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Cited by 438

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 10 of the 10 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

The task-based approach: some questions and suggestions

Littlewood, W.·2004·ELT Journal

Abstract

This article first addresses the question of what tasks are. It suggests that rather than accept the common ‘communicative’ definition, we should return to a broader definition and then focus on key dimensions that distinguish (from the learner’s perspective) different types of task, notably degrees of task-involvement and degrees of focus on form or meaning. This approach helps us to conceptualize the complementary roles of form-focused and meaning-focused tasks in our methodology. It also shows the continuity between task-based language teaching and the broader communicative approach within which it is a development. Finally the article asks whether ‘task-based approach’ is really the most appropriate term at all for describing these developments in language pedagogy.

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Metadata

Authors
Littlewood, W.
Venue
ELT Journal
Published
2004-10-01
Volume
58
Issue
4
Pages
319-326
ISSN
  • 0951-0893 (ISSN-L)
  • 1477-4526
OpenAlex
W2153978494
Cited by
438
References
10
FWCI
45.41
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The task-based approach: some questions and suggestions. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1093/elt/58.4.319
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Littlewood, W. (2004). The task-based approach: some questions and suggestions. ELT Journal. https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/58.4.319

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.