Analysis

From a genre-analytic standpoint, Lizzie and her partner’s performance was highly complex in its structure and in the multiple social roles it involved: the target genre was a

proceduraldemonstration, embedded in a dialogue between an expert and a learner, who are at

the same time guest and host of a TV program, for the benefit of an audience of classmates. Lizzie and Marie deftly coordinated the multiple roles of this complex performance, addressing their audience in the opening and closing sequences (turns 1-4, 33-36), and in their dialogic interactions clearly projecting the roles of learner host and expert guest (e.g., turns 7-10). Besides establishing the construct validity of Meg’s classroom activity as constituting genred task

instruction, the generic complexity of the performance Lizzie and Marie have just pulled off speaks to the cognitive engagement (Philp & Duchesne, 2016)it has involved.

Lizzie and her partner had scripted the program and rehearsed it, as she told me in an interview, ten times on the morning of this performance. They had worked together to script the program and practiced it several times previously to this, a fact which accounts for the fluency of their demonstration (here referring to their performance of it virtually without unplanned

pauses). During these rehearsals, some of which had taken place during class time, Lizzie had consulted Meg on the accuracy of her language. Such intensive behavioral engagement

(“described simply in terms of time on task or participation,” Philps and Duchesne, 2016, p. 55), beyond the requirements of Meg’s course, indicates the potential of GTI approaches to elicit sustained “effort, persistence, and active involvement” (p. 55) in English learning. All of these attitudes are clearly linked to language development, as Schmitt (2008, 2010) observes.

Besides being cognitively and behaviorally engaging, this genred task activity was a highly positive experience affectively for Lizzie. As she had stated before, Lizzie appreciated the

opportunities Meg gave her to “improve herself.” She returned to this theme when I asked her about the cooking program during a subsequent interview:

I think it’s a chance. It’s a chance for us to practice ourself. It’s also ... you can get some cooking skills. You really can get! And you can study from your classmates, and do some easily cooking, you can do it by yourself, you can try it! You not only study English, ... you improved another skills! Really.

Clearly, Lizzie’s enthusiastic response to the cooking demonstration task indicates another potential advantage of GTI: its capacity for increasing emotional engagement, described as “motivated involvement during learning activities” displayed in “enthusiasm, interest, and enjoyment” (p. 56). My observation of Lizzie’s presentation indicated that the activity succeeded in engaging not only her, but the entire class affectively—that is, by appealing in particular to their sense of humor, the genred task activity maintained students’ attention (behavioral engagement) and thus enhanced their opportunity for learning (see turns 17 and 31).

Questionnaire data collected in classes A (n=12) and B (n=10) confirms and extends this observation, uncovering the social values students’ evident emotional and behavioral

engagement may be tied to. Four questionnaire items gauged students’ perceptions of the value of tasks vis-à-vis traditional lecture methodology. Item 18, for instance, read as follows:

Some teachers prefer to lecture at the front of the classroom, while others prefer to use some tasks to help students learn English. For example, the teacher might ask students to order at a restaurant, or decide in a group which movie they want to watch. Which do you think is more useful for your English proficiency, lecturing or these kinds of tasks? Or do you think a combination of the two is most useful? Why? (

)

Results from Meg’s students on these four items are summarized in Table 3, below. Table 4.2

Meg’s students on the value of tasks

Questionnaire item Combine tasks & lecture Tasks only Lecture only No response 18 More useful for

English proficiency 31 2 1 1

19 More interesting 18 7 1 0

20 More useful for

passing exams 20 0 15 0

The table above shows that nearly all students in Meg’s classes who completed questionnaires preferred task-supported (i.e., combined task and lecture) or task-based (tasks only) approaches for 1) these approaches’ perceived benefits for proficiency and 2) their intrinsic interest. Surprisingly, even for purposes of test preparation, a majority of students still preferred a combination of tasks and lecture methods to an exclusively lecture-based approach.

In open-ended questionnaire responses, students gave a variety of reasons for preferring task-supported or task-based approaches, most to do with positive affect or the enhancement of practical ability. Lizzie wrote, “Lecturing gives a good teaching atmosphere so we can learn comprehensive knowledge. However, on other occasions, [tasks] can cultivate our interest in learning, and it's more fun; ... we can experience genuine situations or language settings” (translated from Chinese). Whereas lecture was better for exams, Lizzie thought, (“because we

have to learn the skills to pass the exams,” emphasis added), it was also unengaging: “Our

classrooms are mostly lecture-based, so it's unavoidable that our classrooms are boring.” Another student in class B agreed: “It's so boring that a teacher speaks all the time. Often students can't stand this kind of way to learn.” A student in class A said, “I think to combine both of [these methods] would be more effective, because lecturing is boring, and too many tasks would make students feel too stressed, so if we can combine both of them, that would be good for both instructors and students.”

In their responses, many students approved of task-supported teaching because of its balance of theoretical and practical knowledge, or its ability to help students consolidate

knowledge through practice. “Tasks can help us to practice and to apply what we learned in the classroom,” said one student. “I want not only the strict and rigorous atmosphere of lecturing, but also the vividness and activeness with TBLT,” said another. The student continued: “I think both these methods would help us to learn more knowledge that would be applicable, ... not limited to the content of textbooks.” Yet another student said, “If we learn both [i.e., learn via both lecture and tasks], we can know a lot of things about society, and after graduation, we can easily accommodate to new lifestyle.” These and many similar statements harmonize with those of Lizzie in her interviews, when she expressed the desire to grow personally and to “get new things” through her study of English: “I ... just want to improve myself, and let myself know more, and I can be capable of doing some things.” By leveraging this preference for expanded capacity—appealing to students’ desires to expand their symbolic capital (cf. Norton & Gao, 2008)—the GTI enacted in Meg’s classroom succeeded in securing their emotional engagement, and thus expanding their opportunities for acquiring language.

performance, this time in a contrastive way, by comparing genred tasks at higher and lower proficiency levels. Both tasks are embedded within a lesson on news and current events.

4.4 Genred Task Performance 2: Picture Narration