Implementing an oral task in an EFL classroom with low proficient learners: a micro-evaluation
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Natsuko Shintani
,
Sora Shioji
Abstract
This study employed a micro-evaluation approach to investigate a task-based lesson in a Japanese secondary school with low-proficiency learners of English. A Japanese teacher implemented a task-based lesson in her four regular classes, which typically followed traditional teacher-centered instruction prior to the current investigation. The evaluation involved three components: response-based evaluation by examining language-related, meaning-related, and task-related episodes and their functions in the interactions; student-based evaluation through a questionnaire; and teacher-based evaluation via an interview. The results indicate that students valued the lesson, finding the task enjoyable and beneficial for their learning, though some found it challenging due to their limited proficiency. Students who viewed the task as an opportunity for communication in L2 tended to value the lesson, whereas those who saw the task as exercises for specific grammatical features felt otherwise. The teacher was surprised by how well her students communicated in English and expressed a desire to incorporate more tasks in the future. However, she also identified issues with the task materials and felt that pre-teaching vocabulary would have been necessary. Based on these findings, we propose several strategies to enhance the implementation of task-based lessons for young, low-proficiency students in Japan.
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Research ethics: The ethical review for this study was approved by the Faculty of Foreign Language Studies at Kansai University, where the researchers are affiliated.
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Author contributions: The authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.
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Conflict of interests: The authors state no conflict of interest.
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Research funding: None declared.
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Data availability: The raw data can be obtained on request from the corresponding author.
Appendix A: Handout for spot-the-difference task
Appendix B: The English translation of the interview protocols
Questions about her teaching experience
How many years have you taught English?
Have you used any tasks in your classroom? If so, what was your experience?
Questions about her regular teaching practice
What do you pay attention to in your regular classes?
What other activities do you do besides following the textbook?
Questions about her perceptions about conducting the task
How was the task today? Do you think it was successful or unsuccessful? In what ways?
Did you find any difficulties in implementing the task?
How did you see the students’ responses to the task?
Do you think you would use tasks in your class in the future? Why?
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Young L2 learners in diverse instructional contexts
- Research Articles
- Impact of post-task explicit instruction on the interaction among child EFL learners in online task-based reading lessons
- Can we train young EFL learners to ‘notice the gap’? Exploring the relationship between metalinguistic awareness, grammar learning and the use of metalinguistic explanations in a dictogloss task
- Exploring self-regulated learning behaviours of young second language learners during group work
- Developmental trajectories of discourse features by age and learning environment
- Implementing an oral task in an EFL classroom with low proficient learners: a micro-evaluation
- Exploring teacher-student interaction in task and non-task sequences
- Children learning Mongolian as an additional language through the implementation of a task-based approach
- “Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT”: inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation
- Regular Articles
- Defining competencies for training non-native Korean speaking teachers: a Q methodology approach
- A cross-modal analysis of lexical sophistication: EFL and ESL learners in written and spoken production
- Using sentence processing speed and automaticity to predict L2 performance in the productive and receptive tasks
- Distance-invoked difficulty as a trigger for errors in Chinese and Japanese EFL learners’ English writings
- Exploring Chinese university English writing teachers’ emotions in providing feedback on student writing
- General auditory processing, Mandarin L1 prosodic and phonological awareness, and English L2 word learning
- Why is L2 pragmatics still a neglected area in EFL teaching? Uncovered stories from Vietnamese EFL teachers
- Validation of metacognitive knowledge in vocabulary learning and its predictive effects on incidental vocabulary learning from reading
- Anxiety and enjoyment in oral presentations: a mixed-method study into Chinese EFL learners’ oral presentation performance
- The influence of language contact and ethnic identification on Chinese as a second language learners’ oral proficiency
- An idiodynamic study of the interconnectedness between cognitive and affective components underlying L2 willingness to communicate
- “I usually just rely on my intuition and go from there.” pedagogical rules and metalinguistic awareness of pre-service EFL teachers
- Development and validation of Questionnaire for Self-regulated Learning Writing Strategies (QSRLWS) for EFL learners
- Language transfer in tense acquisition: new evidence from English learning Chinese adolescents
- A systematic review of English-as-a-foreign-language vocabulary learning activities for primary school students
- Using automated indices of cohesion to explore the growth of cohesive features in L2 writing
- The impact of text-audio synchronized enhancement on collocation learning from reading-while-listening: an extended replication of Jung and Lee (2023)
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Young L2 learners in diverse instructional contexts
- Research Articles
- Impact of post-task explicit instruction on the interaction among child EFL learners in online task-based reading lessons
- Can we train young EFL learners to ‘notice the gap’? Exploring the relationship between metalinguistic awareness, grammar learning and the use of metalinguistic explanations in a dictogloss task
- Exploring self-regulated learning behaviours of young second language learners during group work
- Developmental trajectories of discourse features by age and learning environment
- Implementing an oral task in an EFL classroom with low proficient learners: a micro-evaluation
- Exploring teacher-student interaction in task and non-task sequences
- Children learning Mongolian as an additional language through the implementation of a task-based approach
- “Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT”: inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation
- Regular Articles
- Defining competencies for training non-native Korean speaking teachers: a Q methodology approach
- A cross-modal analysis of lexical sophistication: EFL and ESL learners in written and spoken production
- Using sentence processing speed and automaticity to predict L2 performance in the productive and receptive tasks
- Distance-invoked difficulty as a trigger for errors in Chinese and Japanese EFL learners’ English writings
- Exploring Chinese university English writing teachers’ emotions in providing feedback on student writing
- General auditory processing, Mandarin L1 prosodic and phonological awareness, and English L2 word learning
- Why is L2 pragmatics still a neglected area in EFL teaching? Uncovered stories from Vietnamese EFL teachers
- Validation of metacognitive knowledge in vocabulary learning and its predictive effects on incidental vocabulary learning from reading
- Anxiety and enjoyment in oral presentations: a mixed-method study into Chinese EFL learners’ oral presentation performance
- The influence of language contact and ethnic identification on Chinese as a second language learners’ oral proficiency
- An idiodynamic study of the interconnectedness between cognitive and affective components underlying L2 willingness to communicate
- “I usually just rely on my intuition and go from there.” pedagogical rules and metalinguistic awareness of pre-service EFL teachers
- Development and validation of Questionnaire for Self-regulated Learning Writing Strategies (QSRLWS) for EFL learners
- Language transfer in tense acquisition: new evidence from English learning Chinese adolescents
- A systematic review of English-as-a-foreign-language vocabulary learning activities for primary school students
- Using automated indices of cohesion to explore the growth of cohesive features in L2 writing
- The impact of text-audio synchronized enhancement on collocation learning from reading-while-listening: an extended replication of Jung and Lee (2023)
