For the past 20 years, task-based language teaching (TBLT) has attracted the worldwide attention of researchers, curriculum developers, teacher trainers and language teachers. However, much of the available literature and research has been from a psycholinguistic perspective, driven by the desire to understand how people acquire a second language. Far less research has been carried out as to whether TBLT works for real teachers and real learners in a classroom environment. This book aims to offer a unique contribution by uniting a discussion of task-based pedagogical principles with descriptions of their application to real life language education problems. It provides an account of the many challenges and obstacles that the implementation of task-based language education raises and discusses the different options for overcoming them. The book contains a substantial body of new research from Flanders, where the implementation of TBLT has been a nationwide project for the past fifteen years in primary, secondary and adult education.
