Language Teaching Research Quarterly

The learning effects of task-based interaction is an emerging topic in the field of instructed pragmatics for ESL learners. Specifically, researchers are exploring the impact of different task features on pragmatics learning. This article reports a review of the extant research. First, the review aimed to identify specific task design and implementation characteristics that appeared to enhance learners’ use of pragmatic features during task performance. Inter alia, the review indicated greater benefits from tasks which learners completed collaboratively versus individually and tasks which presented learners with relatively complex versus relatively simple cognitive demands. Secondly, the review aimed to assess evidence of learning across this body of research. The review could not establish whether the enhanced pragmatic language use observed during task performance equated with long-term learning as very few studies included delayed post-tests, an obvious lacuna in the body of research to date.