Implementational Demands in Task-Based Teaching: The Teachers’ Perspective

This case study investigated how five novice teachers of French went about implementing tasks. In particular, the investigation aimed at finding out about implementational demands that imposed challenges for the teachers and how they coped with these challenges. The study also looked at the complementary relationship between implementational demands and task design factors and how these impact teacher behavior and the learner’s engagement. The data collection took place over the period of one academic year and involved observational data and information elicited from interviews. The results revealed a range of challenges that teachers face when implementing tasks. Some of these issues had to do with the learning and implementing of task routines, others with understanding task designs and managing task conditions. Student engagement and frequent task breakdowns were most often found with tasks that required the processing of larger amount of linguistic content during group work, and when the teacher played the primary role as the facilitator of learning. The article concludes with some suggestions on how to offset the implementational demands in curriculum design and teacher training.