Applied Linguistics 28/2: 309–315 � Oxford University Press 2007

doi:10.1093/applin/aml057 Advance Access Published on 4 April 2007

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Enhancing Automaticity ThroughTask-based Language Learning

1ISABELLE DE RIDDER, 2LIEVE VANGEHUCHTEN, and3MARTA SESENA GOMEZ1Flemish Council for Education, 2University of Antwerp, 3University of Salamanca

In general terms automaticity could be defined as the subconscious condition

wherein ‘we perform a complex series of tasks very quickly and efficiently,

without having to think about the various components and subcomponents

of action involved’ (DeKeyser 2001: 125). For language learning, Segalowitz

(2003) characterised automaticity as a more efficient, more accurate, and more

stable performance. As such, automaticity is often associated with systematicity

and a merely instructional approach. However, task-based learning seems

not incompatible with automaticity either, since it incorporates activities that

respect ‘transfer-appropriate processing and other positive features of commu-

nicative practices’ (Segalowitz 2003: 402) and thus allows students to creatively

apply previously acquired knowledge in new communicative contexts. In order

to test this assumption, an experiment was conducted at Antwerp University

with a group of intermediate-level students of Spanish. Two groups were

evaluated: an experimental group and a control group. The control group

attended a traditional communicative course, whereas the experimental group’s

course had a task-based component built into it. The results of the experiment

indicate that the experimental group outperformed the control group for

automatization (as defined by a number of criteria).

RESEARCH AIMS AND RATIONALE

Automaticity is a concept that seems to rapidly win ground in language

learning theory. Segalowitz (2003) defines automaticity for language learning

as a more efficient, more accurate and more stable performance. Moreover,

an advanced level of automaticity seems to lead to near-native performance

(DeKeyser 2001; Hulstijn 2002). Even though empirical research on

automaticity is still in its early stages, research in cognitive psychology as

well as in second language acquisition suggests that automaticity is best

achieved by repeated creative use of the language rules taught in a context of

authentic communication (DeKeyser 2003). From this point of view, a

communicative task-based approach offers several advantages, since this

language learning method allows students to creatively transfer previously

acquired knowledge to new communicative contexts (Nunan 1989; Zanon

1999; Nation 2001; Robinson 2001). In order to examine whether the task-

based approach indeed offers the appropriate setting to enhance automaticity,

an experiment was conducted with 68 intermediate-level students of Spanish

as a foreign language for Business and Economics.

HYPOTHESIS

In the task-based approach, the students’ task guarantees that the linguistic

contents, although vital to the development of the exercise, do not determine

its structure. Instead, the class is process-oriented: the focus is on the process

that underlies the successful completion of the task. In this way, the task-

based approach avoids the pitfalls of the traditional communicative method,

such as the lack of systematic revision, of student-centred activities, and of

authentic communicative settings. In other words, the task-based approach

allows structured repetition and creative transfer of knowledge items.

Therefore, we hypothesized that the task-based approach leads to a higher

level of automaticity than the traditional communicative approach. We have

defined automaticity by a number of criteria (see below) and expected the

task-based approach to increase results on all of these criteria.

METHOD

Design

The control group took a one-year integrated course where knowledge items

were introduced indirectly, further assimilated in a focus-on-form phase,

and finally practised in a course-content related communicative situation.

As far as the experimental group is concerned, we varied the transfer

conditions with a task-based component: the so-called practicas comunicativas.

Through creative skill training activities, students engaged in different

communicative situations, unrelated to the actual course but organized

in such a way that the participants were compelled to use the previously

acquired lexico-grammar. Both groups were evaluated on their level of

automaticity after completion of the course.

Subjects

A total of 68 students participated in the experiment: 35 in the control group

and 33 in the experimental group (30 male students (13 in the control

group and 17 in the experimental group) and 38 female (22 in the control

group and 16 in the experimental group)). The subjects were assigned

randomly to the two groups. They were all between 20 and 23 years of

age. The subjects were students of business and economics at the University

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of Antwerp. During the experiment, they were in the third year of a four-

year programme in Economics. Their native tongue is Dutch, and they had

all passed the beginners’ course Spanish for Business and Economics. The overall

beginners’ oral exam results of both groups did not differ significantly (t-test

analysis).

Course materials

The first three stages of the course coincided for both the experimental and

the control group and this fitted in with the concept of a communicative

course with a strong systematic or focus-on-form component: presentation,

explanation, exercises. The fourth stage was different in that the control

group used the acquired knowledge in a similar context, whereas the

experimental group creatively applied the acquired knowledge to a new

context. This meant that besides the classes and the related homework, the

students of the control group were asked to compose an individual dossier.

For this, they had to read 12 texts on Spanish companies drawn from the

specialist business press. Next, in preparation of an oral test, the students

were invited to independently further gather information for the dossier and

to prepare a brief presentation of each of these companies.

The experimental group followed the same course as the control group,

but without the individual assignment. Instead, a fourth task-based phase

was added: the practicas comunicativas. The final objective was to shoot an

advertising spot for a brand new product. Each workshop addressed a specific

aspect of the task, and the students were invited to draw on their knowledge

of the world as well as on their specialist-economic background and

(meta)linguistic knowledge of Spanish in order to do so.

Instrumentation and observation

In the case of both groups, automaticity was graded for the two oral

discourses: the oral examination and the advertisement. Automaticity is a

vast concept; it has many different facets. Since it affects all aspects of

language learning at once (Segalowitz 2003), we have defined the assessment

criteria on the basis of the Common European Framework of Reference for

Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment (2001). These criteria were adjusted

to the specific purposes of the course and, in a more concrete manner,

to what was supposed to be acquired knowledge after completing the

course successfully.1 The main criteria were: pronunciation, fluency,2

intonation, sociolinguistic competence, lexical competence, and

grammatical competence. Each of these criteria was broken into discrete

sub-criteria:

� Pronunciation: distinctness, intelligibility, naturalness;

� Fluency: pauses, reformulating phrases, fillers, recurrences;

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� Intonation: clearness, intelligibility, naturalness, melodic phrasing;

� Sociolinguistic adequacy: adjustment to the situation, use of tu/usted;

� Lexicon: mastery of the core vocabulary, lexical adjustment to the

situation, use of phraseology, richness of the lexicon;

� Grammar: morphology and syntax of the present and past tenses, use

of the pronouns, use of ser/estar, use of por/para, use of prepositions,

use of concordance rules.

Two independent raters used video-recordings to evaluate the oral

performances of both groups for each of these (sub-)criteria. Scores are on

a scale of 1 to 4 (0 stands for ‘not applicable’, 1 for ‘insufficient’, 2 for

‘sufficient’, 3 for ‘good’, and 4 for ‘outstanding’). The agreement between the

scores of both raters was measured by computing the Pearson Product

Correlation Coefficients. For all criteria, these coefficients lay between .900�

and .998� (significant at the .01 level). For the purposes of the present

analysis, both evaluators decided on one final score. The scores were added

up per major evaluation criterion in order to obtain six final percentages

(calculated on the basis of a maximum score).3

Procedure

Both the control and the experimental group took two classes of fifty

minutes on a weekly basis during two terms of twelve weeks each. There was

a gap of seven weeks between the two terms. In addition, the students of the

experimental group attended the practicas comunicativas: five times 60 minutes

per term, so 10 hours in total. The control group followed exactly the same

schedule, with the exception of the 10 hours of practicas comunicativas, which,

in their case, were replaced by individual preparation towards an oral

examination (see above).

RESULTS

Table 1 describes the statistics for the six major criteria, expressed in

percentages. The results were analysed with an independent samples t-test.

All statistical tests were performed at .05 level. The results indicate that:

(a) The control group outperformed the experimental group on

pronunciation [t (66)¼�3.53, p (two tailed)¼ .001�] and

intonation [t (66)¼�2.73, p (two tailed)¼ .008�]. This contradicts the

hypothesis.

(b) The experimental group outperformed the control group on grammar

[t (66)¼ 6.06, p (two tailed)¼ .000�], vocabulary [t (66)¼ 5.51, p (two

tailed)¼ .000�], and social adequacy [t (66)¼5.52, p (two

tailed)¼ .000�]. This was hypothesized.

(c) No significant difference could be established on fluency. This also

contradicts the hypothesis.

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DISCUSSION

As far as the knowledge items (lexicon and grammar) and the level of

sociolinguistic competence are concerned, the experimental group signifi-

cantly outperformed the control group. Nevertheless, with regard to fluency,

no significant difference could be established. As far as the criteria of

pronunciation and intonation are concerned, the control group significantly

outperformed the experimental group. Since we expected outperformance by

the experimental group on all of the criteria, these results partly contradict

our hypothesis.

The lack of difference at the level of fluency might be explained by the fact

that the discourse that was presented to evaluate the experimental and

the control groups was to a considerable extent prepared and studied in

advance. This may explain the absence of reformulating phrases, pauses,

fillers, etc., which normally characterize spoken discourse and determine the

level of fluency.

The fact that the control group outperformed the experimental group

on pronunciation and intonation might be due to the fact that in the

experimental group the students are each other’s conversational partner,

whereas the students of the control group during their oral examination

enter into a conversation with the evaluator, a native or near-native speaker.

In the case of the experimental group, a possible explanation is therefore

that the L2-learner will not run counter to the L2-accent of his fellow

students and that this has a reinforcing effect on the non-native level

Table 1: Descriptive statistics of the results on the six major criteria inpercentage

Criterion Condition Mean SD Min. Max. N

Pronunciation Control 74.76 22.28 25.00 100.00 35

Experimental 58.58 14.36 33.33 83.33 33

Intonation Control 70.71 23.02 25.00 100.00 35

Experimental 54.92 24.59 25.00 100.00 33

Grammar Control 63.27 18.18 28.94 89.47 35

Experimental 88.89 16.59 43.75 100.00 33

Vocabulary Control 65.89 23.64 25.00 100.00 35

Experimental 91.18 11.90 44.44 100.00 33

Social adequacy Control 68.57 29.61 25.00 100.00 35

Experimental 85.92 22.48 25.00 100.00 33

Fluency Control 67.50 24.47 25.00 100.00 35

Experimental 74.00 25.74 25.00 100.00 33

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of this group (pronunciation and intonation). In contrast, it seems

plausible that the students of the control group will try their utmost

during the official exam to adjust their speech to that of the evaluator.

Further experimental settings should therefore take into account the nature

of the dyad.

CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH

The initial hypothesis seems to have been partially confirmed. The

experimental group only outperforms the control group for the criteria of

social adequacy and grammatical and lexical knowledge. Therefore, the

conclusion can be drawn that the task-based approach stimulates the process

of automatization to a larger extent than a purely communicative course

with a strong systematic component. However, given the very different

nature of the task-based approach, the question could also be posed to what

extent the better performance of the experimental group is not due mostly

to a higher motivation, and, if such is the case, whether this motivation is

an intrinsic part of the task-based approach, as has been suggested by Estaire

(1999). Thus, the question whether each task-based activity in se is able

to arouse enough motivation and influence the automatization process in

the same way, needs further examination.

Moreover, the results presented here are preliminary: more research is

needed in which the different criteria are isolated, so that their exact relation

to each other and to the automatization process can be established. The

experiment reported upon took place in a specific learning environment over

a specific period of time. It remains to be seen if different settings (different

languages, contexts, language levels, etc.) and testing over a longer term

will corroborate the above results.

One final consideration concerns the psychological similarity between

the learning context and the transfer context. Research has shown that the

greater the psychological similarity of the learning and transfer contexts,

the higher the degree of automaticity (Segalowitz 2003). Given the fact that

the basic principle of the task-based approach is to offer not new contents

but only new contexts, which moreover are being created mostly by the

students themselves, it can be stated that the psychological similarity

between the learning context and the transfer context is considerable

within this approach. Therefore, we share the opinion of Segalowitz

(2003: 402) that ‘future research will have to determine which dimensions

of psychological similarity (e.g. whether the learners’ intentions, feelings,

etc., are important, or whether only linguistic contexts are important) are

relevant to the establishment of automaticity that is transferable to new

situations’.

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NOTES

1 If the student passes the course

Spanish for Business and Economics

Intermediate Level, his/her compe-

tence can be put on a par with the

European C1-level in the matter of

reading proficiency, and with the

B2-level in respect of the remaining

skills.

2 Although automaticity is often con-

sidered to be a part of fluency (for

instance Wood 2001), there is no

foregone conclusion on what is the

connection between both concepts in

a second language acquisition context

(Segalowitz 2003: 384). In this report,

fluency is considered as a criterion

for determining the progress in the

automatization process, and is defined

as the ‘ability in the second language

to produce or comprehend utterances

smoothly, rapidly and accurately’

(ibid.), without the concept of auto-

maticity being made subordinate to

the concept of fluency.

3 The ‘‘0’’ scores were counted as

‘‘missing’’.

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