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Article published In: ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 176:2 (2025) ► pp.219–243

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Trainee EFL teachers’ development and implementation of tasks in young learner classrooms

ORCiD logo with link | University of Vienna
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Vienna.

Published online: 13 January 2026
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https://doi.org/10.1075/itl.25005.khe
Abstract
This study investigated the impact of educating Austrian EFL teachers-in-training about the concept of task, on the premise that this understanding would be a significant prerequisite for them to effectively implement TBLT in their young learner classrooms. Participants were trainee teachers enrolled in a Master’s program, where TBLT was a module of one of their courses. The course content centered around Ellis, R., & Shintani, N. (2014). Exploring language pedagogy through second language acquisition research. Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar task principles, and emphasized an active, experiential understanding of TBLT theory and its relevance to teachers’ own teaching practices. Participants designed, used and evaluated a language task in their classes. Results showed that most teachers developed tasks that met the prespecified criteria and effectively evaluated the challenges in their task implementations, providing valuable suggestions for future improvements.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • The concept of task in TBLT
  • Teacher learning in TBLT
  • This study
  • Method
    • Context and participants
  • TBLT assignment
  • Procedure
  • Data analysis
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Implications and limitations
  • References
References (54)
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