy prepares learners to communicate.
Actions. These are the procedures to follow in performing the task or the
various steps that learners must take along the road to task completion.
Monitoring. This is the supervisory process of ensuring that the task per-
formance remains on track.
Outcomes. These are the oral, written, and/or behavioral outcomes in which
the task is intended to result.
Feedback. This includes evaluation of the whole or parts of a task perfor-
mance by the teacher or other learners, including corrective feedback on
language use as well as other helpful feedback.

Many of these features of tasks and their implementationin the years since
Candlin (1987) first described themhave been operationalized and studied
with respect to their influence on task-based learning and performance. These
include, for example, the following
the facilitating effects of linguistically versus elaboratively modified input
on comprehension (Yano, Long & Ross, 1994);
the effects of task role (Yule & MacDonald, 1990) and grouping arrange-
ments (Brown, 1991) on the amount of interaction;
the effectiveness of different types of corrective feedback on uptake and
development during task-based interaction (Mackey & Goo, 2007);
the effects of task different task characteristics on spoken (Foster & Skehan,
1999) and written (Kuiken & Vedder, 2007a, 2007b) outcomes.

Tasks and the Designed Delivery of Instruction

However, what of the larger implications of the study of task effects on learning
for decisions about instructional design and program development, implemen-
tation, and evaluation? Samuda and Bygate (2008, pp. 5860) made a useful
distinction between task-supported, task-referenced, and task-based approaches
to the role of tasks in instructional design. On the one hand, tasks have been

7 Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136

Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

proposed as a useful means to support delivery of programs that follow a struc-

tural (Ellis, 1993) or lexical (Willis, 1996) syllabus. In this approach, tasks can
be designed to focus on variously determined and sequenced grammar struc-
tures or lexical items (see Ellis, 2009, pp. 231232; Toth, this issue), and tasks
are not necessarily used for assessment purposes and the syllabus itself may be
defined by categories other than tasks (Samuda & Bygate, 2008, p. 59).
In contrast, task-referenced approaches use tasks principally as a way of
setting achievement targets and assessing the desired outcomes of a program of
instruction, as in the case of the Australian Adult Migrant Language Program
(AMEP; see Brindley & Slatyer, 2002) or the Common European Framework
of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2001). In most task-referenced
approaches, decisions about the units of classroom instruction (however con-
ceived) are made prospectively, bearing in mind progress toward outcomes of
task achievement. However, Candlin (1984, 1987) thought tasks could be used
as units of analysis for referencing, retrospectively, what happened in class-
rooms over a course of instruction, with regard to what language was learned
as a consequence of tasks performed, what content the tasks involved, and what
activities the tasks led to for teachers and learners.
Writing at around the same time as Candlin (1984), Long (1985) described
a different perspective on how the information about tasks and their influence
on learning could be drawn on and integrated into prospective decisions
about instructional program design. This is what Samuda and Bygate (2008)
referred to as an example of the task-based approach to the use of tasks to
organize program delivery and assessment. Essential to his proposals, Long
distinguished between target taskswhat learners are expected to do on exit
from instructional programs (identified via a needs analysis)and pedagog-
ical tasksthe tasks teachers and students work on in classrooms, which
can be gradually increased in complexity so as to approximate target task de-
mands. In contrast to a number of others who have subsequently argued for
the important contribution that tasks can make to language pedagogy (e.g.,
Ellis, 2003; Skehan, 1998; Willis, 1996), Long (1985, 1998, 2005; Long &
Crookes, 1992; Long & Norris, 2004) proposed that needs analysis was the
necessary first stage in course design, allowing target tasks to be identified.
Following this first stage, Long argued, target tasks should then be classified
into task types, and following this, pedagogic versions of each task type should
be designed. Subsequently, pedagogic tasks should be sequenced to form the
syllabus, then performed in classrooms, and the extent to which they enable
target task performance to be achieved should be evaluated with criterion-
referenced, performance tests. Longs proposal for integrating research on task

Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136 8

Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

effects with other components of L2 program design, such as needs analy-

sis, task sequencing, and evaluation outcomes, closely mirrored models pro-
posed to guide educational decision making in English for specific purposes
(ESP) programs in the 1970s and 1980s (e.g., Harper, 1984; Jupp & Hodlin,
1975; Munby, 1978) and in other domains of instruction following the generic
ADDIE (Analysis, Design, Development, Implementation, Evaluation) model
of instructional design (see Dick & Carey, 1996; Gagne, Wager, Golas, &
Keller, 2005).

Recent Taxonomic Frameworks and Theoretical Rationales

for Task-based Learning
Central to much recent task-based learning research are issues of the influence
of task characteristics on learning and performance, the relative complexity of
tasks having one or another of them, and the development of taxonomic models
to facilitate prospective pedagogic decision making about sequencing tasks.
These concerns aim to make instructional design decisions relevant for learners
in L2 learning programs (Garcia-Mayo, 2007; Robinson, 2007b; Robinson &
Gilabert, 2007). Essential to issues of program design to facilitate exit-program
evaluations of success in learning are taxonomies of task characteristics (in any
area of instruction) and rationales for how they can be used to implement
classroom decisions about what task is presented to learners, at what point
in an instructional program, and how such decisions can be validated (or not,
and so changed) on the basis of exit-program evaluation procedures (see Clark
& Elen, 2007; Merrill, 2007; Reigeluth, 1999; Reigeluth & Carr-Chellman,
2009).
Arising in part out of early speculations about what task characteristics may
be influential on interaction and SLA (e.g., Candlin, 1984, 1987; Long, 1983;
Prabhu, 1987) a number of increasingly elaborate taxonomies of task charac-
teristics have been proposed as a basis for pedagogic task design (e.g., Pica,
Kanagy, & Falodun, 1993; Prabhu, 1987; Robinson, 2007b; Skehan, 1998).
Moreover, an increasing number of studies have operationalized characteristics
of pedagogic tasks based on one or another of these taxonomic frameworks
and have studied their effects (at different levels of complexity) on the amount
of interaction they promote (Kim, 2009a, 2009b; Nuevo, 2006) and on the
accuracy, fluency, and complexity of task outcomes (Gilabert, 2007; Tavakoli
& Foster, this issue); language development (Collentine, 2010); and uptake of
corrective feedback (Baralt, 2010; Revesz, 2009).

9 Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136

Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

As with taxonomies of task characteristics, theoretical rationales motivat-

ing empirical research into task-based learning have also become more elabo-
rate over this 30-year period, reflecting a development from the early emphasis
on how task-based learning can facilitate comprehension of input through inter-
action and negotiation of meaning to more recent emphases on how task-based
learning can facilitate attention to output and the development of increasingly
targetlike speech production. Certain theoretical rationales have been offered
for the predicted effects of tasks on learning, and specific taxonomic frame-
works have been proposed for classifying task characteristics.

Theoretical Rationales for Task-Based Learning Research

The Procedural Syllabus
The first large-scale attempt to implement TBLT and to develop a theoretical
rationale for it took place in India, between 1979 and 1984, and is described in
Prabhu (1987). In his account of the theoretical motivation for the Bangalore
Project and the task-based procedural syllabus it implemented, Prabhu argued
that:

task-based teaching operates with the concept that, while the conscious
mind is working out some of the meaning-content, a subconscious part of
the mind perceives, abstracts, or acquires (or re-creates as a cognitive
structure) some of the linguistic structuring embodied in those entities, as
a step in the development of an internal system of rules. The intensive
exposure caused by the effort to work out meaning-content is thus a
condition which is favorable to the subconscious abstractionor cognitive
formationof language structure. (pp. 7071)

Explicit instruction in grammar in the project was avoided because teaching a

descriptive grammar is likelyas has been pointed out at various times in the
history of language pedagogyto promote in learners an explicit knowledge of
that grammar, rather than a deployable internal system (pp. 7273). Prabhus
cognitive rationale for TBLT is thus compatible with Krashens (1982) claim
that comprehensible input is necessary for learning and that the effort to
work out meaning-content promotes incidental learning of tacit or implicit
knowledge. Prabhu explained that the Bangalore Project did not use group
work in the classroom because learner-learner interaction did not promote
development of interlanguage (although see Adams, 2007, for evidence that it
does), and may lead to fossilization:

Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136 10

Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

The effect of learner-learner interaction will largely be a firming up of

learners [interlanguage] systems: each learner output will reinforce the
internal systems of others without their being a corresponding process of
revision. . .The principle that interaction between the teacher and the
learner, or between a text/task on paper and the learner, is more beneficial
than interaction between one learner and another is thus part of the
concept of learning which lies behind task-based teaching. (pp. 8182)

The Interaction Hypothesis and Focus on Form

In contrast to Prabhu (1987), Long (1983, 1989) argued that the interaction
task-work promotes is important because it not only provides one way in which
input can be made comprehensible but additionally serves as a context for at-
tending to problematic forms in the input and output during task-work. Such
learner-driven attention to form, contingent on negotiation of meaning, can
speed mapping of form-meaning relations and prompt interlanguage change in
ways that respected each learners own developmental trajectory (see Keck et al.,
2006; Mackey, 2007). Consequently Pica et al. (1993) described a taxonomy of
task characteristics in order to promote further research into which of these char-
acteristics optimally promoted interaction work. Drawing on Schmidts (1990;
Schmidt & Frota, 1986) claim that attention to aspects of the surface struc-
ture of utterances, accompanied by the subjective experience of awareness or
noticing them, was essential to learning, Long (1991, pp. 4546) also argued
that pedagogy could facilitate this process of attending to and noticing com-
municatively redundant, nonsalient features of the L2. This could be achieved
by interventions that prompt a focus on form that overtly draws students
attention to linguistic elements as they arise incidentally in lessons whose
overriding focus is on meaning or communication. Doughty and Williams
(1998) described a series of techniques, and proposals for research into them,
for providing such additional cognitive processing support (p. 3) to learners.
Decisions about focus on form could be made offline, proactively, leading,
for example, to textual enhancement of problematic forms in the input to task
performance, or could take place reactively, online, as in the case of recasts of
selected forms in learners output during task performance.

The Output Hypothesis

Swain (1995, pp. 125126) argued that attention to output, whether this occurs
in interaction between learners or not, has a facilitating role, because in pro-
ducing the target language. . . learners may notice a gap between what they want
to say and what they can say, leading them to recognize what they do not know,

11 Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136

Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

or know only partially. Producing language also offers learners opportunities

for testing hypotheses about well-formedness and for metalinguistic reflection
on L2 form. Izumi (2003) and Kormos (2006) have described the stages of L2
speech production at which attention can operate to promote the three effects
that Swain described, and current research is concerned with the extent to which
the attentional demands of pedagogic tasks can be manipulated to lead learners
to push their output.
A theoretical construct of interest here is the notion of attention as ca-
pacity and the related issues of how increasing the attentional demands of
tasks affect the fluency, accuracy, and complexity of speech production (see
Housen & Kuiken, 2009a, 2009b). Clearly, the human information processing
system is limited in its ability to process and respond to information in the
environment; but are breakdowns in performance caused by limits on atten-
tional capacity? Skehan (1998, 2009) argued for this position, claiming that
capacity limits on a single pool of attentional resources leads to decrements in
the fluency, accuracy, and complexity of L2 speech when tasks are high in their
attentional, memory, and other cognitive demands. In this view, capacity limits
prevent learners attending to both accuracy and complexity of production on
cognitively demanding tasks, leading learners to trade-off attention to one at
the expense of the other. A contrasting position has been proposed by Robinson
(2003a, 2007b), who argued that attentional capacity limits are an unsatisfac-
tory, post hoc explanation for breakdowns in attention to speech. Following, in
part, arguments made by Allport (1987), Neumann (1987), and Sanders (1998),
Robinson (2003a, 2007d) suggested that breakdowns in action-control, not
capacity limits, lead to decrements in speech production and learners failure
to benefit from the learning opportunities attention directing provides. Conse-
quently, increasing complexity along various dimensions of tasks, such as in-
creasing the amount of reasoning a task requires, promotes greater effort at con-
trolling production and more vigilant monitoring of output. This increased com-
plexity leads to greater accuracy and complexity of L2 production when com-
pared to performance on simpler task versions that require little or no reasoning.

The Limited Capacity Hypothesis

Schmidt (1990, p. 143) noted that Task demands are a powerful determinant
of what is noticed in experimental settings and provide one of the basic ar-
guments that what is learned is what is noticed. . . The information committed
to memory is essentially the information that must be heeded in order to carry
out a task. The extent to which this is true of L2 learning tasks in classrooms
is an important issue for the design of materials and instruction. Because much

Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136 12

Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

TBLL research has taken place in experimental settings, the relevance of find-
ings from these studies to instructional decision making in diverse classroom
settings, and for diverse populations of learners, require generalizability stud-
ies, as Gass, Mackey and Ross-Feldman (this issue) have described. Skehan
(1998) provided the first extended psycholinguistic rationale for the effects of
certain aspects of task demands on attention, noticing, and speech produc-
tion, focusing in particular on the extent to which having time to plan a task led
to increases in the accuracy, fluency, and complexity of speech produced when
compared to performance on tasks for which planning time was not available.
Skehans limited capacity hypothesis (p. 97) proposed that more demanding
tasks consume more attentional resources. . . with the result that less attention
is available for focus on form: Therefore, sequencing tasks from less cogni-
tively demanding to more demanding optimizes opportunities for attentional
allocation to language forms. In Skehans view, task design is a means to pro-
mote balanced language development in the areas of accuracy, fluency, and
complexity of production. This process can be facilitated because certain task
characteristics predispose learners to channel their attention in predictable
ways, such as clear macrostructure towards accuracy, the need to impose order
on ideas towards complexity, and so on (Skehan, 1998, p. 112; cf. Tavakoli &
Foster, this issue). However, due to limitations in attentional resources, tasks
can lead either to increased complexity or accuracy but not to bothso learn-
ers must trade-off attention to one aspect of production to the detriment of
the other. Tasks should therefore be sequenced by choosing those tasks with
characteristics that lead to each, at an appropriate level of difficulty, as deter-
mined by three factors: (a) Code complexity is described in fairly traditional
ways, as in descriptions of structural syllabuses, or developmental sequences
(Skehan, 1998, p. 99); (b) cognitive complexity is the result of the familiarity
of the task, topic, or genre, and the processing requirements; information type,
clarity, and organization; and amount of computation required; and (c) commu-
nicative stress involves six characteristics, including time pressure, number of
participants, and opportunities to control interaction.

The Cognition Hypothesis

The cognition hypothesis provides a theoretical rationale for the effects of
task demands on language learning that differs from Skehans proposal. This
rationale is rooted in claims by Cromer (1973, 1991) that conceptual develop-
ment creates the conditions for first-language (L1) development, and in claims
by Slobin (1993) that parallels in L1 and L2 development (as revealed in
data reported in Perdue, 1993a, 1993b) are evident because adult L2 learners

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initially attempt to linguistically encode concepts that emerge earliest during

child development. In this view, learners adopt, by default, the ontogenetically
determined order of meaning (concept)-form (language) mapping in attempts
to produce the L2 (see Robinson, 2005). For instructed SLA, the fundamen-
tal pedagogic claim of the cognition hypothesis is that in task-based syllabi,
pedagogic tasks should be sequenced solely on the basis of increases in their
cognitive complexity, which mirror the sequences in which children are able
to meet the cognitive demands of tasks during L1 acquisition, and that such
sequences provide optimal support for L2 learners in their attempts to use ac-
curate and complex language at the level needed to meet real-world target task
demands (Robinson, 2001a, 2005). In this account, learners do not trade-off
attention to accuracy against attention to complexity of production: Rather,
on some dimensions of task demands (described below), increasing complex-
ity is argued to promote more accurate, grammaticized production and more
complex, syntacticized utterances. Referring to Givons (1985) distinction be-
tween pragmatic and syntactic modes of production, Robinson (1995, 2003b)
has argued that simple task demands elicit the pragmatic mode (characterized
by loose coordination of clauses and little use of grammatical morphology)
in contrast to complex task demands. Complex task demands lead to greater
effort at conceptualization and elicit the morphologically richer and struc-
turally more complex syntactic mode, in line with Givons (2009, p. 12) claim
that More complex mentally-represented events are coded by more complex
linguistic/syntactic structures.
To guide research into these claims, and also pedagogy, Robinson (2007b)
proposed an operational taxonomy of task characteristics. This taxonomic, Tri-
adic Componential Framework (TCF) distinguishes three categories of task
demands implicated in real-world task performance. Task condition refers to
interactive demands of tasks, including participation variables (e.g., open vs.
closed tasks) and participant variables (e.g., same vs. different gender). Char-
acteristics of tasks distinguishing the demands made by task conditions thus
include many of the factors described in Pica et al.s (1993) taxonomy. A sec-
ond category of task difficulty concerns individual differences in learner factors,
such as working memory capacity, which can affect the extent to which learners
perceive task demands to be difficult to meet. These factors explain why two
learners may find the same task to be more or less difficult than each other, and,
broadly speaking, these individual difference factors may combine to result in
aptitudes for certain kinds of task performance and task-based learning. Task
complexity refers to the intrinsic cognitive complexity of tasks, such as their
reasoning demands. Robinson distinguished three different kinds of reasoning

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demands: (a) spatial reasoning, as involved in navigating through, and giving

directions about, places like cities while driving, or giving instructions on how
to back a car into a small parking space; (b) causal reasoning, involved in un-
derstanding and explaining why a natural or mechanical event occurred (why a
bridge fell down in a storm, why exchange rates fluctuate); and (c) intentional
reasoning, as involved when explaining behavior with reference to the inten-
tions, beliefs, and desires of others (why Tom suddenly left the party, why Jill
has stopped speaking to Mary, etc.).
The TCF distinguishes task features affecting the cognitive complexity
of tasks along two dimensions. Resource-directing dimensions of complex-
ity affect allocation of cognitive resources to specific aspects of L2 code. For
instance, tasks that increase in their intentional-reasoning demands require lin-
guistic reference to the mental states of others. These demands should therefore
direct learners attention to forms needed to meet them during communication,
such as psychological state terms in English (e.g., believe, wonder). These
forms may be currently known but not well controlled, or if they are unknown,
then attempts to complete the task may make them salient and noticeable.
By increasing complexity along these dimensions, initially implicit knowl-
edge of the L1 concept-structuring function of language (see Talmy, 2000)
becomes gradually explicit and available for change during L2 production.
In contrast, resource-dispersing dimensions do not do this: Making a task
complex by removing planning time does not direct the learners attention to
specific aspects of L2 code but rather disperses attention over many linguis-
tic and other features. Increasing task demands along these dimensions has
the effect of gradually removing processing support (such as planning time)
for access to current interlanguage; thus, practice along them requires, and
should encourage, faster and more automatic L2 access and use. Based on this
resource-directing/dispersing distinction and the TCF, Robinson (2010) pro-
posed two operational principles for sequencing tasks in a task-based syllabus:
(a) Sequencing should be based only on increases in cognitive complexity, (b)
increase resource-dispersing dimensions of task complexity first (to promote
access to current interlanguage), then increase resource-directing dimensions
of complexity (to promote development of new form-function mappings, and
destabilize the current interlanguage system).

Task Demands and Stages of Speech Production

Theoretical rationales for the influence of task demands on writing and both
reading and listening comprehension currently lag behind rationales for their ef-
fects on speech production in articulating linkages between rationales proposed

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and explanatory psycholinguistic mechanisms. With respect to the latter, both

Skehan (2009a, 2009b; cf. Tavakoli & Foster, this issue; Tavakoli & Skehan,
2005) and Robinson (1995, 2005) have drawn on Levelts model of speech
production in their psycholinguistic rationales for how task demands should
affect L2 speech performance, as have others who have been more generally
concerned with identifying the mechanisms involved in producing L2 speech
and responding to negative feedback on it (e.g., Bygate, 1999; Doughty, 2001;
Izumi, 2003; Kormos, 2006, 2011; see also de Bot, 1996, 1998). Levelts model
of speech production identifies stages in which speech is assembled for pro-
duction, beginning with a conceptualization stage, leading to preparation of the
preverbal message, followed by stages of lexical and grammatical encoding,
articulation, and (optionally, possibly individually initiated or coconstructed)
monitoring of utterances following production (which can lead to self-repair,
see Gilabert, 2005, 2007; Kormos, 1999; Swain & Lapkin, 1995). Levelts
model is a stage model (for arguments against stage models in general, see
Larson-Freeman & Cameron, 2007; and see Dell, 1986, and Dell, Juliano, &
Govindjee, 1993, for alternative spreading activation models of speech pro-
duction), but preparation of speech at the stages Levelt described is proposed
to be performed in parallel, and processing is incremental, so all stages of
speech production are simultaneously active, with feed-forward and feedback
operations connecting these stages.
Drawing on Levelts model (1989; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999) of
speech production, Robinson (1995) argued that increasing the conceptual
demands of tasks (naturally) leads to greater effort at conceptualization and
macroplanning at the stage of message preparation, thus creating the condi-
tions for development and re-mapping of conceptual and linguistic categories
(Robinson et al., 2009, p. 537), during subsequent microplanning and the
lexicogrammatical encoding stage into which macroplanning feeds. In Levelts
model, the conceptualization stage generates a preverbal message: the mes-
sage should contain the features that are necessary and sufficient for the next
stage of processingin particular for grammatical encoding (Levelt, 1989,
p. 70). Therefore, greater effort at conceptualization during message prepara-
tion, induced by conceptually demanding tasks, should lead to what Dipper,
Black, and Bryan (2005, p. 422) called paring down of conceptual informa-
tion into a linguistically relevant representation for subsequent encoding, at
the microplanning stage, with positive consequences for accurate and complex
performance.
Skehan (2009a, 2009b) has recently proposed a fine-grained analysis of
how some aspects of task demands that make them more difficult (what

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Skehan, 2009a, calls complexifying/pressuring influences) or less difficult

(what Skehan calls easing/focusing influences) are related to the stages of
speech production that Levelt (1989) described. Skehan (2009a) argued that
it is the connections he proposes between task demands and their influence
on stages of speech production that cause the effects of task demands on the
accuracy, fluency, and complexity of spoken performance. For example, where
a task requires dynamic relations between task elements to be described (as
when describing how cars were moving prior to the occurrence of a traffic ac-
cident), then this will lead to more complex language performance, compared
to describing concrete, static information (e.g., the arrangement of furniture in
a room). In this case, the locus of differences in performance on the two tasks
is attributed to differences at the conceptualization stage of message prepara-
tion. In contrast, monologic tasks lead to more complex spoken performance
than dialogic tasks, but this is attributed to differences at the formulation stage
and subsequent lexicosyntactic encoding procedures. Skehan, then, basically
argued that different task characteristics (either intrinsic to their design or char-
acteristics of their implementation) have effects on spoken performance that are
caused by more or less effort at the conceptualization stage versus task charac-
teristics that result in effects caused by processing for speech production at the
lexical and syntactic encoding and formulation stages. What is valuable about
Skehans proposal is its attempt to ground discussion of task characteristics,
and their effects on learning and performance, in a model of speech production
mechanisms, thereby providing a psycholinguistic rationale for the effects of
what has been metaphorically referred to in the SLA literature as pushed
output. Much more theory and research in this area is needed and is likely to
be forthcoming.

Taxonomies of Task Characteristics

For TBLL research to produce cumulative findings, with application to peda-
gogy, a taxonomy of task characteristics is needed. A major aim of task-based
learning research is to establish such a taxonomy. The benefits of an agreed
taxonomic framework for research into task effects are clear. On the one hand,
a taxonomy describes a finite list of task characteristics and categories of them.
This can serve as a focus for concerted research into the effects of those char-
acteristics on learning, when used to deliver different kinds of task content,
and with learners at different levels of proficiency, or with different task ap-
titude or other profiles, thus enabling the generalizability of findings for the
characteristics and their effects to be charted. On the other hand, a taxonomy

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with instructional relevance identifies characteristics of pedagogic tasks that

can be used to approximate the demands made by a wide variety of real-world
target-task performance objectives. There are thus constraints that an opera-
tional taxonomy of task characteristics should satisfy if it is to be both useful
for coordinating research and with application to pedagogy. Two pedagogic
constraints that a taxonomy must meet are (a) that it is detailed enough in its
listing of characteristics to allow a wide variety of target-task performances
to be approximated and (b) that the characteristics it identifies must be feasi-
ble, allowing task designers in different programs using the taxonomy to make
similar decisions about how to operationalize the characteristic. An additional
theoretical constraint is (c) that the taxonomy is motivated by what is currently
known about SLA processes and development. A final hybrid theoretical-
pedagogic constraint is that (d) it should be possible to use the taxonomy to
classify and sequence tasks, following some metric for combining task char-
acteristics in sequences and in ways that are hypothesized to lead to language
learning.
For extensive reviews of the many task characteristics, and categories of
them, that have been proposed, see Ellis (2003), Nunan (1993, 2004), Robin-
son (2001a, 2007b), and Samuda and Bygate (2008). Three taxonomies in
particular continue to predominate in task-based language research. The earli-
est of these was proposed by Pica et al. (1993), who described a typology of
communication tasks, each with different configurations of activity (the role
relationships between participants, and direction of information flow between
them) and goal (the outcomes the task was expected to result in). They further
analyzed the goals and activities tasks that could result in terms of the oppor-
tunities they provided for learning. For example, where task goals are the same
or convergent, then they claimed it was expected that the task would lead
to (a) comprehension of input, (b) feedback on production, and (c) interlan-
guage modification. In contrast, where interactants have divergent goals, then
each of these was only possible, therefore providing fewer opportunities for
learning. The task types that Pica et al. identified were Jigsaw, Information-
gap, Problem-solving, Decision-making, and Opinion exchange. Pica et al.s
typology therefore expands on the three types of task that the Bangalore Project
used and that Prabhu (1987, pp. 4647) had ordered from Information gap, to
Reasoning gap, to Opinion gap in terms of the demands these task types made
on learners. This taxonomy satisfies the feasible constraint described previously
and also the theoretical constraint (with respect to interactionist rationales for
SLA), but it fails to meet the first constraint because it lacks sufficient detail
(consisting of only five task types) and it also fails to meet the fourth constraint

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because it provides no information about how task types can be sequenced

optimally for learners.
Skehans (1998, 2003; Skehan & Foster, 2001) taxonomy, described earlier,
consists of categories of task characteristics that contribute to code complex-
ity, cognitive complexity, and communicative stress and builds on Candlins
(1987) proposals for factors that may influence task performance and learning.
For example, the vocabulary load a task involves affects its code complexity, the
clarity and sufficiency of information provided affects its cognitive complexity,
and the number of participants and time limits affect its degree of communica-
tive stress (see Kuiken & Vedder, 2007b, for discussion). In more recent work,
Skehan (2009a, 2009b) has maintained a focus on how task characteristics can
complexify (e.g., by requiring greater quantities of information to be expressed)
and pressure task performance (by imposing tight time constraints), and as ob-
served above, Skehan has linked complexifying/pressuring task characteristics
to Levelts (1989) model of stages in speech production, which cause their ef-
fects on the accuracy, fluency, and complexity of learners language. Skehans
taxonomy is theoretically motivated, not with respect to interactional influences
on learning (as is the case with Pica et al.s [1993] taxonomy) but with respect
to the effects of tasks on the psycholinguistic processes causing variation in
speech production. The characteristics that Skehan described are also feasible
because task designers should consistently be able to manipulate time pressure,
quantities of needed information, and so forth. However, as with Pica et al.s
taxonomy, the characteristics described lack sufficient detail to link pedagogic
versions to a wide variety of real-world task performances (although Skehan
has been clear that his model is not intended to address how pedagogic tasks can
be used to do this), and no metric is offered for sequencing the characteristics
described.
Robinsons (2001a, 2007b) TCF, described earlier (and see the Appendix),
combines elements from both Pica et al.s (1993) and Skehans (1998, 2003)
proposals. Following the rationale described previously, the category of task
characteristics contributing to their cognitive complexity are proposed to affect
speech production in different ways along resource-directing and dispersing
dimensions. The category of task characteristics describing the different par-
ticipation, and participant factors involved in task performance, are proposed
to affect the extent of interaction in different ways. The third category of task
difficulty in the TCF involves learner factors, which may influence performance
and learning on tasks having characteristics distinguishing their interactive or
cognitive demands (see Albert & Kormos, this issue). For example, along the
single task dimension of task complexity, individuals high in working memory

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capacity and in the ability to switch attention between task demands may find
dual tasks (requiring two things to be done simultaneously, such as answering
a phone call while monitoring a TV screen in the office) to be less difficult than
those lower in these abilities. Similarly, when the solution to a task learners are
performing is indeterminate and not fixed (+ open) as opposed to determinant
and fixed (+ closed), then individual differences in measures of emotional
control, such as openness to experience and tolerance of ambiguity (Costa &
McCrae, 1985; Furnham & Ribchester, 1995), may predict more, or less, suc-
cessful engagement in task participation to meet these goals (with those more
open to experience and more tolerant of ambiguity adapting better to partic-
ipation in open tasks, and vice versa). It is not yet clear what the ability and
affective factors are that contribute to perceptions of task difficulty, and so both
promote and mitigate successful performance on the simple and complex task
characteristics listed under the category of Task Complexity in the appendix or
affect performance under different interactional Task Conditions listed there.
Research into individual differences in affective and ability factors and the
extent to which they affect task performance is much needed (see Albert &
Kormos, this issue, for one example) because if these links can be established
through research, they could be used to operationalize batteries of individual
difference measures that can be used to profile task-aptitudeswith the twin
aims of matching learners to tasks that optimize their opportunities for suc-
cessful L2 learning and performance and of supporting them when their ability
and affective profiles are not well matched to the demands tasks make on them
(see Robinson, 2007a, 2007a; Snow, 1994).
In summary, with regard to the criteria that task taxonomies should meet
in order to be pedagogically useful and acquisitionally optimal, the TCF is
more detailed than Pica et al.s (1993) or Skehans (1998) taxonomies while
being equally feasible and theoretically motivated. It has the advantage too,
of an associated sequencing metric described earlier, particularly, that (a) se-
quencing pedagogic versions of target tasks should be based only on increases
in cognitive complexity and that (b) resource-dispersing dimensions of task
complexity should first be increased (to promote access to current interlan-
guage) and then resource-directing dimensions of complexity should be in-
creased (to promote development of new form-function mappings and desta-
bilize the current interlanguage system). Whether this sequencing procedure
(intrinsically linked to the TCF taxonomy) is optimal for promoting successful
task performance and language learning is, as yet, empirically unresolved, be-
cause research into it has only recently begun (e.g., Romanko & Nakatsugawa,
2010).

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The Articles in This Issue

The articles in this issue all describe careful empirical studies, selected from
recent issues of Language Learning because they address one or another of
the issues about TBLL raised earlier. The first two articles, by Tavakoli and
Foster and by Albert and Kormos, dealt centrally with the effects of tasks on
outcome measures of speech production. Tavakoli and Foster began by observ-
ing that research into the effects of tasks on production is important because
it can illuminate the proposition that task performance in itself drives inter-
language change by causing learners to attend to and retain information about
the target language as they use it (p. 38). Additionally, research identifying
features of tasks that impact on a learners processing may help provide em-
pirically sound principles for classroom materials design (p. 38) and inform
decisions about which tasks to choose to guide a learners focus of atten-
tion to particular aspects of the language being learned (p. 38). Drawing on
Skehans (1998, 2009a, 2009b) limited capacity hypothesisthat given finite
attentional resources, learners will prioritize one aspect of performance, such
as being accurate, over another, such as being suitably fluent or complex
(p. 41)they hypothesized that two characteristics of narrative tasks (loose
vs. tight structure, and storyline complexity) will have these effects. Their
hypotheses are that (a) narratives with tight structure will lead to more accu-
rate language, whereas those with loose structure will lead to greater fluency;
and (b) compared to less cognitively complex narratives that only foreground
events, more complex narratives that both foreground and background events
will lead to more syntactically complex and lexically diverse language but have
no effects on accuracy. The research found that in narrative performance on
the task that has tight structure (and so is simple on what Robinson (2003a)
called this resource-dispersing dimension of cognitive demand) and that has
two storylines (and so is simultaneously complex on this resource-directing
dimension of task demands in Robinsons framework), there is greater accu-
racy, fluency, and complexity, as the cognition hypothesis predicts. However,
other findings, such as performance on a narrative with loose structure and
two storylines, appear to confirm Skehans predictions, because it appears that
the higher fluency and complexity this narrative elicits is traded off against
lower accuracy. Tavakoli and Foster also argued that their results for greater
accuracy on narrative tasks with tight structure can be interpreted as support
for Skehans claim that some effects task characteristics have on production
are caused (as in this case) by the extent to which they free up attention at the
conceptualization stage of speech production. Tight structure frees up attention

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because it reduces the need for effort at macroplanning of coordinated narrative

event descriptions during conceptualization, and attention freed up from effort
at conceptualization is, in turn, allocated to the formulation stage, resulting in
greater accuracy.
Albert and Kormos also studied the effects of narrative task performance
on the accuracy, fluency, and complexity of production. However, they are prin-
cipally interested in the extent to which individual differences in creativity can
influence task performance. Building on Carrolls (1993) three-stratum theory
of cognitive abilities and his observation that one common higher order ability
factor is idea production and drawing also on Guilfords (1967) distinction
between divergent and convergent thinking, Albert and Kormos proposed that
divergent thinking contributes to three facets of creativity that may affect idea
production on L2 tasks: creative fluency, flexibility, and originality. They ar-
gued that these facets of creativity should be particularly influential on certain
tasks, especially open-ended ones like narrative tasks, for which there is no
correct solution, but a large number of solutions are possible (p. 82). In other
words, they argued, creativity thus measured should contribute positively to
performance on open versus closed tasks. They hypothesized that creativity
(operationalised and measured using a test developed by Barkoczi & Zetenyi)
should be particularly influential on the quantity of talk produced (as evident in
the number of idea units) as well as lexical variety and the variety of narrative
structure. They found that creative fluency and originality were related to the
amount of talk produced, and the complexity of narrative structure attempted
but had no effect on accuracy of production.
The articles by Tavakoli and Foster and by Albert and Kormos are com-
plementary with respect to their focus on narrative task production. However,
the attempt by Albert and Kormos to identify individual differences contribut-
ing to the difficulty learners experience in meeting narrative task demands is
particularly important. Tasks, and characteristics of them that designers and
researchers manipulate, are unlikely to have effects on production and learning
independently of the abilities different learners bring to the context of task
performance. All learning is the result of complex interactions between task
demands contributing to their intrinsic cognitive complexity (so a less cogni-
tively complex task should always meet with more success for any one learner
than its more intrinsically complex counterpart) and the cognitive abilities and
affective dispositions learners have, which affect their experience of how dif-
ficult tasks are and so contribute to variation in levels of success reached by
any two learners on the same task (see Robinson, 2001a, 2001b, 2003a, 2007a;
Shuell, 1980; Skehan, 1989; Snow, 1989, 1994; Sternberg, 2002). To what

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extent, therefore, might Tavakoli and Fosters findings for the effects of the
design characteristics of narrative tasks on speech production been different
if they had used measures of participants creative fluency and originality as
covariates in their analysesas Albert and Kormos demonstrate that both of
these affect the nature of learners responses to narrative task demands?
The following two articles each explore the extent to which tasks can be
used to support vocabulary or grammar instruction. In Longs terms (1991;
Doughty & Williams, 1998; Long & Robinson, 1998) the researchers address
how tasks can be used to focus attention on forms selected and sequenced for
instruction following a lexical or grammatical syllabus. In her article, Kim op-
erationalizes Hulstijn and Laufers (2001) motivational-cognitive construct of
task-induced involvement in order to examine whether certain tasks are more
effective than others in promoting L2 vocabulary acquisition. After reporting
previous findings concerning the effects of task characteristics on vocabulary
acquisition, such as de la Fuentes (2002) finding that tasks involving negotia-
tion plus output led to greater receptive and productive learning than exposure
to words provided in premodified input to tasks, Kim cited Hulstijn and Laufers
(p. 542) claim that the more effective task required a deeper level of processing
of the new words than the other task. Hulstijn and Laufers involvement load
hypothesis is an attempt to operationalize differences in the depth of processing
that tasks can encourage, whereby greater involvement in task demands causes
greater depth of processing, which, in turns, leads to better retention of vo-
cabulary than does lower involvement in task demands. The motivational need
component of involvement load is driven by the desire to comply with task
requirements, whereas search and evaluation are cognitive components that
affect the extent to which attention is paid to form-meaning relationships when
encountering vocabulary during the task. In two experiments, Kim found, first,
that a writing task, with a higher involvement load index compared to tasks in-
volving reading with comprehension activities or gap fill activities, led to more
effective initial learning and better retention of new words. Second, she found
that different tasks (writing a composition vs. writing sentences containing
words) that had the same level of involvement load were effectively equivalent
in promoting initial learning and retention of words.
In his article, Toth presented a rich, quantitative and qualitative assessment
of the extent to which learner led discourse (LLD) and teacher led discourse
(TLD) during tasks designed to maximize meaningful language use of, and at-
tention to, the target of an (one semester) earlier instructional episode (in which
learners were explicitly taught metalinguistic information about the Spanish an-
ticausative clitic se) facilitated their subsequent learning of it. Toths study is

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most clearly an example of task-supported approaches to instruction, follow-

ing a predetermined (in this case, following course book-prescription) order for
grammar teaching. Additionally, his study used closed, two-way information
gap tasks to deliver the LLD treatment but open topic discussion for eliciting
the effects of TLD on learning, in order to promote scaffolded feedback given
to facilitate form-meaning mapping (p. 148). Although the tasks used to de-
liver LLD and TLD treatments were very different in their participation and
participant structure this was the difference Toth sought to investigate. Toth
found that TLD, and the participant/participation (see the Appendix) task con-
ditions it was delivered through, was more effective at promoting development
of the grammatically targeted, and previously practiced, forms than was LLD
in two-way information exchange tasks.
The final article in this issue begins by summarizing the earliest theoretical
rationales for the benefits of task-based interactionand the opportunity for
metalinguistic reflection on output it provides, that is, the twofold potential
of negotiationto assist L2 comprehension and draw attention to L2 form
[which] affords it a more powerful role in L2 learning than has been claimed
so far (Pica, 1994, p. 508), and that under certain task conditions, learners
will not only reveal their hypotheses, but reflect on them, using language to do
so (Swain, 1995, p. 132). Gass, Mackey, and Ross-Feldman then reviewed a
number of claims that have been made (e.g., by Foster, 1998, and Nunan, 1991)
that experimental conditions operationalized in studying these issues may well
not reflect the interactional patterns typical of classroom language learning
contexts. They pointed out that although there is not a prototypical classroom,
any more than there is a prototypical laboratory (p. 193), researched findings in
the latter settings must demonstrate their generalizability to classrooms. Gass,
Mackey, and Ross-Feldman went on to show that findings for interactional
patterns in the experimental and classroom contexts they studied suggest few
differences between them while revealingin both settingsdifferences in
interactional patterns that depended on the type of task the learners carried
out. This issue of demonstrating the generalizability of findings from empirical
research into the influence of task demands on learning to classrooms, in diverse
institutional contexts and with diverse populations, is one that must continue to
mediate between all of the theoretical claims and empirical findings described
in this issue, and claims about their instructional relevance, as Bygate, Norris,
and Van den Branden (2009) have pointed out:

Underpinning this empirical impetus is the imperative for research to

focus on how TBLT works within the context of ongoing programs. Hence

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the TBLT enterprise will not be able to rely on individual case studies of
learners conducted outside the context of programs of instruction, or on
laboratory studies, nor on studies carried out in host classrooms in which
the use of tasks is investigated without relating their use to the teaching of
the ongoing program. Such work provides a valuable contributionin a
sense it might be seen as a form of pilotingfor the empirical grounding
of TBLT. However, more widespread pedagogically contextualized
research is clearly needed. (p. 497)

Revised version accepted 10 January 2011

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 Robinson Task-Based Language Learning

Appendix

The Triadic Componential Framework for Task

ClassificationCategories, Criteria, Analytic Procedures, and
Design Characteristics

Task complexity (cognitive Task condition (interactive Task difficulty (learner factors)
factors) factors)
(Classification criteria: (Classification criteria: (Classification criteria:
cognitive demands) interactional demands) ability requirements)
(Classification (Classification procedure: (Classification procedure:
procedure: behavior-descriptive ability assessment analyses)
information-theoretic analyses)
analyses)
(a) Resource-directing (a) Participation variables (a) Ability variables and
variables making making interactional task-relevant resource
cognitive/conceptual demands differentials
demands
Here and now Open solution h/l Working memory
Few elements One-way flow h/l Reasoning
Spatial reasoning Convergent solution h/l Task-switching
Causal reasoning Few participants h/l Aptitude
Intentional reasoning Few contributions h/l Field independence
needed
Perspective-taking Negotiation not needed h/l Mind/intention-
reading
(b) Resource-dispersing (b) Participant variables (b) affective variables and
variables making making interactant task-relevant state-trait
performative/procedural demands differentials
demands
Planning time Same proficiency h/l Openness to experience
Single task Same gender h/l Control of emotion
Task structure Familiar h/l Task motivation
Few steps Shared content h/l Processing anxiety
knowledge
Independency of steps Equal status and role h/l Willingness to
communicate
Prior knowledge Shared cultural h/l Self-efficacy
knowledge
Adapted from Robinson 2007b, by permission of Multilingual Matters. Reproduced
with permission of the publisher, Multilingual Matters.

Language Learning 61:Suppl. 1, June 2011, pp. 136 36

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