Innovation in Language Learning

Over the past decades, there has been a plethora of attempt to find out the role of the task in second and foreign language teaching and learning. Task-based language teaching takes task as its unit of analysis and emphasizes the creation of meaning without any prior prescription of forms. Therefore, learners are free to use any strategies or forms to perform the task and achieve the task goal. Several studies have been done on the issues of task-based language teaching, task and its different features. However, the issue of the effects of generic features of task on L2 learners’ task performance has not been well-attended in the literature of TBLT. As a result, this study aims to explore the impacts of generic features of task on L2 learners’ written task in terms of accuracy between advanced and intermediate male learners. To achieve this goal, 20 intermediate and 20 advanced learners in an English Institute were selected as the participants of the study. They were given two tasks with two different generic features namely descriptive and narrative to elicit their written task performance. Then the written productions were quantified and measured by the measure introduced by Ellis. The results of the study showed that there were significant differences between the performances of both intermediate and advanced male learners in descriptive and narrative tasks. The results of this study can be useful for language teachers, task designers, and the researchers in the field of task-based language teaching and learning.

Key words: descriptive task, narrative task, generic features of task, accuracy, proficiency level