Differential Effects of Task Types on Motivation and Speaking: The case of Iranian elementary EFL learners

Task-based language learning not only can help students process language which is being learned or recycled more naturally, but can it also enable teachers to see if students are developing the ability to communicate in an L2 situation. Accordingly, this study investigates the influence of communicative task types and their effects on the fluency and accuracy of Iranian elementary EFL learners’ oral production. For this purpose, 54 elementary EFL learners were selected in an English language institute in Tehran, randomly divided into two groups, males and females as experimental and one control group of mixed male and female participants. As the pretest and posttest, interviews were conducted to check the effect of the treatment within 12 sessions of the classes during a month and a half. Two tasks were carried out as the treatment: a decision-making and an information-exchange task. The control group was taught speaking through traditional techniques like matching or substitution drills and completing dialogues and sentences, while the experimental group participants experienced each sort of the treatment task in one of the two conditions: group work and pair work. In order to see the effect of the treatment on the participants’ motivation for learning a questionnaire was provided. And to see the effect of both variables independent t-test was run. Results show that both genders benefitted task-based learning either in pair or group work. However, Group oral presentation indicated the greatest influence on improving students’ speaking ability, as well as enhancing their motivation for learning

Keywords:

task , task type , group work , pair work , oral presentation , motivation