Task-based Language Teaching Implementation in Integrating EFL

Students’ Writing Skill

JELTL (Journal of English Language Teaching and Linguistics)

e-ISSN: 2502-6062, p-ISSN: 2503-1848
Year, Vol. xx (xx)
www.jeltl.org
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.21462/jeltl.vxxixx.xx

Task-based Language Teaching Implementation in

Integrating EFL Students’ Writing Skill

Abstract

Lacks of students participation and also lacks of their basic understanding in

constructing good sentences had become the major background of the researcher to
conduct this study. This research article deals with a study conducted with students
of Economic Faculty enrolled in EFL program. This study employed mixed methods
analysis which analyzed the implementation of Task-based Language Teaching on
EFL students and examined on how the strategy employed will impact on students’
writing skills. In addition, this research is also intended to find out the perception of
instructor and students on the application of Task-based Language Teaching. The
data in this research were collected through the process of observing, interviewing
and analyzing students’ writing. By comparing the results, we can conclude that the
students show improvement, either from the perspective of students’ participation or
achievement. Moreover, the results also indicate that the majority of students and
also instructor show positive perception towards the implementation of Task-based
Language Teaching which was acknowledged with the growth of their study
motivation and enjoyment. However, problems that deal with time availability and
feedback are identified during the process, showing that a better preparation and
further research are needed for better implementation in the future.

Keywords: Task-based Language Teaching, Writing Skill, EFL Classroom

1. INTRODUCTION
Task can be defined as language processing activity that involves the learners
in which the focus is on goals, roles, input, setting and feedback. Task is usually
given by teachers to support the successful program of teaching and learning. The
successful of teaching and learning program is closely related to the application of
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the learning model. In general, learning model is not only has short-term objectives
but also supposed to have long-term objectives. This notion also applied when we
learn English as a foreign language. Johnson (2001) posits that there are five reasons
on why someone learning English, such as: (1) for the purpose of studying, (2) for
the purpose of self-integration with the cultures being learnt, (3) for the purpose of
strengthening one’s cultural identity, (4) for the purpose of international
communication, (5) for the purpose of facilitating international communication.
Moreover, Brown (2001) also states that in the process of learning second language,
we have to know the orientation of learning. In this case, there are two kinds of
orientation. The first one is integrative orientation and the second one is instrumental
orientation. Integrative orientation occurs when one’s objective in learning foreign
language is intended for social and cultural reason, while instrumental orientation
occurs when one’s objective in learning foreign language is intended for the
academic purpose.
Nunan (1989) states that task is an activity or action which is carried out as the
result of processing or understanding language. Moreover, task can be defined as
activity that occured as a result of language processing through classroom activities
that required students to comprehend, to manipulate, to produce and to interact with
the target language through the use of their grammatical understanding in expressing
the intended meaning. Through the use of task, students are required to do the
communicative activities in which it emphasizes on the meaning instead of the form,
although meaning is actually not separated from the form itself. It means that the
students are supposed to use their grammatical understanding to express their
communicative meaning.
Richards and Renandya (2002) argue that the task can be defined as the
activity in which the content of the task is the first priority that problem have to be
solved. In addition, the task is closely related with the real activities. Moreover,
Willis and Willis (2007) defines Task-based Language Teaching as the approach
that provides the students with the activities that possibly enhancing their interest
and interaction in classroom. This approach emphasizes on designing the task that
successfully make the students conduct to the activity with target language.
Moreover, teacher also plays a focal role in the implementation and prepares the
students in the process Task-based Language Teaching. In addition, teachers are
supposed to be creative and innovative, so that it can enhance the students’ interest
in learning the target language. Many research conducted previously are in line with
that, Zhaochun (2015) explains that the application of Task-based Language
Teaching on EFL writing class is effectively increase students’ ability in English
writing. In addition, Seyedi and Faharani (2014) also demonstrate that Task-based
writing increases the comprehension for EFL classroom. Another study on the
application of Task-based Language Teaching was conducted by Sholihah (2011), in
which she demonstates that Task-based Language Teaching enables teacher to train
the learner in order to make appropriate language choice.
Based on the definition of the task, it can be stated that task can not be
separated from the use of communicative language in which the focus should be on
meaning instead of grammatical form. However, it does not mean that form is not
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important. In fact, form and meaning are closely related each other. In the design of
Task-based Language Teaching, there are six kind of tasks to be applied to support
the successful of language teaching and learning. (Willis, 1996), such as: 1) listing,
practically this activity can be conducted through the activities, such as
brainstorming and fact-finding activity. In addition, the result of this process can be
in a form of thought, idea or concept. 2) ordering and sorting, this activity involves
the process of arranging, ranking, categorizing and also classifying. (3) comparing,
can be conducted through the process of making comparison upon similar
information coming from different sources. The stages involves the process of
matching and identifying two different things and also trying to find out the
differences also the similarities. (4) problem solving, knowledge comprehension and
thought are needed in this stage. The problem implemented in this task can be taken
from daily life experience. (5) sharing personal experiences, this stage can be very
useful for students to motivate them in order to communicate, comprehend and also
share their personal experiences to the others, (6) creative tasks, this stage involves
many group of students including various kind creative tasks. Task-based Teaching
and Learning is a method of delivering a learning material in which teacher gives the
task, so that the students are supposed to accomplish the objectives of learning
activities. The task given can be conducted in class, library, or even at home as long
as the task can be completed.
On the basis of the facts that researcher found in the process of teaching and
learning in EFL classroom, the lecturer rarely gives students tasks with further
consideration of students’ language skills that students are supposed to achieve.
They simply provide students with classroom activities without considering
students’ language skills improvement. Moreover, this condition also leads the
students to be less participated and motivated during the class and made the class
goes silent. Therefore, from the problems already mentioned above, the researcher
intends to apply a learning model with Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT)
approach in creating opportunities of students’ skill development through
collaborative knowledge buiding. In conducting this research, there will be two
research questions: 1. To what extend does Task-based Language Teaching promote
the improvement of students’ writing skill enrolled in EFL classroom?, 2. How do
students and instructor perceive the use of Task-based Language Teaching in EFL
classroom?. In general, the major objective of this research is to provide reference
on how to conduct a communicative and integrative teaching which leads to the
improvement of students’ writing skills. Moreover, specifically, this research is
intended to examine on how Task-based Language Teaching can increase students’
motivation, participation, and also positive attitude towards the process of teaching
and learning in EFL classroom. Finally, it is hoped that the results of this research
can be useful for future research conducted on similar topic, especially in a field of
applied linguistics.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW

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2.1 Task-based Language Teaching

Task-based Language Teaching is one of communicative approach in which
the activities conducted will merely focus on discussion – tasks – presentation – and
focus on language form in which it is presented as a development of communicative
language teaching. The main objective of this learning method is to accomplish the
task and raise the outcome. One of the frameworks of this Task-based Language
Teaching approach is proposed Willis (1996) in which the framework consists of
three main parts: pre task, task cycle and language focus.

2.2 Task-based Language Teaching Stages

Jane Willis (1996) proposes three stage process in which it is assumed as an
effective way in improving students’ skills. The further elaboration can be seen as
follows:
- Pre-task Stage
This stage is warm up activity in which it introduces the topic and also
the task through activating topic-related words or phrases to the students.
- Task-cycle Stage
This stage is further divided into the parts; the task, the planning and also
its report. The task has communicative objective for the students to
achieve certain goals and also to make important decision. Moreover, the
task should allow the students to use their own ideas. However, the
teacher involvement is also important to encourage and also support the
successful accomplishment of the task for the students.
- Language Focus
In this final stage, the students have already worked with the language, so
that they are supposed to be able to concentrate more on language forms
that carry meaning.

3. RESEARCH METHODS
The research methods employed in conducting this study can be seen in
details as follows:

3.1 Research Design

This research is classroom action research in which the data in this research
were obtained from the process of observing the process of teaching and learning in
order to see the instructor and the students activities during the class and also
examining the results of analysis of the students’ writing product.

3.2 Participants
The paticipants involved in this study were the students of Economic faculty
enrolled in EFL program in Sultan Agung Islamic University with a total of 30
students. In the period of Task-based Language Teaching implementation, the
students met twice a week and 90 minutes for each meeting.
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3.3 Instruments
The data in this research were obtained from the process of observing the
process of teaching and learning. In the process of the implementation, the students
were asked to complete the assessment in a form of a writing motivation letter which
the focus are on content, grammatical aspects, and also organizations of the text. The
assessment was conducted in order to see the students’ improvement on English
writing skill competence, especially in constructing a good writing product. In the
process of teaching and learning, the instructor carried out five task-based activities
to support the successful of the application of Task-based Language Teaching in
EFL classroom as mentioned below.
No. Language Focus Task-Skills
1 Personal Description Describe personal information
3 Personal Experience Writing personal experiences
4 Interests Story description, writing personal
statement
5 Self Qualification Writing personal experiences, report
6 Plans Story description

Moreover, to make the data be more comprehensive, the researcher also

asked the students to complete the questionnaire and conducted the interview on
instructor, so that it will be useful in constructing the research reports. All of the
research instruments are employed in order to collect the data in relation with the
process, effectivity, and students’ achievement level. Moreover, the research
instrument in a form of electronic tools were also employed to support the data
documentation, either in a form of picture or video recording during the the process
of teaching and learning. Furthermore, the collected data were then selected and
interpreted based on the focus of the research.

3.4 Data Analysis

The data obtained in this research were analyzed quantitatively by using
statistical tool (SPSS) for each of the observed elements as mention above and then
the results of the data were interpreted qualitatively based on the focus of the
research. Finally, the researcher draws the conclusion.

4. FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

On the basis of the first objective of the study in which to analyze the
implementation of Task-based Language Teaching on EFL students, the researcher
categorized the results into two cycles in order to see the students’ improvement.
Furthermore, the mean scores were then calculated as seen in table below.

Table 1. Score obtained from the Perspective of Content

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Minimu Maximu Std.

N m m Mean Deviation
cycle1 30 65,00 79,00 69,8333 3,42489
cycle2 30 68,00 84,00 74,9333 4,45617
Valid N 30
(listwise)
Based on the above figure, we can see that the minimum score obtained by the
students in cycle 1 is 65 and the maximum score obtained by the students in cycle 1
is 79, while the minimum score obtained by the students in cycle 2 is 68 and the
maximum score obtained is 84. Moreover, we also can see that the mean score in
cycle 2 is higher than the mean score in cycle 1, in which the mean score in cycle 1
is 69,83 while the mean score in cycle 2 is 74,93. It indicates that the students show
the improvement in writing the content of motivation letter. On the basis of the
content, most of students in cycle 1 are able to describe the personal information and
also personal experience in details. However, sometimes they have difficulties in
elaborating their personal interest and also their future plans. In addition, the
students tend to presents part of content only be mentioning instead of elaborating in
details. Furthermore, the results of data from the perspective of text organization can
be seen as follows.

Table 2. Score obtained from the Perspective of Text Organization

Minimu Maximu Std.

N m m Mean Deviation
cycle1 30 68,00 84,00 73,9000 4,28590
cycle2 30 72,00 89,00 78,9333 4,40950
Valid N 30
(listwise)

We can see in the table above that minimum score obtained by the students in cycle
1 is 68 and the maximum score obtained by the students in cycle 1 is 84, while the
minimum score in cycle 2 obtained by the students is 72 and the maximum score is
89. In addition, the above table also show that the mean score in cycle 1 is 73,9 and
the mean score in cycle 2 is 78,93, which means that the students in cycle 2 perform
a better result from those in cycle 1. Thus, we can assume that the students made an
improvement. In addition, from the persepective of text organization, the results in
cycle 1 show that the students are able to put their paragraph into appropriate
organization. However, they tend to ignore the importance on how to maintain the
coherence of those paragraphs. As a results, the writing product produced by the
students can not simultaneously connected and difficult to understand. Moreover, the

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researcher also found that the most difficult part of writing performed by the
students was on the body of the motvation letter. However, due to the intensive
practice performed, the students show improvement as we can see the results of the
mean score in cycle 2. Furthermore, the results of data from the grammatical aspect
can be seen as follows.

Table 3. Score obtained from the Aspect of Grammar

Minimu Maximu Std.

N m m Mean Deviation
cycle1 30 60,00 74,00 68,8667 3,78503
cycle2 30 64,00 82,00 74,6000 3,76554
Valid N 30
(listwise)
Based on the above table, we can see that the minimum score obtained by the
students in cycle 1 is 60 and the maximum score obtained by the students in cycle 1
is 74, while the minimum score obtained by the students in cycle 2 is 64 and the
maximum score obtained is 82. Moreover, we also can see that the mean score in
cycle 2 is higher than the mean score in cycle 1, in which the mean score in cycle 1
is 68,86 while the mean score in cycle 2 is 74,60. Therefore, the results indicate that
the students show the improvement in writing in terms of their grammar. On the
basis of grammatical aspect, the students often get difficulties in the use of phrasal
verbs, preposition and phrasal verbs with pronoun. Moreover, based on the writing
result, it can be seen that some of the students show low level understanding of basic
grammatical structural patterns that they supposed to achieved at the lower level.
Thus, by frequently analyzing students’ grammatical problem, the instructor
encourages the students to perform more practice, so that the results undergo the
improvement as we can see in cycle 2 above.
The students’ feedback regarding their reflections on the application of Task-
based classroom activities were further analyzed through analyzing the results of the
questionnaire, consists of what they like and dislike in the application of Task-based
Language Teaching. The students’ responses will be beneficial for further
consideration of making improvement for future lesson. The frequency of students’
responses can be seen in table below.

Table 4. Students’ Like and Dislikes on Task-based Language Teaching

Application

Task-based Activities Frequency Precentage

LIKES
Sharing Information 26 86,67%

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Interactive Discussion 23 76,67%

Student-centered 19 63,34%
Motivation 16 53,34%
Critical Thinking 20 66,67%

DISLIKES
Individual Work 7 23,34%
Time limitation 6 20,00%
Quick decision making 8 26,67%

Based on th students’ perception on the implementation of Task-based

Language Teaching in EFL classroom, the results of the data revealed that the
majority of students feel like enjoying classroom interactive environment in which it
enables them to interact a lot with peers, to express their idea and to exchange
information with others. In line with that, 63,34% students believe that the class
with task-based activities tend to be more student-centered instead of teacher-
centered, in which it gives them more chance to perform active interaction and
engagement during the process. Moreover, 53,34% of students also claim that the
implementation of Task-based Language Teaching make their learning motivation
much higher than that of in the past learning experience. In terms of the learning
outcome, some of the students claimed that task-based activities provide the students
with problem-solving phase that enables them to be more critical in thinking. On the
other hand, a few students felt a bit burdened and worried about the individual task
that they supposed to complete. The data shows that 20% students claim that time
limitation provided in completing the task made them work in pressure, so that
sometimes they have no time to double-check their work. Moreover, some of the
students also claim that due to the limited time availability, the feedback delivered
by the lecturer can not be presented in details as they expected, including further
writing suggestion or even error correction. In line with that, 26,67% students also
argue that they have to make a quick decision in the process of completing the task
due to the time limitation.
From the perspective of Task-based Language Teaching implementation results,
it is believed that the improvement should be made for future application. In
conducting the analysis of the needs for improvement, the researcher collected the
data obtained from analyzing the results of the questionnaire, consists of the needs
improvement from the persepective of classroom activities and the perspective of the
instructor. The frequency of students’ responses can be seen in table below.

Table 5. Improvement Needs for Task-based Language Teaching Application

Improvement Needs Frequency Precentage

Task-based Activities
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Interesting Material 11 36,67%

Creative Task 10 33,34%
Multimedia Application 9 30,00%

Instructor
Classroom Management 13 43,34%
Clear Instruction 10 33,34%
Provide Feedback 15 50,00%

Based on th students’ responses on the needs for improvement aforementioned

above, the results of the data revealed that the students expect that the instructor may
provide the class with more creative and interesting material instead of the formal
one. Moreover, 30,00% of the students also believed that the use of multimedia can
booster their learning motivation and also enrich their learning experience. From the
perspective of instructor’s performance, 43,34% students suggest that the instructor
should run the class effectively by providing the students with more chance of group
discussion or even pair-works in completing the task instead of emphasizing on
constant individual work. In line with that, 33,34% of students suggest that the
instructor may provide the students with constant and controlled practice before they
actually started the task session, so that the students will have a good preparation
and comprehension in completing the task. In addition, the students argue that the
instructor’s response and feedback, either in a form of suggestion or error correction
should be delivered in details, so that it will lead to better improvement in the future
appilication.
Regarding to the instructor’s perception on the application of Task-based
Language Teaching in EFL context, the interview data revealed that the instructor
believes that the students have more chance to perform active interaction and
engagement in Task-based Language Teaching classroom than that of in teacher-
centered classroom in which it will lead positive results in enhancing their language
ability. Moreover, the instructor also believes that task-based activities provided in
EFL classroom will not only provide the students with better understanding of
language usage but also the growth of their learning motivation, in which it can be
seen from students ability and willingness to express their thought and idea and not
afraid of making mistakes. However, the instructor claimed that task-based activities
provided in classroom is actually expandable in which they can structure and
construct the appropriate practice that fit the needs of the students, however, the
extensive will lead to the long-term retention, so that they have to be selective in
creating and delivering appropriate task or activities in EFL classroom.
The valid improvement of students’ achievement can be seen from the increase
of mean score on both cycles. Moreover, the results of the research also reveals that
the students show positive perception in the engagement in Task-based Language
Teaching in their EFL classroom in which it enable them to perform interactive
classroom activities and to complete challenging task. In line with that, the instructor
also show positive perception towards the application of Task-based Language
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Teaching in which it enable them to create learner-centered classroom situation that

will promote students’ active engagement during the lesson. However, the results of
data also indicate some problems during the implementation either from the
perspective of Task-based activities or Instructor’s performance, so that the students
suggest that futher improvement should be made for leading to a better results.

6. CONCLUSION

According to the results of the study, it can be inferred that the present study
provides an alternative method to teach EFL classroom with the application of Task-
based Language Teaching in which it is positively proven to give contribution on
students’ writing skill improvement. Moreover, from the perspective of pedagogical
implication, it can be stated that the application of Task-based Language Teaching in
EFL context can promote students’ self confidence and also self-fulfilment which
lead to the improvement of their active engagement and also participation during the
lesson. The more the growth of students’ activeness on interaction and participation
during the class, the more the growth of their ability on language comprehension.

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