The Effect of Task-based Language Teaching on EFL Learners Oral Proficiency

Providing a natural language context where the students can use all their language resources in an authentic way based on real communicative needs has always been of munch concern among the language practitioners. Mobilizing all language resources in real communicative situations is a problem in traditional approaches. Unlike traditional approaches to language teaching, Task-based language teaching involves the learners to experience the language which is personalized and relevant to their needs. The current study tried to investigate the effects of task-based language teaching on EFL learners’ oral proficiency. In order to accomplish the purpose of the study, 33 advanced EFL learners whose language proficiency was ensured through the administration of retired version of Cambridge IELTS ESOL, were selected and divided into two groups of experimental and control with 17 participants in experimental group and 16 participants in control group. The experimental group received task-based instruction while the control group enjoyed conventional PPP model of language teaching. The quantitative analyses were carried out by independent-samples t-test as well as analysis of variance (ANOVA) to determine the differences in terms of complexity, accuracy, and fluency of learners’ oral language proficiency. The results revealed that there is a statistically significant difference between the groups with regard to lexical density of complexity measure as well as fluency. However, there was not any statistically significant difference between the groups in terms of accuracy and syntactic variety of complexity measure.