Exploring The Complexity Of Classroom Tasks For Language Learning

In task-based language teaching (TBLT), defining and manipulating the complexity of language tasks has been claimed to be of crucial importance, in view of sequencing tasks in a task-based syllabus, manipulating tasks to meet specific learners' needs, and assessing language learners' current level of language proficiency. The theoretical literature and empirical research on task complexity has recendy expanded, but much of this work fails to take into account the multiple dimensions that affect task complexity. For one, in authentic, truly functional task performance, key features of the social setting in which tasks are performed, and interlocutor-dependent variables (such as their shared knowledge and experiences) influence actual task complexity. Since in real life interlocutors reinterpret tasks to suit their own needs, motivations and purposes, and dynamically tune the complexity of their performance to the ongoing conversation and negotiation process, predictions about task complexity cannot be as accurate as some applied linguists claim they should be.

Published online: 24 March 2014
https://doi.org/10.1075/ttwia.80.05bra