Classroom Learning, Teaching, and Research: A Task‐Based Perspective

Abstract

In an increasing number of second language (L2) classrooms, teachers and researchers are taking on new roles and responsibilities. From these new perspectives, they are developing similar concerns about L2 learning processes, which they typically express in ways that reflect their different backgrounds and goals. To support learning, teaching, and research in the L2 classroom, researchers and teachers have attempted to develop activities that both address their concerns and accommodate their differences on a long‐term basis. This article reflects my participation as a researcher in this context and presents the ways in which the teachers and students with whom I have worked have turned to information gap tasks to serve many of our needs. The first part of the article describes the contributions of information gap tasks as seen from our learning, teaching, and research perspectives. The second part describes the issues and challenges we have faced in integrating and implementing them. Then the third part presents an approach that we have developed for designing information gap tasks both as authentic activities for teaching and learning and as reliable instruments for research. Examples of our tasks are provided, together with excerpts from the discourse of their classroom implementation. These excerpts reveal the effectiveness of the tasks in drawing students' attention to form, function, and meaning in ways that we considered vital to students' L2 learning.