Tasks and Second Language Acquisition
Melissa Baralt, Florida International University, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Roger Gilabert, University of Barcelona, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Marije Michel, Lancaster University, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Andrea Révész, University College London, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
The goal of this ReN is to promote consistency in the way in which task-based research operationalizes independent and dependent variables.
Research on how task-related factors affects language use and language learning has been a productive strand in instructed second language acquisition (SLA) research in recent years. However, while there have been considerable advances in our understanding of task variables, the field still has a scattered research agenda. Extant research involves diverse ways of operationalizing task-related factors and encompasses variables such as task type, task complexity, task sequencing, and planning time. Dependent measures of task performance and second language learning have also varied greatly. With a paucity of replication studies, a proliferation of task variables, and performance measures, it is almost impossible to compare and evaluate the existing work and to come to a synthesized understanding of how task factors relate to second language use and SLA.
The activities planned in conjunction with this ReN aim to bring to light these issues and foster collaboration in strengthening what we know about the way in which task factors, language production, and language learning are linked.
Our first planned activity is a colloquium at the upcoming Task-Based Language Teaching conference in Leuven, organized by Drs. John Norris (Georgetown University) and Mike Long (University of Maryland). The topic addresses the following:
Narrative reviews and a recent research synthesis have found results from over 250 studies of task complexity to date hard to interpret because researchers employ so many different definitions of terms, research designs, variables, and measures. As in other disciplines, a collaborative research network (CRN) could improve the quality and yield of future research on this and other problems in SLA, applied linguistics, and TBLT. Voluntary membership in a network of established researchers could speed up progress through pooling ideas, facilities, expertise, research participants, data and funding sources, by facilitating replication studies, and generally making the international research effort cumulative.
For more information on this colloquium as well as details of the papers to be presented, please visit http://www.tblt.org/conferences/2015/colloquia/
Our ReN will meet at the EuroSLA 2016 and AILA 2017 conferences. These meetings (and planned research) are for the purpose of developing a common research agenda for task-based scholarship.
At present, the ReN’s members are:
From Belgium:
Bram Bulté, Free University Brussels
Koen van Gorp, University of Leuven
Alex Housen, Free University Brussels
Elke Peters, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
From Italy:
Gabriele Pallotti, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
From Japan:
Peter Robinson, Aoyama Gakuin University
Daniel O. Jackson, Kanda University of International Studies
From The Netherlands:
Marrit van de Guchte, University of Amsterdam
Nel de Jong, Free University of Amsterdam
Ineke Vedder, University of Amsterdam
From New Zealand:
Rosemary Erlam, University of Auckland
From Spain:
Roger Gilabert Guerrero, University of Barcelona
Mayya Levkina, University of Barcelona
Aleksandra Malicka, University of Barcelona
Lena Vasylets, University of Barcelona
From the United Kingdom:
Jookyoung Jung, University College London
Judit Kormos, Lancaster University
Nektaria Kourtali, University College London
Marije Michel, Lancaster University
Jenefer Philp, Lancaster University
Andrea Révész, University College London
Parvaneh Tavakoli, University of Reading
Clare Wright, University of Reading
From the United States of America:
Melissa Baralt, Florida International University
Minyoung Cho, University of Hawai`i, Manoa
Marta Gonzalez Lloret, University of Hawai`i
Laura Gurzynski-Weiss, Indiana University
Jake Guyton, Florida International University
YouJin Kim, Georgia State University
Shawn Loewen, Michigan State University
Michael H Long, University of Maryland
José Morcillo Gómez, Florida International University
John Norris, Georgetown University
Lourdes Ortega, Georgetown University
Rebecca Sachs, Virginia International University