Recent Perspectives on Task-Based Language Learning and Teaching

Mohammad Ahmadian, María del Pilar García Mayo, Mohammad Ahmadian, María del Pilar García Mayo

• Publisher: De Gruyter Mouton
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781501503290
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Langues et linguistique
• Subtopic: Linguistique

The last three decades have witnessed a growth of interest in research on tasks from various perspectives and numerous books and collections of articles have been published focusing on the notion of task and its utility in different contexts. Nevertheless, what is lacking is a multi-faceted examination of tasks from different important perspectives. This edited volume, with four sections of three chapters each, views tasks and Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) from four distinct (but complementary) vantage points. In the first section, all chapters view tasks from a cognitive-interactionist angle with each addressing one key facet of either cognition or interaction (or both) in different contexts (CALL and EFL/ESL). Section two hinges on the idea that language teaching and learning is perhaps best conceptualized, understood, and investigated within a complexity theory framework which accounts for the dynamicity and interrelatedness of the variables involved. Viewing TBLT from a sociocultural lens is what connects the chapters included in the third section. Finally, the fourth section views TBLT from pedagogical and curricular vantage points.

IISociocultural Theory Perspective

Rémi A. van Compernolle

4Dynamic Strategic Interaction Scenarios: A Vygotskian Approach to Focusing on Meaning and Form

Rémi A. van Compernolle, Carnegie Mellon University

1Introduction

Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has received a great deal of attention in second language (L2) pedagogical research and practice, as evidenced by the proliferation of books and edited volumes dedicated to the topic in the last few years (e.g., Baralt, Gilabert, & Robinson 2014; Byrnes & Manchón 2014; Gónzalez-Lloret & Ortega 2014; Long 2015; Shehadeh & Coombe 2012). Generally speaking, TBLT focuses on creating pedagogical tasks that are meaning focused and relevant to real-word (i.e., beyond the classroom) activities. A useful, concise definition of a pedagogical task is provided by Nunan (2004):

a pedagogical task is a piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to express meaning, and in which the intention is to convey meaning rather than to manipulate form. (p. 4)

It should be noted, of course, that most tasks target specific lexicogrammatical patterns (i.e., forms) by design. For instance, students might be asked to retell a past experience as a way of eliciting the use of past tense forms in hopes that their ability to use such forms in communication will improve. In other words, while the overt focus is on meaning, there is typically an implicit focus on form.

In this chapter, I describe and illustrate an approach to TBLT that involves overt focus on meaning and form (FonMF) simultaneously – dynamic strategic interaction scenarios, or DSIS (van Compernolle 2013, 2014a, 2014b). The approach draws on two Vygotskian pedagogical applications, strategic interaction scenarios (DiPietro 1987) and dynamic assessment (Poehner 2008), which promote the internalization of patterns of meaning and patterns of language. The goal of DSIS is to promote FonFM in order to develop learners’ conscious knowledge of L2 forms and meanings and to “speed up” (Paradis 2009), or “accelerate” (van Compernolle 2014a), their access to that knowledge during online language use. Specific examples are drawn from previous work involving US university learners of French who were engaged in a concept-based enrichment program focused on sociolinguistic and pragmatic variation. D-SISs can be considered tasks because 1) they focus primarily on meaning created during communication and 2) the contexts involve real-world situations that learners would be expected to encounter outside of a classroom context. As discussed later, the D-SISs were part of a larger extracurricular program that included additional, complementary metalinguistic tasks. In this way, D-SISs can be seen as part of a task-supported curriculum.

A few preliminaries are in order. From a Vygotskian perspective, meaning and form are inseparable.10 This is because meaning is not restricted to the content of one’s message. Rather, choices between forms communicate different perspectival, social-indexical, pragmatic, metaphorical, etc. meanings. A simple example is the social-indexical difference between the greetings Hey, what’s up? and Hello, how are you?, both of which effectively communicate the same thing. However, the first option may point to such social-indexical meanings as informality, social closeness, youth, etc., whereas the second may be considered more standard, appropriate for use in more formal situations and between people who are socially distant. Understood this way, pedagogical tasks need to incorporate the purposeful manipulation of form, but not for form’s sake; instead, form should be intentionally manipulated precisely because the choice between two or more possible forms is what makes meanings possible during communicative activity. The overarching goal of DSIS tasks is, therefore, to link learners’ intended meanings with relevant forms and to support control over those forms during communication.

2Background

2.1Mediation and internalization

Mediation refers to Vygotsky’s (1978) observation that higher forms of psychological functioning are accomplished through the integration of external stimuli that reorganize biologically endowed capacities. For example, neurological memory systems are reorganized by language so that we engage in the act of remembering things, events, people, and so on (Wertsch 1985). Similarly, other people in a child’s or a learner’s environment (e.g., parents, teachers) can mediate mental functioning. Examples include parents helping their children to assemble a puzzle through prompts or modeling and teachers assisting their students in solving a mathematics problem. We can think of such external stimuli as language11 as psychological mediators or tools while assistance from other people can be thought of as human mediation aiming to support the integration of psychological mediators into a child’s or a learner’s psychological functioning, that is, internalization.

Here, I would like to emphasize the distinction between assistance and mediation by other people (e.g., parents, teachers). Assistance can be seen as the broader concept, which refers to any kind of help, support, etc. provided in carrying out a task. In some cases, such assistance can be considered human mediation – as alluded to above – when the result is the development of new or modified psychological functioning. As noted in van Compernolle (2015), human mediation differs from assistance on a specific task because it involves “the construction of opportunities for mental development through the internalization of psychological tools” (p. 41). Thus, as we will see below, helping a learner to control a particular language form in a single instance is assistance, but helping the learner to understand how and when to control a particular language form for meaning-making activity across contexts (i.e., internalizing pragmatic concepts) is mediation.

It is important to note that internalization does not coequate with acquisition. Rather, as Zinchenko (2002) points out, it is about growth and transformation on the one hand and, on the other, it is bidirectional in that it involves inward and outward growth and transformation. This is to say that the internalization of a psychological mediator entails making it one’s own (inward growth and transformation). In turn, the tool may be transformed in social-material activity (outward growth and transformation). A consequence of this conception of internalization is that development is operationalized as the qualitative transformation of mental capacities, as evidenced by the way mental functioning changes as new psychological mediators are integrated into our behaviors or as existing ones are modified for use in new contexts. Internalizing new, or modifying existing, psychological mediators is what allows us to plan and monitor our actions on the internal (psychological) and external (social) planes.

2.2Formation of mental actions

One of Vygotsky’s collaborators, Piotr Gal’perin (e.g., Gal’perin 1989, 1992), developed a theory of the formation of mental actions that involved three stages: orientation, execution, and control. Orientation refers to the way humans go about planning their actions, which may occur at any number of timeframes. We make split-second decisions every day that have immediate consequences (e.g., guiding the steering wheel and operating the accelerator and brake while driving), but we also make long-term plans in which the consequences of our actions are rather far in the future (e.g., when an architect begins to sketch out plans for a new building). This entails recognizing the resources that one can use and are available in the social world. Execution is the actual performance of the orientation, and control refers to our ability to monitor the execution of the orientation and adjust our actions as needed. It is important to note here that human mediators (e.g., teachers) help learners to plan, execute, and monitor and control actions.

Gal’perin’s research showed that the quality of the orientation was key since it was involved in plannin...