Recent years have seen a growing interest in the role of tasks in second language acquisition and a substantial body of research now exists to show their potential contribution to language learning and teaching. However, not much is known about the effects of different task types, nor about their accompanying instructions. Which tasks are more successful under what circumstances? What type of instructions should be included?

This book attempts to answer the questions above by first examining previous studies on the use of tasks, the roles of input, output and interaction, and by placing...