Tracking Immanent Language Learning Behavior Over Time in Task-Based Classroom Work

• Published in: TESOL quarterly 2017-09, Vol.51 (3), p.507
• Main Authors: Kunitz, Silvia, Marian, Klara Skogmyr
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Assignments; English (Second Language); Foreign Countries; Junior High School Students; Logical Thinking; Longitudinal Studies; Planning; Second Language Instruction; Social Behavior; Spelling; Student Behavior; Teaching Methods
• ISSN: 0039-8322
• DOI: 10.1002/tesq.389/full

In this study, the authors explore how classroom tasks that are commonly used in task-based language teaching (TBLT) are achieved as observable aspects of "local educational order" (Hester & Francis, 2000) through observable and immanently social classroom behaviors. They focus specifically on students' language learning behaviors, which they track through the longitudinal conversation-analytic methodology called learning behavior tracking (LBT) (Markee, 2008). From a theoretical point of view, they situate LBT within the ethnomethodological (EM) perspective on social action pioneered by Garfinkel (1967) and relate it to socially defined ways of understanding planning (Burch, 2014; Markee & Kunitz, 2013). In the empirical part of the article, the researchers analyze TBLT work that was conducted in an English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom in a Swedish junior high school. Specifically, they track the occurrences of a learnable (the spelling of the word disgusting) that was emically oriented to as such by the students as they engaged in planning and accomplishing teacher-assigned tasks. The authors then develop an emic, sequential account of the participants' practical reasoning and dynamically evolving epistemic positions. They argue that this kind of basic empirical research refines our understanding of how TBLT curriculum work is achieved by participants as practical, mundane, and observable activities in language classrooms, and that these insights may feed into more applied research on teacher training, thereby fostering the design of instructional innovations.