Berggren, Jessica, Karina Pålsson Gröndahl, Anette Resare Jansson, Charlotta Wilson, Hedvig Anfält, Gunilla Finnson, Malin Haglind, Emmeli Johansson, Anna Löfquist, Kristina Nyström & Anna Rönnquist

From monologues to dialogues - task design for oral interaction in English

Many language teachers experience difficulties in organising oral interaction activities.  Despite Swedish teenagers' high oral proficiency, conversations in the classroom tend to resemble series of monologues or unauthentic question-response situations. Our project highlights the oral task as a potential root and therefore also a solution to this problem. The overarching purpose is to explore the design of meaningful and functional tasks which promote classroom oral interaction.

The project, which is in its second year, includes several subprojects which are planned and carried out with teachers from primary and secondary school.  The theoretical framework is based on task design and task-based learning and teaching (TBLT), and the research design is iterative, where each subproject designs and tests a task in the classroom during several cycles. Pupil interaction is recorded and transcribed. The analysis is inspired by genre theory; the conversation is divided into 'chunks' and categorised according to function. Next, the analysis forms the basis for revisions in the task design, and the task is tested again.

The research question is How can we design tasks that elicit a specific interactional pattern? Among other things, results from our first year indicate that tasks designed with reasoning as the predicted interactional pattern elicit more developed interaction than tasks involving argumentation. Another lesson learned is that 'less is more'; comprehensive instructions and masses of material harm the pupils’ language use and interaction rather than help.