Exploring the benefits of task repetition and recycling for classroom language learning

Abstract

Task-based methodology is particularly suited to teaching languages for specific purposes, because of its affinity to behavioural objectives. Doubts have been expressed as to whether learners actually learn language through doing tasks, and if they do, exactly what they learn. This paper reports the preliminary results of an ongoing study of the benefits of building repetition into a communicative task in an English for Specific Purposes course. We compare the performances of two learners at markedly different levels of English proficiency and find that both benefited from the opportunity to recycle communicative content as they repeated complex tasks. This suggests that task repetition of the type reported here may be a useful pedagogic procedure and that the same task can help different learners develop different areas of their interlanguage. © 2000, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.