English Language Learners’ Socially Constructed Motives and Interactional Moves
This book explores the potential for task-based language learning and teaching (TBLT) within a particular context, specifically Hungary, by investigating beliefs among Hungarian university students about English (and other foreign) language teaching. It also examines the nature of these learners’ task-based spoken interaction and explores their socioculturally determined choices in that regard. It finds that, despite much exposure to traditional classroom practices, the learners are generally open to TBLT, make various (sometimes surprising) contributions in performing speaking tasks, and display a tendency toward collaboration in spoken interaction over communication breakdowns. The book offers both universal and culture-specific explanations for this tendency. The findings detailed here have implications for English (and other foreign/second) language teaching which may be of interest to researchers, practitioners, and teacher educators, not only in Hungary, Central Europe, and similar educational contexts, but anywhere that teachers and learners are struggling to improve foreign and second language development.
Holding a PhD in English Applied Linguistics, Thomas A. Williams is currently engaged in teaching and research at the University of Szeged, Hungary. His studies and classes delve into such areas as task-based language learning and teaching, learner interaction, developing second and foreign language speaking skills, sociocultural theory and second language learning, conversation analysis, intercultural pragmatics and classroom-based research. With a teaching degree and over 28 years’ experience in the classroom, he has also taught and tested English as a foreign language, Business English, and specialized translation. He has presented his findings internationally and published numerous articles and chapters, in addition to a well-received speaking coursebook.
“This book is an innovative contribution to the field of classroom-based research on young adult EFL learners at B2/C1 level. It integrates task-based language teaching with a sociocultural approach to language learning by analyzing how students perform on an oral task in pairs. Data are triangulated by students’ answers to a questionnaire and interview questions. The author makes the study fully replicable by including all the instruments and the transcribed responses.”
Professor Emerita Marianne Nikolov
Department of English Applied Linguistics, University of Pécs
“Thomas Williams presents a serious scholarly study of how social and educational constructs impact Hungarian students’ interactions at university level. The author’s theoretical finesse and the focus with which the rich data are analyzed can only be seen as exemplary. The appendix material will surely become an invaluable resource, too. If that wasn’t enough, this book has style: subtle, clear, and human. [It is a] breath of fresh air in contemporary academia.”
József Horváth
Associate Professor, Institute of English Studies, University of Pécs
'This book is valuable in two ways for researchers interested in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) and English Language Teaching (ELT), curriculum developers, coursebook designers, English language teachers as well as teacher trainees. First, the researcher focuses on TBLT as a highly advocated teaching approach in ELT and does this by collecting data from an actual classroom environment. The feedback data from learners themselves as they are engaged in task-based activities in a communication class may inform a diversity of stakeholders involved in language teaching, since content or activity may prove fruitless if not informed by the actual users of that content. Second, this book paves the way to change the traditional approaches to language teaching and learning in Hungary as an underrepresented region. The researcher pointed to a very serious and chronic problem in the country, which relies on teacher-, grammar-, and translation-oriented instruction; and he made a move towards its solution by offering practical solutions in the local context of a Hungarian university.
Another strong point of the book is that, with its qualitative research design, the study gives voice to its participants and provides an in-depth data regarding the reactions, thoughts, and attitudes of Hungarian learners towards TBLT as they are involved with the tasks in an actual classroom. The researcher has also generously shared all the data from questionnaires and interviews in the appendix section of the book. Although the researcher considers it a limitation (as mentioned in the limitations section by the researcher himself) that his findings are not generalizable, it is known that qualitative research is exploratory, aiming to provide a thick description of opinions, motivations and insights into a problem rather than generalizing the findings. In this respect, the researcher has done an admirable job presenting the experiences of Hungarian learners of English in their naturalistic setting, resulting in a rich understanding of the phenomena under investigation.'
Ozge Guney, LinguistList Issue 30, 2019
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