Review of Van den Branden (2022): How to Teach an Additional Language: To task or not to task?
Paul Pauwels · ITL Review of Applied Linguistics · 2023
In this fifteenth volume of the Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) series, Kris Van den Branden sets out to investigate in how far TBLT fills the needs of high quality 21st century additional language (AL) education.In order to do so, he starts out with a survey of present-day SLA research (Chapter 2), followed by a survey of research into motivational factors (Chapter 3).The second part of the book then builds on these surveys to provide more concrete recommendations, starting with ten 'key principles' for AL teaching (Chapter 4) and moving on to curriculum design (Chapter 5) and assessment (Chapter 6).Throughout these chapters, the author provides a wide selection of examples of how TBLT can be effectively implemented.In Chapter 7, the focus shifts to the teaching context, focusing on teacher development, school policy development and teacher training.In the introduction, Van den Branden makes clear that he prefers the label 'additional language' over 'second' or 'foreign' language -a distinction which he sees blurring in the present day context of globalization.He also makes clear that he is going to cast his net wide, including not just language focused research, but also general pedagogy and language policy.Chapter 1, 'setting the scene' starts by outlining the challenges facing language teachers and argues that TBLT is better suited to deal with these than traditional knowledge focused approaches, as it ensures higher interactivity, serves more goals, mobilizes more student resources, and provides a higher degree of contextualization.The chapter acknowledges that goals for AL-learning can differ, as can the levels of proficiency aimed for.The chapter further provides the necessary clarification of the notion of 'task' .It also questions the usefulness of some theoretical distinctions (e.g.intentional vs incidental learning) for teachers facing practical teaching concerns.The second chapter provides a survey of research into instructed SLA.The author starts off by reflecting on two types of research-informed principles -Ellis and Shintani's (2014) and Long's (2015) principles for SLA, and Baume and Scanlon's (2018) and Rosenshine's (2012) general pedagogical principles.In the remainder of the chapter he assesses SLA research against this background, cov-