MCL workshop on Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT)

Selecting and sequencing pedagogic tasks for the L2 classroom

Wednesday, April 5, 2017 4:30 PM EDT
Johnson Center, 337 (Meeting Room G)

Dr. Michael H. Long
Professor of Second Language Acquisition instead of Professor of Applied Linguistics

Researchers have made some progress in identifying and manipulating various parameters of task complexity, including number and distinctiveness of elements, context-embeddedness, degree of structure, and reasoning demand. They have employed measures of cognitive load (e.g., participant ratings of difficulty, duration and stress, expert judgments, dual task performance, and eye-tracking) to verify that two or more versions of a task do in fact differ in complexity as intended.

Problems remain, however. It is one thing to know something about task complexity and cognitive load, but another to use complexity to classify and sequence pedagogic tasks in a task syllabus and in TBLT materials (Long, 2015). Some dimensions of complexity, e.g., degree of structure and distinctiveness of elements, can be hard to determine, much less to operationalize, and others, e.g., number of elements and reasoning demands, often co-vary. An additional recurring problem is that, whether intentionally (path of least resistance) or unintentionally (additional elements go unnoticed), both native and non-native speakers tend to ignore items designed to increase complexity if a task can still be completed (minimally) satisfactorily while doing so. Such shortcuts work against the ultimate goal of the researcher, syllabus designer, materials designer and classroom teacher, which is to use added complexity to “stretch” a learner’s L2 performance and thereby drive L2 development. In this workshop, I will discuss examples of pedagogic tasks and task sequencing, and illustrate two potential mechanisms for protecting increased complexity from “reinterpretation” by research participants and classroom learners: task closure and feedback loops.

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