Pedagogical Tasks for The Language Classroom

The purpose of this Element is to bridge research and classroom practice by presenting clear actionable strategies for how to design and implement pedagogic tasks from a task-based language teaching (TBLT) perspective. The Element is intended to benefit practitioners in English as a second language/foreign language (ESL, EFL) and world language classrooms as well as researchers who wish to use tasks or who wish to gain a better grasp of the interface between research and practice. We focus specifically on pedagogic tasks, which are approximations of real-world tasks that teachers can readily implement in their language classrooms. The Element is organized around a set of seven key principles that are supported by theoretical and empirical research in the field of SLA and illustrated through examples. Content covers fundamental concepts such as common task outcomes and task types, communicative gaps, task difficulty, scaffolding, focus on form, feedback, task engagement, and assessment.