UC Santa Barbara

Technology-Mediated Task-Based Language Teaching is the combination of technology with Task-Based Language Teaching (González-Lloret & Ortega, 2014) and emphasizes authentic communication and holistic language learning opportunities in Second Language Acquisition. Since its introduction almost thirty-five years ago, Task-Based Language Teaching has received widespread attention from researchers in the fields of Second Language education due to its collaborative nature and the interaction and negotiation of meaning that result from its implementation (Robinson, 2011). Task-Based Language Teaching represents a paradigm shift of mainstream views about language teaching from a focus on ‘knowledge of language’ to a pragmatic and experiential focus on ‘achiev[ing] communicative purposes’ (Scarino & Liddicoat, 2009, p. 45). Still, relatively few studies have addressed grammar acquisition in online courses from a Task-Based perspective. The present study sought to examine the effects of an online Task-Based Language Teaching module on the acquisition of direct and indirect object pronouns in Spanish. These grammatical structures are used very frequently by native Spanish speakers, but are less used by Spanish learners because of their difficulty. The main problem is that object clitics in Spanish normally create a structure that appears to be (Subject)-Object-Verb. This can be especially difficult for native speakers of English since these speakers are accustomed to Subject-Verb-Object. Furthermore, Spanish indirect object pronouns look exactly like direct object pronouns except for the third person singular and plural. Hence, learning how to use and distinguish between the direct object and indirect object pronouns is challenging. The results of this study demonstrate the benefits of using an online Task-Based Language Teaching module specially designed for the acquisition of direct and indirect object pronouns in Spanish. Participants in the experimental group used the target structures on many occasions, and their results exceeded those of the control group—the mean of the experimental group was 7.50, whereas the mean of the control group was 1.23. Similarly, students in the experimental group also produced five times more instances of the target structures than students in the control group in an identical final exam activity that both groups had to complete—3.22 vs 0.64, respectively. Thus, the data obtained in this study manifest that technology-mediated TBLT can be particularly valuable in the acquisition of L2 grammar.