Edited by Martin Bygate
[Task-Based Language Teaching 11] 2018
► pp. 255–278
Chapter 10Mediating input-based tasks for beginner learners through task repetition
A sociocultural perspective
This chapter examines task repetition from a sociocultural perspective. I will report a study examining how the dynamics of teacher-student interaction change when the same task is repeated over time. I draw on sociocultural theory by viewing task repetition as one way of dynamically mediating learners’ participation in an input-based task. The task was a listen-and-do task consisting of a simple procedure – the teacher’s commands followed by students’ action – with no requirement that the learners speak in the L2 (English). The same task was repeated nine times over five weeks. The participants were a group of six children, aged six, who had no L2 knowledge or experience of formal language learning. The lessons were audio- and video-recorded. The transcribed interactions and the video-data were analysed in detail to explore how the teacher’s scaffolding changed over time and how the students shifted from other-regulation to self-regulation. The analysis showed that the teacher employed two different approaches: mediating the task commands in the early lessons to assist the students’ comprehension and then pushing learners towards self-regulation in later lessons by reducing the level of support. The teacher’s actions led to co-construction and enabled the students to move from other-regulation to self-regulation in both comprehending key items in the input and voluntarily producing them. Overall, the study shows how the nature of ‘activity’ changed as the task-as-workplan was repeated over time.
Article outline
- Introduction
- Language development in sociocultural theory
- Regulation and internalization
- Zone of proximal development (ZPD)
- Activity theory
- The study
- Participants
- Teaching materials and procedures
- Data analysis
- Findings
- Mediating the learners’ completion of the task
- Teacher’s action 1: Comprehension strategies
- Teacher’s action 2: Elaborating a key word
- Teacher’s action 3: L1 use
- Pushing learners to self-regulate
- Encouraging students to request clarifications using adjectives
- Teacher’s action 2: Pushing students to comprehend the plural morpheme
- Teacher’s action 3: Encouraging the students to use the L2
- Conclusion
-
References
https://doi.org/10.1075/tblt.11.10shi
References
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 05 january 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.