How tasks make a difference:

Some insights from adolescent immersion learners' writing

Sharon Lapkin and Merrill Swain

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto

 

This study is one of a series in a program of research funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. For about six years we have been examining and refining the construct of output through inspecting learners' interactions as they solve linguistic problems either individually (Swain & Lapkin, 1995) or collaboratively (e.g., Swain & Lapkin, 1998). Their output, in the form of collaborative dialogues and written products, allows us to document second language learning in progress as learners notice gaps in their knowledge, formulate hypotheses to fill those gaps, and test their hypotheses as they work to express their intended meaning.

We have argued (e.g., Swain & Lapkin, in press a) that meaningful communicative tasks can lead learners to focus on form while constructing the meaning required by the task. Since our research has been conducted in a French immersion context, we have been interested in pedagogical approaches or activities that encourage students to attend to the accuracy of their spoken and written French while learning the target language in a content-based curriculum. To this end, we have used two specific task types for our main data collection: the jigsaw and the dictogloss.

The main study involved four grade 8 immersion classes, two receiving the dictogloss and two the jigsaw task. One jigsaw class and one dictogloss class also received a mini-lesson on French pronominal verbs as an input enhancement activity. Based on literature and research reviewed in Swain and Lapkin (in press; see also Doughty and Williams, 1998, Nunan, 1989, Pica, Kanagy & Falodun, 1993), we hypothesized that the dictogloss would lead learners to focus on form to a greater extent than the jigsaw, although the two tasks involved essentially the same content. Within each task, we expected that the students receiving the mini-lesson would pay greater attention to form than the students that did not receive it.

We collected data in four classes, representing four conditions: Class J did a jigsaw task, Class J+ the same task preceded by a mini-lesson on French pronominal verbs; Class D did a dictogloss task, and Class D+ the same task preceded by the mini-lesson.

The jigsaw task involved pairs of students working together to construct, first orally and then in writing, a story based on a series of eight pictures about an unusual alarm clock in a two-way information gap activity. The dictogloss task involved taking notes individually on a text read aloud twice at normal speed. Students then worked with a partner to write the story they had heard, based on their two sets of notes.

In designing the tasks for the main data collection we sought to make them as parallel as possible in terms of content. To arrive at the text you see in Figure 1, we showed the series of eight pictures to three adult native speakers of French and had them narrate the story. We then combined their transcribed narratives to form the dictogloss text which contains 7 pronominal verbs. Telling the story from the pictures in the jigsaw condition creates a number of contexts for pronominal verbs.

 

Figure 1. Dictogloss text: Le réveil-matin de Martine

Il est six heures du matin et le soleil se lève. Martine dort tranquillement dans son lit. Elle fait de beaux rêves, la tête au pied du lit et les pieds sur l’oreiller. Quand le réveil sonne, Martine ne veut pas se lever. Elle sort son pied et avec le gros orteil, elle ferme le réveil. Elle se rendort tout de suite. Mais elle a le réveil qu’il faut pour ne pas être en retard. À six heures et deux minutes, une main mécanique tenant une petite plume sort du réveil et lui chatouille le pied. C’est efficace! Finalement Martine se lève. Elle se brosse les dents, se peigne les cheveux et s’habille pour prendre le chemin de l’école. Encore une journée bien commencée!

The four classes were grade 8 early French immersion classes in lower-middle to middle-class schools. Until grade 3, all instruction was in French, with English language arts introduced in grade 4. From about grade 5 on, half of the instructional time was spent in English and half in French, with school subjects such as mathematics or history divided up between the two halves of the day. Scores on a cloze pretest given to the four classes did not differ statistically.

Elsewhere (Swain & Lapkin, 1998; in press a, b) we have described the full range of analyses undertaken. In this paper we examine the written narratives with specific reference to pronominal verbs, the target structure required by each task. The mini-lesson, also focused on pronominal verbs, was pre-recorded on videotape and lasted approximately 5 minutes. The video also showed two students working together on a relevant task (a jigsaw or dictogloss that differed in terms of stimulus material from those used for the main data collection). This served as a model for what the students were to do immediately following the viewing of the videotape when the new stimulus was introduced. This modelling of expected behaviour included dialogue about linguistic form and grammatical rules.

The two classes (J and D) that did not receive the mini-lesson also watched a video in which students worked on constructing a story from pictures or the dictogloss passage without explicit reference to grammatical form.

The written narratives of the student dyads were scored by two experienced immersion teachers using five-point rating scales to evaluate content, organization, vocabulary, morphology and syntax. One of the researchers also counted idea units to see whether the two tasks yielded substantially different content.

Detailed descriptive and statistical analyses are presented in Lapkin and Swain (in preparation); but space does not permit including them here. The analyses explored differences within task type (i.e., dictogloss with and without mini-lesson; jigsaw with and without mini-lesson) and across tasks (a) without the mini-lesson and (b) with the mini-lesson. A brief summary of key findings follows.

Global ratings on five scales used to evaluate the quality of the written narratives and a count of idea units revealed no statistically significant differences among classes. This suggests that the communicative value of the tasks, with or without the mini-lesson, is relatively constant, with all classes able to construct meaning from pictures or oral text as the case may be.

Detailed analyses of verbs and especially of the pronominal verbs in the stories did uncover noteworthy differences, however, both within task type and between tasks.

Within the dictogloss, the mini-lesson appears to have made no difference in the frequency and accuracy of pronominal verb use, possibly because both classes had access to a well-formed target text. In the case of the jigsaw, however, significant differences appear in favour of the J+ class on all the counts relating to pronominal verbs.

With respect to across-task differences, the D+ class outperforms the J+ class in terms of the ratio of correct pronominal verbs to pronominal forms they use, though the ratio of correct pronominals to obligatory contexts does not differ for the two groups. For the non-mini-lesson classes, however, the D class does use proportionately more correct pronominals to obligatory contexts than the J class.

Key verbs which occurred as pronominals (though not always correctly so) were also analysed descriptively (and not statistically) by group. Across tasks, it is clear that the mini-lesson leads students to overgeneralize the pronominal form (for example, the students may use se sonner, a non-existent pronominal verb, where sonner should be used). This is more pronounced in the case of the J+ group which has no access to a native-speaker text.

In sum, the dictogloss is striking in its power to promote accuracy in the use of pronominal verbs. Even in the absence of a mini-lesson, the model provided by the oral text engenders the use and accuracy of these forms. From a pedagogical perspective, it seems clear that both task types lend themselves to use in the immersion context.

 

References

Connors, K. & Ouellette, B. (1996). Describing the meanings of French pronominal-verbal constructions for students of French-English translation. Language Sciences, 18: 213-226.

Doughty, C. & Williams, J. (Eds.). (1998). Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Lapkin, S. & Swain, M. (In preparation). How tasks make a difference: Some insights from adolescent immersion learners' writing. Toronto: OISE/UT Modern Language Centre.

Lyster, R. (1994). La négotiation de la forme: stratégie analytique en classe d'immersion. Canadian Modern Language Review, 50, 446-465.

Pica, T., Kanagy, R. & Falodun, J. (1994). Choosing and using communication tasks for second language instruction. In G. Crookes & S. Gass (Eds.), Task and language learning: Integrating theory and practice (pp. 9-34). Clevedon, Avon: Multilingual Matters.

Swain, M. & Lapkin, S. (1998). Interaction and second language learning: Two adolescent French immersion students working together. Modern Language Journal, 83: 320-337.

Swain, M. & Lapkin, S. (In press a). Focus on form through collaborative dialogue: Exploring task effects. In M. Bygate, P. Skehan & M. Swain (Eds.), Task-based learning: Language teaching, learning and assessment. Harlow, Essex: Addison Wesley Longman.

Swain, M. & Lapkin, S. (In press b). Task-based language learning: The uses of first language use. Language Teaching Research.

Wajnryb, R. (1990). Grammar dictation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

 

About the Authors

Sharon Lapkin is a professor in the OISE/UT Modern Language Centre and co-edits the Canadian Modern Language Review.

Merrill Swain is a professor of applied linguistics in the OISE/UT Modern Language Centre. Her research interests include bilingual education and second language teaching and learning.

 

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