This article first appeared in TESOL Quarterly, Volume 51, Number 3, pgs. 716–727. Subscribers can access issues here. Only TESOL members may subscribe. To become a member of TESOL, please click here, and to purchase articles, please visit Wiley-Blackwell. © TESOL International Association.

TESOL Quarterly publishes brief commentaries on aspects of qualitative and quantitative research

Edited by Daniel O. Jackson Kanda University of International Studies Chiba, Japan Alfred Rue Burch Rice University Houston, Texas, United States

The social psychologist Kurt Lewin famously wrote, “There is nothing more practical than a good theory” (1952, p. 169). Task-based language teaching (TBLT) has strong links to practical activities in the real world, and TBLT theory and research contributes to pedagogical practice. However, the relationship between theory and practice is primarily one-way, according to Bygate (2016), who argues that TBLT theory is tested in practice more often than practice is shaped by the theory.

It is a different matter, however, if one focuses on TBLT research conducted in sociocultural theory (SCT). SCT addresses the relationship between theory and practice through praxis, the idea that theory guides practice and practice shapes theory (see Vygotsky, 1987). Praxis is central to a sociocultural approach to second language learning and teaching (Lantolf & Poehner, 2014; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006; van Compernolle, 2015), including research on tasks. In this article I look at how SCT contributes to TBLT through praxis.

In the first section of this article, I compare the practical relevance and psycholinguistic rationales underlying TBLT and SCT. I then provide a brief account of SCT that focuses on the core concepts of mediation and internalization. The rest of the article focuses on four contributions SCT research has made to TBLT that show how practice shapes theory. I conclude with the implications of praxis.

PRACTICAL RELEVANCE AND PSYCHOLINGUISTIC RATIONALES

Proponents of TBLT hold that tasks are pedagogically useful, practically relevant, and psycholinguistically valid. Perhaps no one has argued as strongly as Long (2015) that these qualities are related to a specific understanding of TBLT based on the cognitive-interactionist theory (CIT) of instructed second language acquisition. Long does not consider SCT to make much of a contribution because of its “nebulous core constructs” (p. 35). However, SCT concepts are researched using visible social processes and based on early neurological research that contributed to the development of modern psycholinguistics and neurolinguistics (Levelt, 2013). Arguably, acquisition, which Chomsky famously located in a black box, is no less nebulous than internalization.

In any case, an inclusive approach that acknowledges the research contributions of SCT reflects the views of other strong proponents of TBLT, which is evident in books by Ellis (2003), Samuda and Bygate (2008), and Van den Branden (2006). Research studies explicitly include both SCT and CIT concepts and methods (e.g., Foster & Ohta, 2005; Eckerth, 2008); many others draw on SCT methods, such as analyzing learner interactions for language-related episodes (Swain & Lapkin, 1998). Robinson's (2011) overview of task issues describes how internalization has made several contributions to task research. Another SCT contribution is its caution in attributing psycholinguistic validity to tasks themselves. Although tasks influence learner responses, their value is in the significance that learners find in them (Lantolf, 2011).

This article first appeared in TESOL Quarterly, 51, 716–727. For permission to use text from this article, please go to Wiley-Blackwell and click on "Request Permissions" under "Article Tools."
doi: 10.1002/tesq.390