Book reviews / System 42 (2014) 474–480476

Task-Based Language in Foreign Language Contexts, A. Shehadeh, C.A. Coombe. John Benjamins Publishing Company,Amsterdam, Philadelphia (2012). xi D 364 pp.

Recently, in a paper delivered at the University of Oxford, Martin Bygate (2013) noted that while a significant body ofresearch literature has focussed on the sequencing and implementation of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT), far lessinterest has been given to investigating its efficacy in the classroom. Of the empirical studies that do explore this concern, Vanden Branden (2006) notes that most have been divorced from the dynamics of the second language classroom and ‘conductedin laboratory conditions or in tightly controlled settings’ (p. 1). For this reason, Ali Shehadeh and Christine Coombe haveproduced Task-Based Language in Foreign Language Contexts, a volume of thirteen classroom studies that ‘reports on how TBLTideas are being investigated by researchers and language professionals and being successfully put into practice by teachersand learners’ (p. 8). Over half of the chapters come fromAsia, and of those, six are from Japan alone, but the book also presentsother studies from classroom venues ranging from Venezuela to Turkey.

The book is divided into two parts. The first contains chapters investigating variables that affect task-based languagelearning and performance, while the second half addresses how classroom practitioners have sought to implement TBLT intheir specific schools and universities. While space does not allow for a critical review of all the chapters, what follows is asample that is representative of the overall tenor of the book.

Chapter Two, by Sasayama and Izumi, explores the effects of task complexity and planning on the oral production ofJapanese high school students. They sought to test Skehan’s (1998) limited capacity hypothesis, which states that students arenot able to pay equal attention to complexity, accuracy and fluency when doing tasks, and Robinson’s (2007) cognitionhypothesis, which counter-proposes that students are able to multitask. Students were required to engage in two narrativetasks, one simple and one complex, in which they would speak to researchers while also ordering pictures related to thenarrative. Half the students were given time to plan what they would say, while the other half were not allowed planningtime. Student speech was transcribed and studied for accuracy through an impressive battery of statistical measures. Whiletheir findings were statistically inconclusive, in that they could neither confirm nor refute either Skehan’s or Robinson’shypotheses, they suggest that students can undertake complex tasks with syntactic accuracy if given time for planning, butwith a decrease in global accuracy and fluency. Students given simple tasks could complete them with a higher level ofaccuracy and fluency, but giving them pre-task planning time would negatively impact fluency. Although somewhat coun-terintuitive, these findings were similar to those of Genc (Chapter 4) who studied the effects of strategic planning for oral andwritten tasks with sixty Turkish university students. From her statistical analysis of student texts and transcripts, she con-cludes that giving students more time for planning results in language that is less accurate.

In Chapter Five, Horiba and Fukaya study the effect of task instructions on reading and memory comprehension among agroup of Japanese nursing students. Instructions about two reading texts were explained in Japanese for one group, and inEnglish for another. Students were given a dizzying array of tests before and after the reading text, and then asked later torecall what they had read in writing (one group in Japanese and the other in English). Many of their findings were incon-clusive, but the data analysis seemed to indicate that students who had received scaffolding in Japanese were able to recallmore of the content of the reading texts than those who did the task entirely in English. Those who did the tasks in the L2were, however, able to learn new vocabulary. They offer tentative support for Skehan’s limited capacity hypothesis byconcluding that students can focus either on understanding the overall meaning of a text or on vocabulary enrichment, butnot both at the same time.

Park (Chapter Ten) studied the effects of computer-assisted TBLT with Korean secondary students. Using an experimentaldesign, students in the control group received instruction from the set textbook using a grammar-translation approach, whilethe experimental group studied in the computer lab with task-based lessons developed to teach learners how to write email.All students were given pre- and post-test writing assessments as well as the school’s required unit review tests of grammarand vocabulary. The results of the unit review tests weremixed, but Park found that the TBLT group outperformed the controlgroup on the writing assessments. These claims needed greater moderation, though, since the rubric used by the two trainedassessors relied upon subjective judgements. In addition, while questionnaires from the students in the experimental groupshowed that they enjoyed the experience of doing TBLT in the computer lab over grammar translation-based study in theclassroom, the limitations of this study made it difficult to conclude whether TBLT had made a lasting difference in terms oftheir language acquisition.

Chapter Eleven contains a study by Chacón about a film-orientated TBLT course for Venezuelan university studentstraining to become EFL teachers. Over tenweeks, the course featured pre-task preparation, a six-week project-based task, oralpresentations and post-task work involving the learners in creating short, film-based language learning activities that theywould administer to their peers. All tasks were designed to provide learners with collaborative opportunities for speaking,listening, writing and reading. Chacón claims to have used an Action Research model of qualitative analysis to assess thecourse. This was perplexing, since it was unclear how the problem-solution based approach in Action Research related to thecoded qualitative analysis of interviews, diary studies, recorded oral presentations, and peer assessment. Nevertheless, shereports that while the students had difficulty cooperating in task groups, based upon her observations in class and fromstudent self-assessment, it was felt that the second language fluency and intelligibility of the learners had improved. Whilethere is little reason to doubt this claim, what would have enhanced this study would have been clearer evidence from anindependent source that language improvement had taken place as a result of using TBLT.

Book reviews / System 42 (2014) 474–480 477

I admit to having a certain affinity for TBLT in my language courses. However, the impression left from reading this bookwas that, despite TBLT’s status as the ‘new orthodoxy’ of second language learning and instruction (Littlewood, 2004), thereseems to be very little conclusive evidence to prove that it is any better or worse than other forms of language teaching.Tantalizing hints do spring forth from the pages of this work, but they are often cloaked in other questions, such as whetherthe choice of data analysis was appropriate, whether the contributors were working with common understandings of whatconstituted a ‘task’ and, in the case of where claims were made for student learning as a result of TBLT, the degree to which itimpacted the entire class rather than a few star students. Without knowingmore, it is difficult to come to any clear conclusionabout the overall contribution of this book to second language pedagogy. What did seem to be clearer from many of thepapers in this collectionwas that TBLT served as a useful means of managing the EFL classes, most of whichwere overcrowdedand in monolingual environments. However, while keeping the learners actively engaged with each other naturally seemsbetter than teacher-fronted lessons, recent psychological research suggests that, regardless of the method used, languagelearning is significantly curtailed in just such pedagogical environments (Zhang, Morris, Cheng, & Yap, 2013). Findings such asthese raise interesting questions, but also pave the way for new research opportunities.

Task-Based Language in Foreign Language Contexts successfully showcases the work of practitioners seeking to discoverhow to better implement TBLT in their classes. The book provides a wealth of helpful examples in the form of class materialsand research inventories, all of which can be found in the appendices. This book would serve as a helpful resource forgraduate students looking for examples of classroom research on TBLT. The questions and findings of the contributors willcertainly stimulate lively debate as well as the desire for further investigation, especially among those committed toresearching the efficacy of TBLT in second language classrooms around the world.

References

Bygate, M. (2013). Task as workspace for language learning and teaching. In Paper presented at the Department of Education Public Seminars. University ofOxford. http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/task-workspace-language-learning-and-teaching.

Littlewood, W. (2004). The task-based approach: some questions and suggestions. ELT Journal, 58(4), 319–326.Robinson, P. (2007). Task complexity, theory of mind, and intentional reasoning: effects on L2 speech production, interaction, uptake and perceptions of

task difficulty. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 45, 193–213.Skehan, P. (1998). A cognitive approach to language learning. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Van den Branden, K. (2006). Introduction: task-based language teaching in a nutshell. In K. Van den Branden (Ed.), Task-based language education: From

theory to practice (pp. 1–16). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Zhang, S., Morris, M., Cheng, C. Y., & Yap, A. (2013). Heritage-culture images disrupt immigrants’ second-language processing through triggering first-

language interference. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(28), 11272–11277. http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1304435110.

Gregory HadleyDepartment of Information Culture, Niigata University of International and Information Studies, Mizukino 3-1-1,

Niigata-shi 950-2292, JapanE-mail address: gregoryhadley@hotmail.com

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2013.12.018

literacy skills. At the same time, there is a notable lack of empirical research on these new communication forms. Tagg (see

Discourse of Text Messaging: Analysis of SMS Communication, C. Tagg. Continuum, London (2012). vii D 225 pp.

Much has been written about the changing forms of communication that have arrived in the digital age (emails, tweeting,texting, etc.), and it is not difficult to find anxious articles in the media discussing the destructive effects of new technology on

also 2013) makes a valuable contribution towards rectifying this situation with her analysis of a corpus (CorTxt) of more than11,000 text messages.

In contrast to the predictors of doom in the media, in her opening chapter, ‘Situating text messaging: what, who, how andwhy’, Tagg argues that the creativity and apparent informality of text messaging is built on a strong command of language andawareness of how language can be used. She identifies text messaging as a modern-day equivalent to telegrams and post-cards, “texting is one stage in a long line of developments which people have exploited in their desire and need tocommunicate” (p. 12).

Chapter 2, ‘A corpus of text messages’, provides extensive discussion on the difficulties of collecting and anonymizing acorpus of text messages. She acknowledges the highly ‘biased’ and localized nature of CorTxt, which is largely made up ofmessages sent between her friends and family; and she notes that her findings cannot be generalized upon: “this book mustbe seen as detailing the linguistic practices of a particular group of texters at a particular time”. She also acknowledges afurther limitation which I will return to below: her study did not collect any data explaining the reasons behind the waylanguage is used in texts.