TBLT and L2 Pronunciation

Abstract

Decades of research on task-based language teaching and learning (TBLT) have demonstrated that tasks may encourage second/foreign language (L2) development by providing conditions for cognitive processes and social interactions that facilitate L2 acquisition (e.g., Long, 2015; Robinson, 2011; Skehan, 2014; for alternative, noncognitive viewpoints on TBLT, see Jackson & Burch, 2017). Specifically, manipulating task features has been shown to draw learners' attention to target forms within meaningbased interaction; to encourage automatization and fluency of target structures; and to promote use of more accurate, varied, and/or complex forms. However, most research examining the facilitative role of tasks and task features thus far has focused on tasks that center on grammatical or lexical structures, or even pragmatics (Plonsky & Kim, 2016). To date, there is a lack of systematic investigation into the role of tasks and task manipulation in promoting opportunities for the development of L2 pronunciation, an important aspect of L2 acquisition and communicative competence. In fact, despite recognition that the theoretical rationale for TBLT includes pronunciation (Ellis, 2009) The authors would like to thank the SSLA editors, board, and editorial assistants for their guidance on this thematic issue; the contributors for their enthusiasm for this idea from the very beginning; external reviewers for their insightful suggestions; and the audience members who attended our colloquium at TBLT 2015. Finally, we would like to thank YouJin Kim for providing feedback on an earlier draft of this introduction. Any remaining oversights are ours.

Spanish teachers’ beliefs on the usefulness of pronunciation knowledge, skills, and activities and their confidence in implementing them

“…Overall, respondents' generally positive views of communicative activities are consistent with state-of-the-art pedagogical recommendations and research (e.g. Gurzynski-Weiss et al, 2017;Saito, 2015).…”

“…In addition to recent studies that have set PI into a communicative framework, balancing meaning-oriented learning objectives with form-focused instruction, researchers have begun to incorporate the principles of task-based language teaching into PI (Gurzynski-Weiss et al, 2017). For instance, in a study manipulating the complexity of an information-gap task targeting Spanish vowels, Solon, Long, and Gurzynski-Weiss (2017) found that learners in simple and complex conditions produced a similar number of language-related episodes that were pronunciation-focused, but the production of /e/ became more targetlike only for learners who completed the more complex task.…”

Étude de la perception des apprenants de français langue étrangère concernant l’enseignement des langues basé sur les tâches

“…La recherche portant sur la prononciation et l'ELBT est émergente. Elle confirme que cette compétence spécifique qu'est la prononciation peut aussi être ciblée à travers cette approche pédagogique (Gurzynski-Weiss, Long et Solon, 2017).…”

From Research in the Lab to Pedagogical Practices in the EFL Classroom: The Case of Task-Based Pronunciation Teaching

“…TBPT makes use of the task-design principles of TBLT to enhance learners' attention to phonetic form in pedagogic tasks that involve meaning-based interaction. TBLT adopts meaning-based communicative tasks as central to defining language learning needs, goals, classroom activities, and assessment, but has not devoted research efforts to investigating pronunciation-focused communicative tasks until recently [89]. Based on [90]'s Framework for Task-Based Learning, a commonly used TBPT task-design implementation procedure [12][13][14] involves three stages, namely, pre-task, task cycle, and post-task.…”

“…For example, according to the Cognition Hypothesis [91], making a communicative task cognitively more complex by increasing the number of elements and reasoning demands needed to complete the task leads to the production of more lexically and grammatically complex language, thus implicitly enhancing L2 development. Recent research [89] indicates that manipulating task-design variables is effective at enhancing learners' attention to phonetic form in meaning-based tasks, resulting in improvements in the perception and production of L2 segmental [12,13,15] as well as suprasegmental features of L2 speech [92], and speech comprehensibility [10]. As learners tend to engage in such interactive tasks collaboratively, task performance often leads to the occurrence of pronunciation-focused language-related episodes (P-LRE) [93] that serve to raise learners' awareness of pronunciation issues and indicate the extent to which the task design was effective at helping learners focus on pronunciation.…”