Recent versions of international high-stakes tests like TOEFL and IELTS have made use of integrated tasks in addition to the traditional independent tasks in a claim to provide a more realistic estimation of the test takers’ language abilities. The present study aimed to investigate how test takers’ performance may differ on such tasks. As such, the test takers’ performance was compared on IELT...

This study tried to investigate the impact of task-based instruction (TBI) on the enhancement of Iranian EFL learners’ speaking skill. The study also tried to scrutinize the impact of TBI on learners’ emotional intelligence. To meet these ends, 60 students were randomly divided into two groups, the experimental group and the control group. At the very first session of the term, two speaking exa...

The necessity and importance of teaching pragmatics has come to light by many researchers (e.g. Rose & Kasper, 2001). Due to the consensus over the need to teach pragmatic competence, the main issue now centers on the question of how we should teach this competence in the most effective way. Consistent with this line of research, the present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of deduc...

This paper presents a task-based user study carried out to investigate how explicit roles assigned to group members affected collaborative information seeking behaviour during a travel planning task. 24 pairs participated our study where half of them were given a specific instruction to divide the roles into a searcher and writer, while others were given no such instruction. The evaluation look...

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Objectives: The role of cognitive process for postural control was shown in dual task studies. However, there was no definite evidence how verbal instructions influence the allocation of attention to postural control. This study determined whether young and elderly adult are able to deliberately control the resource allocation when performing a sensorimotor and cognitive task simultaneously and...

Robots acquire behaviors to perform tasks, in general by being programmed, or occasionally by being instructed through demonstrations. In this thesis, we address the challenge of providing task behaviors to a robot through language instructions and interactions. We consider robots equipped with built-in motion and perception primitives with their functionality known to the user. We contribute I...

The field of second or world language teaching has undergone many shifts and trends over the last few decades. Numerous methods have come and gone. We have seen the Audiolingual Method, cognitivebased approaches, the Total Physical Response (TPR), the Natural Approach, and many others (for a detailed description of these methods and approaches, see Richards and Rodgers 2001). In addition, the p...

The importance of teachers in the success of Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) is unquestionable. However, designing a teacher course on TBLT raises many questions concerning ‘what’ and ‘how’ it can be implemented. Can teachers’ professional development be promoted through Task-Based Instruction (TBI)? This paper explores this question by examining the design and implementation of an online c...