Language Skill-Task Corollary: The Effect of Decision-Making vs. Jigsaw Tasks on Developing EFL Learners’ Listening and Speaking Abilities

Abstract

Task-based language Teaching (TBLT) has occupied the pertinent literature for some long years. However, the role of specific task type in developing specific skill type seems to be amongst the intact issues in the literature. To shed more light on this issue, the present study was conducted to compare the effect of jigsaw and decision-making tasks on improving listening and speaking abilities of EFL learners. To this end, 75 female Iranian EFL learners, assumed homogenous based on their performance on the Nelson Test, were employed as the participants. Their listening and speaking abilities were also measured both before and after the treatment based on the listening and speaking subtests of the PET. Then, they were assigned to two groups of experimental A and B. The experimental group A received decision-making-based listening and speaking instruction for 12 sessions of 45 minutes, and the experimental group B received jigsaw-based listening and speaking instruction. In order to analyze the data, descriptive statistics and multiple inferential statistical analyses were conducted. The results revealed that those participants who experienced jigsaw listening and speaking tasks outperformed those who received decision-making-based instruction. The findings, then, bear certain theoretical implications for stakeholders.

Keywords

• task types
• decision-making task
• jigsaw task
• listening and speaking skills