Home “Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT”: inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation
Article
Licensed
Unlicensed Requires Authentication

“Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT”: inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation

  • Tasha Austin ORCID logo EMAIL logo , Aris Clemons ORCID logo and Melissa Baralt ORCID logo
Published/Copyright: April 8, 2025

Abstract

This paper presents a case study of a Black Spanish-language teacher and her 4th-grade students using Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) six years after a teacher-training program. We describe the program and the teacher’s understanding of tasks and TBLT. Using a bottom-up approach, we then explore the teacher and students’ implementation of TBLT six years later in a socioeconomically resilient 4th-grade classroom in Miami, Florida, where 95 % of the students are Black. Task-as-process was assessed with classroom observations, handouts, task outcomes, and interviews. Findings revealed that the teacher continued using TBLT, highlighting both its opportunities and challenges. Opportunities were driven by her beliefs, reliance on “Black students’ linguistic gifts,” and access to sample tasks. Challenges included time constraints, COVID-related logistics, and professional loneliness. Her innovative TBLT implementation was influenced by shared cultural artifacts considered “fun” to incorporate. Using Love’s framework of abolitionist teaching, we explore how the teacher and students resisted ideologies of culturelessness through Black cultural unity. Six years post-training, the teacher’s use of tasks and students’ success in TBLT were mediated by their shared Blackness. We conclude by arguing for more world language studies focusing on Black teachers and young learners as innovators in TBLT.


Corresponding author: Tasha Austin, Department of Learning and Instruction, University of Buffalo, 505 Baldy Hall, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA, E-mail:
Tasha Austin and Aris Clemons and Melissa Baralt contributed equally to this work.
  1. Research ethics: Not applicable.

  2. Author contributions: Tasha Austin and Aris Clemons and Melissa Baralt contributed equally to this work. The authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  3. Competing interests: The authors state no conflict of interest.

  4. Research funding: None declared.

  5. Data availability: Not applicable.

References

Anya, Uju. 2011. Connecting with communities of learners and speakers: Integrative ideals, experiences, and motivations of successful black second language learners. Foreign Language Annals 44(3). 441–466. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2011.01142.x.Search in Google Scholar

Anya, Uju. 2016. Racialized identities in second language learning: Speaking blackness in Brazil. Routledge.10.4324/9781315682280Search in Google Scholar

Anya, Uju. 2020. African Americans in world language study: The forged path and future directions. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 40. 97–112. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0267190520000070.Search in Google Scholar

Anya, Uju. 2021. Critical race pedagogy for more effective and inclusive world language teaching. Applied Linguistics 42(6). 1055–1069. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amab068.Search in Google Scholar

Anya, Uju & Linwood J. Randolph Jr. 2019. Diversifying language educators and learners. The Language Educator 14(4). 23–27.Search in Google Scholar

Austin, Tasha. 2022. Linguistic imperialism: Countering anti Black racism in world language teacher preparation. Journal for Multicultural Education 16(3). 246–258.10.1108/JME-12-2021-0234Search in Google Scholar

Austin, Tasha. 2023. Limited capital: A genealogy of culturelessness in (language) teacher education. Educational Linguistics 2(2). 145–167.10.1515/eduling-2023-0008Search in Google Scholar

Austin, Tasha & Uju Anya. 2024. World languages for Black linguistic reparations. Foreign Language Annals 57(2). 288–310.10.1111/flan.12756Search in Google Scholar

Barac, Raluca & Ellen Bialystok. 2012. Bilingual effects on cognitive and linguistic development: Role of language, cultural background, and education. Child Development 83. 413–422. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8624.2011.01707.x.Search in Google Scholar

Baralt, Melissa. 2018. Becoming a task-based teacher educator: A case study. In Martin Bygate, Virginia Samuda & Kris Van den Branden (eds.), TBLT as a researched pedagogy, 265–286. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tblt.12.11barSearch in Google Scholar

Baralt, Melissa, Shayl Griffith, Lori K. Hanson, Nicholas André, Lisa Blair & Daniel M. Bagner. 2024. How family needs informed an early literacy family reading program in multilingual and multicultural Miami-Dade County. Journal of Early Childhood Literacy 24. 723–755. https://doi.org/10.1177/14687984221093242.Search in Google Scholar

Blanton, Andrea, G. Sue Kasun, James A. Gambrell & Zurisaray Espinosa. 2021. A Black mother’s counterstory to the Brown–White binary in dual language education: Toward disrupting dual language as White property. Language Policy 20. 463–487. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10993-021-09582-4.Search in Google Scholar

Blazar, David. 2022. How and why do black teachers benefit students? An experimental analysis of causal mediation.Search in Google Scholar

Brigman, S. Leellen & Lucy Cheser Jacobs. 1981. Participation and success of minority students in university foreign language programs. The Modern Language Journal 65. 371–376. https://doi.org/10.2307/327376.Search in Google Scholar

Bryfonski, Lara & Todd H. McKay. 2019. TBLT implementation and evaluation: A meta-analysis. Language Teaching Research 23. 603–632. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168817744389.Search in Google Scholar

Bygate, Martin. 2020. Some directions for the possible survival of TBLT as a real world project. Language Teaching 53. 275–288. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444820000014.Search in Google Scholar

Bygate, Martin, Peter Skehan & Merrill Swain. 2001. Researching pedagogic tasks: Second language learning, teaching, and testing. Longman.Search in Google Scholar

Van den Branden, Kris, Martin Bygate & John M. Norris. 2009. Task-based language teaching: A reader. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tblt.1Search in Google Scholar

Cervantes-Soon, Claudia G., Enrique David Degollado & Idalia Nuñez. 2021. The Black and Brown search for agency: African American and Latinx children’s plight to bilingualism in a two-way dual language program. In N. Flores, A. Tseng & N. Subtirelu (eds.), Bilingualism for all? Raciolinguistic perspectives on dual language education in the United States, 199–219. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.10.2307/jj.22730640.13Search in Google Scholar

Charle Poza, María Isabel. 2013. The beliefs of African American students about foreign language learning. NECTFL Review 72. 61–77.Search in Google Scholar

Choi, Ji Young, Shinyoung Jeon & Christine Lippard. 2018. Dual language learning, inhibitory control, and math achievement in Head Start and kindergarten. Early Childhood Research Quarterly 42. 66–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2017.09.001.Search in Google Scholar

Clemons, Aris. 2021. Spanish people be like: Dominican ethno-raciolinguistic stancetaking and the construction of Black Latinidades in the United States. Austin: The University of Texas at Austin Dissertation.Search in Google Scholar

Clemons, Aris. 2022. Benefits vs. burden: A raciolinguistic analysis of world language missions statements and testimonios of bilingualism in the United States. Journal of Postcolonial Linguistics 6. 69–91.Search in Google Scholar

Clemons, Tasha Austin. 2024. Soy porque somos: Black Spanish teachers developing hemispheric Black language pedagogies. Critical Multilingualism Studies 11(2). 52–77.Search in Google Scholar

Clemons, Aris, Uju Anya, Déborah Gomez & Melissa Baralt. in press. A needs analysis to develop TBLT curricula for Black Spanish language learners. In Aleksandra Malicka & Roger Gilabert Guerrero (eds.), From task-based needs analysis to task and syllabus design: Insights from across educational contexts. Amsterdam: Johns Benjamins.Search in Google Scholar

Davis, James J. 1992. African American students and foreign language learning. ERIC Digest EDOFL-91-08.Search in Google Scholar

Davis, James J. & Paul L. Markham. 1991. Student attitudes toward foreign language study at historically and predominantly black institutions. Foreign Language Annals 24. 227–237. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.1991.tb00467.x.Search in Google Scholar

Diop, Cheikh Anta. 1978. The cultural unity of Black Africa. Third World Press.Search in Google Scholar

Dunn, Damaris C., Alex Chisholm, Elizabeth Spaulding & Bettina L. Love. 2023. A radical doctrine: Abolitionist education in hard times. In The critical pedagogy reader, 617–628. Routledge.10.4324/9781003286080-49Search in Google Scholar

East, Martin. 2012. Task-based language teaching from the teachers’ perspective: Insight from New Zealand. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tblt.3Search in Google Scholar

Elissondo, Guillermina. 2001. ‘Representing Latino/a culture in introductory Spanish textbooks,’ ERIC Document ED478020.Search in Google Scholar

Ellis, Rod. 2003. Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Ellis, Rod. 2009. Task-based language teaching: Sorting out the misunderstandings. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 19. 221–246. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2009.00231.x.Search in Google Scholar

Erlam, Rosemary & Constanza Tolosa. 2022. Pedagogical realities of implementing task-based language teaching. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tblt.14Search in Google Scholar

Flores, Nelson, Amelia Tseng & Nicholas Subtirelu. 2021. Bilingualism for all or just for the rich and white? Introducing a raciolinguistic perspective to dual language education. In N. Flores, A. Tseng & N. Subtirelu (eds.), Bilingualism for all? Raciolinguistic perspectives on dual language education in the United States, 1–18. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.10.2307/jj.22730640.4Search in Google Scholar

Fox, Rebecca, Olga Corretjer & Kelley Webb. 2019. Benefits of foreign language learning and bilingualism: An analysis of published empirical research 2012-2019. Foreign Language Annals 52. 699–726. https://doi.org/10.1111/flan.12424.Search in Google Scholar

French, Howard W. 2021. Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the making of the modern world, 1471 to the Second World War, 1st edn. Liveright Publishing.Search in Google Scholar

García Mayo, María del Pilar & Maria Luisa Garcia Lecumberri. 2003. Age and the acquisition of English as a foreign language. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.10.21832/9781853596407Search in Google Scholar

Gatlin, Nicholas Sherrod. 2013. Don’t forget about us: African-American college students’ newfound perspectives on foreign language motivation, foreign language anxiety, and beliefs about foreign language learning (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Texas, Austin, TX.Search in Google Scholar

Gershenson, Seth, Stephen B. Holt & Nicholas W. Papageorge. 2016. Who believes in me? The effect of student–teacher demographic match on teacher expectations. Economics of Education Review 52. 209–224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2016.03.002.Search in Google Scholar

Gershenson, Seth, Cassandra M. D. Hart, Constance A. Lindsay & Nicholas W. Papageorge. 2017. The long-run impacts of same-race teachers (IZA Discussion Paper No. 10630).10.2139/ssrn.2940620Search in Google Scholar

Glynn, Cassandra & Beth Wassell. 2018. Who gets to play? Issues of access and social justice in world language study in the US. Dimension 18. 32.Search in Google Scholar

hooks, bell. 2014. Teaching to transgress. Routledge.10.4324/9780203700280Search in Google Scholar

Keck, Casey, Gina Iberri-Shea, Nicole Tracy-Ventura & Safary Wa-Mbaleka. 2006. Investigating the empirical link between interaction and acquisition: A quantitative meta-analysis. In L. Ortega & J. Norris (eds.), Synthesizing research on language learning and teaching, 91–131. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/lllt.13.08kecSearch in Google Scholar

King, Kendall & Alison Mackey. 2007. The bilingual edge: How, when and why to teach your child a second language. New York: Harper Collins.Search in Google Scholar

Kubanyiova, Magdalena. 2012. Teacher development in action: Understanding language teachers’ conceptual change. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Search in Google Scholar

Long, Mike H. 2015. Second language acquisition and task-based language teaching. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Loughran, John J. 2010. What expert teachers do: Teachers’ professional knowledge of classroom practice. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Love, Bettina. 2019. We Want to do more than survive: Abolitionist teaching and the pursuit of educational freedom. Kindle Edition. Beacon Press.Search in Google Scholar

Love, Bettina L. 2023. Punished for dreaming: How school reform harms Black children and how we heal. St. Martin’s Press.Search in Google Scholar

Mackey, Alison & Jaemyung Goo. 2007. Interaction research in SLA: A meta-analysis and research synthesis. In A. Mackey (ed.), Conversational interaction in SLA: A collection of empirical studies, 408–452. New York: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Met, Myriam. 1991. Elementary school foreign languages: What research can and cannot tell us. In E. S. Silber (ed.), Critical issues in foreign language instruction, 63–79. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc.Search in Google Scholar

Moore, Zena. 2005. African American students’ opinions about foreign language study: An exploratory study of low enrollments at the college level. Foreign Language Annals 38. 191–200. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1944-9720.2005.tb02484.x.Search in Google Scholar

National Center for Education Statistics. n.d. Percentage of public school teachers of grades 9 through 12, by field of main teaching assignment and selected demographic and educational characteristics: School year 2020-21. Available at: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d22/tables/dt22_209.50.asp.Search in Google Scholar

Nunan, David. 2004. Task-based language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511667336Search in Google Scholar

Oliver, Rhonda. 1998. Negotiation of meaning in child interactions. The Modern Language Journal 82. 372–386. https://doi.org/10.2307/329962.Search in Google Scholar

Philp, Jenefer, Rhonda Oliver & Alison Mackey (eds.). 2008. Second language acquisition and the young learner: Child’s play? Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/lllt.23Search in Google Scholar

Pratt, Comfort. 2012. Are African American high school students less motivated to learn Spanish than other ethnic groups? Hispania 95. 116–134. https://doi.org/10.1353/hpn.2012.a469670.Search in Google Scholar

Privette, Chelsea & Karina R. Saechao. 2024. Black languaging IS translanguaging: We not just talkin bout it, we bout it bout it!. Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups. 1–10.10.1044/2024_PERSP-23-00297Search in Google Scholar

Padilla, Lillie. 2024. Creating visibility through curriculum: Representing Afro-Latinx in Spanish Language Teaching. In Representation, inclusion and social justice in world language teaching, 85–101. Routledge.10.4324/9781003361787-7Search in Google Scholar

Padilla, Lillie V. & Rosti Vana. 2019. Ideologies in the foreign language curriculum: Insights from textbooks and instructor interviews. Language Awareness 28(1). 15–30. https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2019.1590376.Search in Google Scholar

Randolph, Linwood J. & Aris Clemons. 2024. Black languaging as antiracist pedagogy in the world language classroom. Representation, inclusion and social justice in world language teaching, 122–142. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9781003361787-9Search in Google Scholar

Robinson, Cedric J. 2000. Black Marxism: The making of the black radical tradition, 2nd edn. UNC Press.Search in Google Scholar

Rosa, Jonathan & Nelson Flores. 2017. Unsettling race and language: Toward a raciolinguistic perspective. Language in Society 46(5). 621–647. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404517000562.Search in Google Scholar

Samuda, Virginia. 2015. Tasks, design, and the architecture of pedagogical spaces. In M. Bygate (ed.), Domains and directions in the development of TBLT: A decade of plenaries from the international conference, 217–301. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tblt.8.10samSearch in Google Scholar

Samuda, Virginia & Martin Bygate. 2008. Tasks in second language learning. Basingstoke: Palgrave.10.1057/9780230596429Search in Google Scholar

Samuda, Virginia, Kris Van den Branden & Martin Bygate. 2018. TBLT as a researched pedagogy. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tblt.12Search in Google Scholar

Samuels, Tristan. 2021. Translation as a cultural act: An Africological analysis of medew netcher from a Jamaican perspective. Temple University.Search in Google Scholar

Seedhouse, Paul & Saad Almutairi. 2009. A holistic approach to task-based interaction. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 19. 311–338. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1473-4192.2009.00243.x.Search in Google Scholar

Shintani, Natsuko. 2018. Researching TBLT for young, beginner learners in Japan. In M. Bygate, V. Samuda & K. Van den Branden (eds.), TBLT as a researched pedagogy, 199–212. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/tblt.12.08shiSearch in Google Scholar

Smith, Ernie. 1998. What is Black English? What is Ebonics. In The real Ebonics debate: Power, language, and the education of African-American children, 49–58.10.2307/jj.27710950.8Search in Google Scholar

Smitherman, Geneva. 1986. Talkin and testifyin: The language of Black America, vol. 51. Wayne State University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Stewart, Janice H. 2005. Foreign language study in elementary schools: Benefits and implications for achievement in reading and math. Early Childhood Education Journal 33. 11–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-005-0015-5.Search in Google Scholar

Tom, Alan. 1997. Redesigning teacher education. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.Search in Google Scholar

Turner, Lorenzo D. 1949. Africanisms in the Gullah dialect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar

Weheliye, Alexander. 2000. In the mix: Hearing the souls of Black folk. Amerikastudien/American Studies 45. 535–554.Search in Google Scholar

Willis, Dave & Jane Willis. 2007. Doing task-based teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Woodson, Carter G. 1933. The mis-education of the Negro. The Associated Publishers.Search in Google Scholar

Wynter, Sylvia. 1976. Ethno or socio poetics. Alcheringa: Ethnopoetics 2. 78–94.Search in Google Scholar

Wynter, Sylvia. 2003. Unsettling the coloniality of being/power/truth/freedom: Towards the human, after man, its overrepresentation – an argument. CR: The New Centennial Review 3(3). 257–337. https://doi.org/10.1353/ncr.2004.0015.Search in Google Scholar

Zeichner, Ken. 2005. Becoming a teacher educator: A personal perspective. Teaching and Teacher Education 21. 117–124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2004.12.001.Search in Google Scholar

Received: 2024-07-29
Accepted: 2025-02-28
Published Online: 2025-04-08
Published in Print: 2025-09-25

© 2025 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Editorial
  3. Young L2 learners in diverse instructional contexts
  4. Research Articles
  5. Impact of post-task explicit instruction on the interaction among child EFL learners in online task-based reading lessons
  6. 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
  7. Exploring self-regulated learning behaviours of young second language learners during group work
  8. Developmental trajectories of discourse features by age and learning environment
  9. Implementing an oral task in an EFL classroom with low proficient learners: a micro-evaluation
  10. Exploring teacher-student interaction in task and non-task sequences
  11. Children learning Mongolian as an additional language through the implementation of a task-based approach
  12. “Black children are gifted at learning languages – that’s why I could do TBLT”: inclusive Blackness as a pathway for TBLT innovation
  13. Regular Articles
  14. Defining competencies for training non-native Korean speaking teachers: a Q methodology approach
  15. A cross-modal analysis of lexical sophistication: EFL and ESL learners in written and spoken production
  16. Using sentence processing speed and automaticity to predict L2 performance in the productive and receptive tasks
  17. Distance-invoked difficulty as a trigger for errors in Chinese and Japanese EFL learners’ English writings
  18. Exploring Chinese university English writing teachers’ emotions in providing feedback on student writing
  19. General auditory processing, Mandarin L1 prosodic and phonological awareness, and English L2 word learning
  20. Why is L2 pragmatics still a neglected area in EFL teaching? Uncovered stories from Vietnamese EFL teachers
  21. Validation of metacognitive knowledge in vocabulary learning and its predictive effects on incidental vocabulary learning from reading
  22. Anxiety and enjoyment in oral presentations: a mixed-method study into Chinese EFL learners’ oral presentation performance
  23. The influence of language contact and ethnic identification on Chinese as a second language learners’ oral proficiency
  24. An idiodynamic study of the interconnectedness between cognitive and affective components underlying L2 willingness to communicate
  25. “I usually just rely on my intuition and go from there.” pedagogical rules and metalinguistic awareness of pre-service EFL teachers
  26. Development and validation of Questionnaire for Self-regulated Learning Writing Strategies (QSRLWS) for EFL learners
  27. Language transfer in tense acquisition: new evidence from English learning Chinese adolescents
  28. A systematic review of English-as-a-foreign-language vocabulary learning activities for primary school students
  29. Using automated indices of cohesion to explore the growth of cohesive features in L2 writing
  30. The impact of text-audio synchronized enhancement on collocation learning from reading-while-listening: an extended replication of Jung and Lee (2023)
Downloaded on 20.11.2025 from https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/iral-2024-0225/html
Scroll to top button