This chapter considers how an “internal dimension of tasks” can both shed new light on the relationship between task interpretation, task performance, and learning outcomes, and advance the research agenda on task learning with worthwhile new empirical questions. Building on an expanded notion of the construct of task and the premise that language learning through task is closely linked to the problem-solving activity learners engage in while they are composing, the chapter explores the nature of learner agency in this problem-solving activity and hence the close connection between learners’ own perceptions of task demands, goals, and expected outcomes, and their processing activity during task execution. The chapter claims that TBLT-based understandings of the interplay between task factors and learner factors can benefit from incorporating insights derived from the cognitively-oriented L2 writing theoretical and empirical literature. This should facilitate the quest for answers to theoretically and pedagogically relevant empirical questions on task learning in general.
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