VIETNAMESE EFL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF ORAL TASKS AND NON-TASKS FROM A TASK-BASED LANGUAGE TEACHING (TBLT) PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This article examines Vietnamese EFL students’ perceptions of oral tasks and non-tasks as viewed from a task-based language teaching and learning (TBLT) perspective. Questionnaire data were collected from 188 students from a high school in Vietnam to understand their preferences and perceived importance of tasks and task engagement. The results indicated that these students reported a clear preference for free open-ended oral tasks than structured activities or non-tasks such as asking and answering, acting out a dialogue, and dialogue  modeling. At the same time, students wanted to be provided with linguistic support such as vocabulary and grammatical structures and they also valued the importance of oral tasks for numerous reasons including their values for real world use/application, confidence enhancement, skills integration, and language use improvement. However, they reported a low level of task engagement due to many factors, of which, topics, teaching methods and students’ limited English proficiency were most frequently cited. In light of these findings, the implications for teaching EFL speaking and adopting TBLT in EFL contexts are discussed.