The research context

The research took place in a large public sector postsecondary provincial college in Canada. The college has a number of campus locations in different urban centres, all of which have multicultural populations. The population of each campus has a significant number of international students and recent immigrants to Canada. The college has a well-established ESL programme, which has been in place for over thirty years. Since its inception as a language settlement programme that was initially mainly aimed at supporting immigrant newcomers to Canada, the programme has undergone several

transformations. Around a decade ago, it diverted from its status as a government- funded settlement programme to become a credit-bearing programme aimed predominantly at preparing international students and Canadian citizens (in the institution) that are non-native speakers of English, for postsecondary academic study. Since this change, the programme has shifted from a single campus location to a three- campus context across three major urban centres. This expansion has been accompanied by a large growth in the numbers of international students. This geographical spread and programme population increase have coincided with the global escalation in the use of technology in language education.

Regarding delivery methods, the programme has increasingly moved towards a greater inclusion of technological features and support structures. A decade ago, the programme was primarily situated in classrooms with little access to technology or the Internet. A few hours per week of guided study took place in computer laboratories, where students tended to focus on receptive skills, grammar practice and lexical activities by using dedicated software packages. Currently, the programme includes courses that are delivered either in classroom, blended or fully online formats. Depending on the course delivered, teachers require varying levels of technological expertise, although all teachers in the institution are required to meet the criteria for minimal LMS presence for each course taught. Logically, courses delivered in blended and online formats require a greater degree of online presence and preferably expertise.

In terms of programme format, there are five levels of English language ability. Each one consists of three or four language-based courses, most of which have an associated computer laboratory class or online component. The fifth and final level, English for

Academic Purposes (EAP), acts as a bridging level before students graduate from the ESL programme into a regular postsecondary programme in their chosen discipline. One of the EAP courses is a General Arts and Science elective course that has no taught language content and in which ESL students join with native speaker students with the objective of further preparing ESL students for academic life after their English programme.

With reference to teacher expertise, all ESL teachers in the institution are required to have provincial accreditation and several years of teaching experience. Recently, any newly hired teachers are now required to have a master’s degree in an appropriate area such as Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) or Applied Linguistics. Once hired, teachers may be asked to provide instruction at five different levels of language proficiency and to deliver courses that may focus on any of the four language skills (i.e. listening, speaking, reading and writing) and on any language system area (e.g. grammar, vocabulary and phonology/pronunciation).

A further area of teacher expertise relates to the institutional ESL curriculum, which is largely based on the CLB: a “descriptive scale of language ability” (CLB, p. 11) across twelve benchmarks ranging from basic to advanced, with the very highest levels indicating proficiency in high-stakes or professionally demanding contexts. The CLB performance descriptors are task-based, meaning that they mainly focus on the ability of the language user to complete communicative tasks that have real-world application. In other words, the descriptors of the CLB do not specifically target the usage of designated grammatical, lexical or phonological forms or features.

Given the underlying principles of the CLB, it can be argued that, from a teaching perspective, a CLB-based curriculum, such as the one in this institution, would align well with a TBLT approach. For example, the CLB descriptors of proficiency in the four skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing are evaluated according to learner performance in “communication tasks learners will likely encounter in the real world” (CLB, 2012, p. 16). A further example concerns sociolinguistic knowledge, which underpins the concept of viewing linguistic ability in terms of how learners negotiate meaning in communicative transactions in order to complete objectives with real-world relevance (CLB, 2012).

Regarding teacher expertise in this research context, although the CLB document and the institutional ESL curriculum do not advocate or prescribe any particular language teaching approach or methodology, there are obvious affiliative links with the TBLT approach. These curricular links with TBLT mean that teachers with a strong foundational knowledge of TBLT and a high level of practical teaching experience using the TBLT approach may find the institutional curriculum and overall programme ethos more akin to their teaching philosophies.

Furthermore, the TBLT approach in traditional classroom settings is commonly associated with challenges, such as teacher adaptability, student participation and student uncertainty about TBLT objectives (Hatip, cited in Hişmanoğlu & Hişmanoğlu, 2011). When technology is involved, a further range of TBLT challenges has been identified in addition to the above. These include technological skills, IC (Reinders & White, 2010), issues with group dynamics (Kramsch & Thorne, 2002), and little

evidence that learners focus on metalinguistic features during synchronous computer- mediated communication (Collentine, 2009).

In short, this research context requires that teachers deliver a range of courses covering all language skills and systems at various proficiency levels within a task-based curricular framework and within classroom (but LMS-supported), blended and online teaching environments. As a result, teacher expertise in applying a TBLT approach within TEL contexts may hold some benefits for learners in this context.

Regarding the research context, it should also be emphasised that the methodological approach in this study is designed to investigate the broader aspects of TBLT within a TEL context rather than to focus on more granular aspects of teaching and learning. Although more granular features of TBLT implementation may arise in the data, the overall research objective remains at the level of TBLT frameworks rather than at the level of methodological procedures within them. Any recommendations for specific teaching and learning procedures within an adapted TBLT framework are beyond the scope of this study.