Abstract:

From the emergence of the task-based approach to language learning in the late 1980s, tasks have caught the attention of both researchers in the field of second language acquisition and curriculum designers or course methodologists in foreign language learning programmes. Thus, tasks are present in language classrooms both as an object of inquiry and an instrument of data collection in educational research and as a tool to design and implement learning proposals. Competence-based language curricula, for example, envisage learning as a social activity in which learners engage in the resolution of tasks that would enable them to develop their interactional competence while they acquire 21st century skills and interdisciplinary knowledge.

The activities people do in everyday life at home, at school, at work or when socialising are regarded as tasks. Task-based learning proposes to bring those tasks into the classrooms to make learning meaningful and lasting. Thus, pedagogical tasks are seen as tools to provide learners with genuine opportunities of using the target language while they are engaged in the resolution of problems or in the process of creating an output (a story, a marketing campaign, a book trailer, etc.). Among others, research has informed teachers on the nature of tasks, on the stages of development of tasks, on how to select contents and sequence tasks to meet specific learning objectives or to cater for learners’ need to come to grips with the cognitive and linguistic challenges of taking part in a communicative event in a language they still do not master. Yet, designing effective tasks is still a challenge teachers need to face.

DIGITASK4IC is a project supported within the scheme of Erasmus+ KA226 Digital Education Readiness, whose objective is to create a digital task generator for pedagogical tasks, linked with an annotated task catalogue and an OER library to support teacher trainers and trainee teachers. It is developed thanks to a strategic partnership among Hacettepe University (Turkey), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Catalonia), Universitaet Innsbruck (Austria), and Mugla Sitki Kocman University (Turkey). This paper aims to present the DIGITASK platform, which consists of a software, a mobile application, and a website for generating pedagogical tasks that foster learners’ interactional competence. The open-access platform is complemented with methodological packages for teaching foreign languages (Catalan, English, French, German, Spanish or Turkish) and a training module designed both as a self-learning and as an instructional tool on how to use it to create digital pedagogical tasks. It is expected to have a significant impact on teachers, teacher trainers and materials designers as it will offer pedagogical and technological support for the creation of pedagogical tasks.

Keywords:

TBLT, Interactional Competence, digital task generator, task design.