Task based Language Teaching

Togetherness of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) has been the subject of many recent studies in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) and English as a Second Language (ESL) domain. Few studies, however, have addressed the impact of TBLT on ESP learners’ linguistic production. This study aimed at investigating the impact of task-based teaching on ESP learners’ speaking and writing. Furthermore, this study aimed to explore the ESP learners’ and instructors’ attitudes toward the nature of program and their perceived needs of tasks to be accomplished in the course. To fulfill this aim, 60 ESP students majoring in Law in 2 different classes at Allameh Tabataba’i University, Iran, and 10 ESP instructors were selected as the participants of the study. Accordingly, the students in one of the two classes received a one-semester long instruction based on the principles of TBLT as the experimental group, while the students in the other class were taught according to the content of the textbook developed for such courses. After the instruction was over, the students were given a set of standardized and teacher-made tests. The results of the data analysis indicated that the experimental group showed a significant difference in terms of improvement in acquiring productive skills. It was also revealed that there were significant differences between the participants’ attitudes regarding the nature of the course and their perceived needs of tasks. The findings of this research could provide an insight into designing opportune syllabi for ESP courses.

Task complexity has recently attracted great attention in second language (L2) studies. However, its potential impacts on learning transitional devices have not been considered. The current study was an attempt to analyze the impacts of manipulating task complexity conditions on EFL learners’ grammatical enhancement in terms of learning transitional devices through doing writing tasks. For this purpose, 75 intermediate EFL learners learning English in three English language institutes in Iran were randomly selected. They were assigned to four experimental groups and one control group (each with 15 participants). Each of the experimental groups was presented with a pretest, writing tasks, an immediate posttest and a delayed posttest. The participants took part in 9 sessions and in each session some transitional devices were introduced to the experimental groups with which they were supposed to write a paragraph based on a special topic using all those transitional devices. The different experimental groups received writing tasks with different complexity levels which were determined through the manipulation of factors including ± few elements and ± planning time. The participants in the control group just participated in a regular English class for 9 sessions without doing such tasks. The performances of all groups were analyzed, and the findings revealed statistically significant differences among the five groups in both the immediate posttest and the delayed posttest, after controlling for the effect of the pretest. The findings of the current study have practical implications for curriculum development and EFL writing instruction.