New website TBLT

From august 2018 onwards TBLT will use a new website: https://www.iatblt.org/.

Impressions of the Barcelona Conference

Missed our Barcelona conference? Have a look at our Facebook page

Conference Plenary Presentations

Our Conference Plenary presentations will be made available to our members via a Shared Google folder. Keep an eye for an email message inviting you to view the folder. For Prof. Norris' presentation, please send him an email to jnorris@ets.org

Winners TBLT Research Article Award 2017 and Distinguished Achievement Awards 2017

The Executive Board of the International Association for Task-based Language Teaching is pleased to announce that the 2017 Research Article Award has been granted to:

• Revesz, A., Ekiert, M., & Torgersen, E. (2016). The effects of complexity, accuracy and fluency on communicative adequacy in oral task performance. Applied Linguistics, 37/6, 828-848.

This article was praised by the reviewers for making a major contribution to the field because it addresses a significant issue in the field, i.e. the relationship between communicative adequacy and CALF, and provides robust evidence that supports usefulness of the CALF measures. The reviewers pointed out that the article addresses a crucial gap in our research field: the measurement of communicative adequacy in oral performance. It is superior in originality of the topic and the importance of moving the micro-level of task complexity studies to a larger construct of communicative adequacy. The findings are most relevant to pedagogy and real-world classroom and the development of learners’ communicative ability.

The Executive Board of the International Association for Task-based Language Teaching vzw is equally pleased to announce that a TBLT Distinguished Achievement Award has been granted to two eminent scholars who have made crucial and complementary contributions to the TBLT field: Michael Long and Peter Skehan.

• Michael Long is among the most important figures in the field of second language acquisition (SLA) and one of the first to bring both research and pedagogical attention to tasks in the context of SLA. He has made unmatched contributions with his pioneer and foundational work to the emergence of the notion of tasks as a central element of language education and SLA, making of TBLT a coherent research domain and educational practice. His seminal work on interaction gave rise to the Interaction Hypothesis which has generated hundreds of studies in the last three decades. Among several others, concepts such as needs analysis or focus-on-form which are now an integral part of our TBLT landscape, were conceptualized by Mike Long. His scholarly work has been recognized with multiple awards including a Doctorate Honoris Causa from Stockholm University. He has influenced and generously mentored many of the scholars working on the field of TBLT and continues to be an active member of the TBLT community, pushing the field forward, as demonstrated by his continuous formal and informal supervision of TBLT studies in all kinds of contexts and at all levels, his many plenary talks and workshops all over the world, his dissemination of TBLT ideas through key publications in our field and recent proposal with John Norris for the creation of a collaborative research network to investigate task complexity.

• Peter Skehan's contribution to the field since the early 90s has made him one of the key scholars in TBLT, from the time of his work in Hong Kong, to his continued impact on the field while based in UK.  His Limited attentional capacity model (Skehan 1998-2009) has been a leading model not only for evaluating task complexity, but for examining and understanding language processing and the demands associated with it. His conceptualisation and definition of task, his framework for operationalising and assessing task complexity and his papers on modelling performance have all made an outstanding and extremely impactful contribution to the field of TBLT.  Peter Skehan has mentored and encouraged hundreds of students to adopt task and TBLT as their research focus and to join TBLT.  Many of his PhD students are now established researchers and scholars in the field of TBLT. Peter continues to play an active role in the UK to inspire future researchers and support impact of TBLT research through BAAL LLT SIG meetings, L-SLARF meetings and other public engagements, to serve the TBLT community, as well as raising awareness of TBLT on the global stage and inspire TBLT-led teachers in the future. His most recent contribution is helping establish London Second Language Acquisition Forum (L-SLARF) which brings together researchers and PG students from the UK.