Can we promote students’ learning through designing tasks in certain ways, to encourage certain kinds of learner responses, and to guide them towards certain outcomes?

This workshop provides a platform to discuss task design in the context of language education at three levels: (a) curriculum, (b) pedagogy, and (c) the task itself. First, it looks at task design at the curricular level, addressing how to select tasks in relation with students’ learning needs and desired learning outcomes. It then considers the role of pedagogy in making tasks more meaningful and engaging for the students and hence more conducive for learning. Finally, the workshop considers findings from cognitive task complexity research as a way to examine how characteristics inherent in the design of tasks influence what learners pay attention to and what they learn as a result.