TBLT through the lens of applied linguistics: Engaging with the real world of the classroom

Ever since the establishment in the 1940’s of the distinguished journal Language Learning, a significant proportion of research in applied linguistics has defined itself as aiming to address practical problems of language teaching. Given the definition of applied linguistics as ‘the theoretical and empirical study of real world problems in which language has a central role’ (after Brumfit, 2001), an ambition to relate its work to practical language teaching problems is appropriate. Task-based language teaching is a subarea of applied linguistics which deliberately aims to link research to practice. With this in mind, this paper will seek to evaluate the extent to which TBLT research has to date engaged with — and helped address — the real world problems of language education. It then attempts to derive some implications for future directions of TBLT research as a part of an empirical applied linguistics.