Theme: Speaking as an interactive process Table of content

The cognitive approach provides insights and criteria that can be drawn upon when planning and sequencing tasks so that easy tasks are handled before complex ones. It was argued that such sequencing may have important predictable effects on language development (pushing learners to greater lexical density, accuracy, and may also have important effects on interaction).
* Methodological considerations of applying tasks were addressed by many studies and the following can be inferred:
- There has been a significant quantity of research exploring the effects of pre-task stage especially pre- task planning, teaching and raising student's awareness. In brief, such research suggests that planning has the effect of beneficially extending learners’ speaking performance in the short term at least. Whether this effect will continue into the long term and whether it encourages interlanguage development needs to be considered further.
- There is only one study dealing with during-task manipulation which included assigning an observer of pairs during working on tasks to give them feedback about their performance.
- Post task manipulation has not been explored extensively since only two studies have focused on this area. The effect shown in one of these studies is rather weak, being neither additive nor general (the effect was found only for the decision-making task, and not on the narrative and personal tasks). In the second study, the activities were restricted to using self-evaluation checklists to assess student's oral proficiency.
Consequently, the previous studies are the starting point from which the current study started.
First of all, it is evident that most of previous studies restricted its focus to measuring three levels of language proficiency (accuracy-complexity -and fluency). Most of the previous studies have been undertaken within a theoretical framework that has tended to be rather narrowly concerned with the occurrence of some linguistic features. There has been virtually no interest in the analysis of the communicative outcomes of task interaction except for discourse competence tackled by Sayer (2005). Therefore, the researcher thinks that it is important to tackle the communicative competence as a broad concept embodying the spoken proficiency with all its details and skills. In addition, most of the previous studies investigated separate techniques of the task-based instruction model. It is obvious that no study, except that of Skehan and Foster (1997a) and Sayer (2005), attempted to investigate empirically the 148 effectiveness of more than one strategy suggested by the cognitive approach to promote speaking skills within communicative tasks framework. Moreover, no study attempted to integrate all these components (planning, consciousness raising, explicit instruction, self-evaluation, and post task public performance) in a more comprehensive framework including a per task stage, a during task stage and a post- task stage. Thus, the current study is an attempt to investigate the broader framework of task –based instruction including its various techniques and teaching methods.
Most of the previous studies were concerned with assessing the short term effect of task- based instruction. In a sense, the studies focused on the effect of some cognitive approach techniques on students' performance during performing the tasks. No study focused on the long term effect of adopting the cognitive approach including sub-strategies- on students' language development after receiving the instruction. So there should be an attempt to extrapolate from current findings to longer term change which is the focus of the current study.
Other than these previous considerations, the current study drew some implications and benefited from the previous studies as follows:
Different types of tasks were incorporated to achieve different goals. In other words, both simple and complex tasks were presented to help develop students' skills at different levels and cater for language representing the transactional as well as the interaction dimensions of speaking.
* For example, with the one- way and two- way categorization, tasks included in "description" lessons were mostly one- way tasks, however "exchanging personal information" and "giving opinion tasks" represented two- way tasks.
* As for the convergent/ divergent categorization, "description tasks" and "narration tasks" represented the convergent type; on the other hand, divergent tasks were represented in "exchanging opinions tasks"

- Tasks were sequenced from simple to complex to achieve various goals effectively, i.e. simple tasks preceded tasks, one-way tasks preceded two way tasks, convergent tasks preceded divergent tasks and so on.

- Pre- task planning and online planning are two teaching techniques that were focused on in task design to promote spoken performance. Because each type of planning develops certain aspects of spoken language proficiency, it was better to encourage students to practice both of them in each task to get the best results.
- Guided planning in the form of "teacher- led planning" was ope rationalized and applied in a subtle clear way that directed students to all aspects and skills of speaking performance.
- Planning was given about 10 to 15 minutes in every task as proved effective by previous studies. O -
- Students' self-evaluation was fostered after task performance through encouraging students to record their performance and reflect upon it and providing clear criteria against which they could compare their progress. Furthermore, an observer (one of the students) was assigned to analyze students' performance during some tasks.
- Explicit instruction and awareness raising activities were used in the current study as an integral part of task-based instruction framework.
- Although the three goals (accuracy, complexity and fluency) were addressed implicitly in the design of the tasks employed in the current study, they were not the object of evaluation and measurement, however the study examined the effectiveness of task based instruction with reference to a broader model of communicative competence.
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