Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3034
https://doi.org/10.69639/arandu.v13i1.2098
Task-Based Learning and Its Impact on Writing Skills in
Fifth-Grade Students
Aprendizaje basado en tareas y su impacto en las habilidades escritas en un grupo de
15 estudiantes de quinto grado
Jonathan Alexis Mejia Moreira
jonathan.mejia8469@utc.edu.ec
https://orcid.org/0009-0008-9940-0624
Institución Fiscomisional, Ambato
Ambato – Ecuador
Artículo recibido: 18 febrero 2026-Aceptado para publicación: 20 marzo 2026
Conflictos de intereses: ninguno que declarar.
ABSTRACT
This study analyzes the impact of task-based learning on English as a foreign language writing in
fifteen fifth-grade students at a private school in Ambato. Using a ten-week action research
design, changes in writing quality were assessed with a four-dimensional analytical rubric.
Qualitative data from student journals revealed that communicative purpose was the primary
motivational factor during the process, directly linked to improvements in writing quality. These
findings provide empirical evidence for the viability of the communicative approach in
Ecuadorian educational contexts with limited extracurricular exposure to English.
Keywords: task-based learning, fifth grade, written skills, semi-private classroom, L2
vocabulary
RESUMEN
Este estudio analiza el impacto del aprendizaje basado en tareas en la producción escrita en inglés
como lengua extranjera en quince estudiantes de quinto grado de una institución fiscomisional en
Ambato. Mediante un diseño de investigación-acción de diez semanas, se evaluaron cambios en
la calidad de la escritura mediante una rúbrica analítica de cuatro dimensiones y los datos
cualitativos de los diarios estudiantiles revelaron que el propósito comunicativo fue el principal
factor motivacional durante el proceso, lo que se vinculó directamente con las mejoras en la
calidad de la escritura. Estos hallazgos aportan evidencia empírica sobre la viabilidad del enfoque
comunicativo en contextos educativos ecuatorianos con escaso contacto extracurricular con el
inglés.
Palabras clave: Aprendizaje basado en tareas, quinto grado, habilidades escritas, aula
semiprivada, vocabulario de L2
Todo el contenido de la Revista Científica Internacional Arandu UTIC publicado en este sitio está disponible bajo
licencia Creative Commons Atribution 4.0 International.
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3035
INTRODUCTION
Writing in a foreign language is rarely a neutral activity. For children in Ambato,
Tungurahua province, Ecuador, whose community is shaped by artisan traditions and Andean
culture, writing in English presents challenges beyond routine schoolwork. The gap between
students’ daily lives and the demands of writing in a foreign language encompasses linguistic,
motivational, institutional, and emotional factors. Ellis (2003) noted that language-learning tasks
are most effective when they create a genuine information gap that motivates learners. This is
especially relevant when there is a clear divide between knowing language forms and producing
written texts.
The study took place in a semi-private school in Ecuador, which receives partial state
funding and is managed by a religious congregation. The English program followed the national
curriculum guidelines (Ministerio de Educación del Ecuador, 2019), which emphasize structural
knowledge and controlled practice at this level. By fifth grade, students typically learn English
through grammar tables, vocabulary exercises, and copying tasks. Nunan (2004) observed that
such approaches often result in declarative knowledge without the procedural skills needed for
communication. This description matches the participant group in this study.
The motivation for this study arose from a clear classroom challenge. When asked to write
a paragraph on a familiar topic without a model, most students produced disconnected fragments
or repeated memorized sentences unrelated to the topic. Previous research on form-focused EFL
instruction at the primary level has documented this issue. Graham and Sandmel (2011) found
that focusing on correct form and imitation leads to risk-averse writers who avoid using unfamiliar
structures. This pattern was visible in the classroom before the intervention.
Task-based learning marks a major shift in language teaching and has strong theoretical
and empirical support. Long (2015) defined it as “an approach to language teaching that is based
on the assumption that language learning is most efficient when the student is doing things with
language, not just studying language in isolation.” Willis and Willis (2007) argued that well-
designed tasks create communicative conditions that help learners use new language knowledge
productively. This study’s main question was whether this approach could improve writing among
ten-year-old EFL learners in a resource-limited Andean classroom.
Theoretical framework
Origins and Evolution of Task-Based Language Teaching
The origins of task-based language teaching date back to a set of practical experiments that
tested the fundamental assumptions of the most popular grammar-translation and audiolingual
methods used in the middle of the 20th century. The first recorded attempt at using real-world
tasks as a foundation for language instruction was made by Prabhu in his Communicational
Teaching Project in Bangalore, India, in 1987. This project demonstrated that students could
INTRODUCTION
Writing in a foreign language is rarely a neutral activity. For children in Ambato,
Tungurahua province, Ecuador, whose community is shaped by artisan traditions and Andean
culture, writing in English presents challenges beyond routine schoolwork. The gap between
students’ daily lives and the demands of writing in a foreign language encompasses linguistic,
motivational, institutional, and emotional factors. Ellis (2003) noted that language-learning tasks
are most effective when they create a genuine information gap that motivates learners. This is
especially relevant when there is a clear divide between knowing language forms and producing
written texts.
The study took place in a semi-private school in Ecuador, which receives partial state
funding and is managed by a religious congregation. The English program followed the national
curriculum guidelines (Ministerio de Educación del Ecuador, 2019), which emphasize structural
knowledge and controlled practice at this level. By fifth grade, students typically learn English
through grammar tables, vocabulary exercises, and copying tasks. Nunan (2004) observed that
such approaches often result in declarative knowledge without the procedural skills needed for
communication. This description matches the participant group in this study.
The motivation for this study arose from a clear classroom challenge. When asked to write
a paragraph on a familiar topic without a model, most students produced disconnected fragments
or repeated memorized sentences unrelated to the topic. Previous research on form-focused EFL
instruction at the primary level has documented this issue. Graham and Sandmel (2011) found
that focusing on correct form and imitation leads to risk-averse writers who avoid using unfamiliar
structures. This pattern was visible in the classroom before the intervention.
Task-based learning marks a major shift in language teaching and has strong theoretical
and empirical support. Long (2015) defined it as “an approach to language teaching that is based
on the assumption that language learning is most efficient when the student is doing things with
language, not just studying language in isolation.” Willis and Willis (2007) argued that well-
designed tasks create communicative conditions that help learners use new language knowledge
productively. This study’s main question was whether this approach could improve writing among
ten-year-old EFL learners in a resource-limited Andean classroom.
Theoretical framework
Origins and Evolution of Task-Based Language Teaching
The origins of task-based language teaching date back to a set of practical experiments that
tested the fundamental assumptions of the most popular grammar-translation and audiolingual
methods used in the middle of the 20th century. The first recorded attempt at using real-world
tasks as a foundation for language instruction was made by Prabhu in his Communicational
Teaching Project in Bangalore, India, in 1987. This project demonstrated that students could
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3036
improve their grammatical skills by consistently engaging in meaning-focused tasks, without ever
explicitly learning grammar rules. Prabhu called this the ‘strong’ form of task-based teaching, in
which tasks serve as the core framework of the curriculum rather than merely supplementary
activities. His findings were notable because they contradicted widespread beliefs about the
necessity of explicit instruction in language learning.
Prabhu's ideas have continued to evolve over the years through the contributions of many
other researchers seeking to provide a more systematic explanation of the effectiveness of certain
tasks. Long proposed the interaction hypothesis in 1985, emphasizing the importance of language
development for learners to negotiate meaning while performing a communicative task. When
learners encounter communication problems and try to solve them by repeating, asking for
clarification, and reformulating, they tend to focus more on the form of the language than on other
aspects of the task. According to Long, this provides learners with a context for learning, allowing
them to notice and process the language's form and incorporate it into their interlanguage system.
This interaction hypothesis provided a psycholinguistic basis for the design of a communicative
task, which was often neglected in Prabhu's approach.
Willis (1996) translated this theoretical foundation into a practical teaching framework for
classroom use. Her three-phase model—covering pre-task preparation, during-task activity, and
post-task focus on language—provided a feasible sequence that maintained the communicative
nature of tasks while allowing explicit focus on form after the task. The significance of Willis's
framework lies in its clear pedagogical structure and its explicit recognition that attention to form
and meaning are compatible. An effectively planned task cycle can guide learners through both
focus areas in a way that supports, rather than hinders, communicative development. This
framework, further refined by Long (2015) and Willis and Willis (2007), shaped the instructional
design of this study.
Defining Pedagogical Tasks in EFL Contexts
A persistent challenge in the task-based literature concerns the definition of what, precisely,
a task is. The term has been used in ways that range from very broad, covering virtually any
classroom activity, to quite narrow, restricting it to activities that closely simulate real-world
communicative demands. Ellis (2003, p. 16) offered a definition that has become widely cited in
the field, describing a task as “a workplan that requires learners to process language pragmatically
in order to achieve an outcome that can be evaluated in terms of whether the correct or appropriate
propositional content has been conveyed.” Several aspects of this definition deserve comment in
relation to the present research. First, it is outcome-oriented, not process-oriented. That is, a task
is seen in terms of what the student does or produces, not in terms of how he or she does it.
Second, it places meaning at the heart of the task. The quality of the performance is assessed
communicatively, not structurally. Third, it refers to planning and design in the notion of a
‘workplan’. That is, tasks are seen as constructed, not spontaneous, interactions.
improve their grammatical skills by consistently engaging in meaning-focused tasks, without ever
explicitly learning grammar rules. Prabhu called this the ‘strong’ form of task-based teaching, in
which tasks serve as the core framework of the curriculum rather than merely supplementary
activities. His findings were notable because they contradicted widespread beliefs about the
necessity of explicit instruction in language learning.
Prabhu's ideas have continued to evolve over the years through the contributions of many
other researchers seeking to provide a more systematic explanation of the effectiveness of certain
tasks. Long proposed the interaction hypothesis in 1985, emphasizing the importance of language
development for learners to negotiate meaning while performing a communicative task. When
learners encounter communication problems and try to solve them by repeating, asking for
clarification, and reformulating, they tend to focus more on the form of the language than on other
aspects of the task. According to Long, this provides learners with a context for learning, allowing
them to notice and process the language's form and incorporate it into their interlanguage system.
This interaction hypothesis provided a psycholinguistic basis for the design of a communicative
task, which was often neglected in Prabhu's approach.
Willis (1996) translated this theoretical foundation into a practical teaching framework for
classroom use. Her three-phase model—covering pre-task preparation, during-task activity, and
post-task focus on language—provided a feasible sequence that maintained the communicative
nature of tasks while allowing explicit focus on form after the task. The significance of Willis's
framework lies in its clear pedagogical structure and its explicit recognition that attention to form
and meaning are compatible. An effectively planned task cycle can guide learners through both
focus areas in a way that supports, rather than hinders, communicative development. This
framework, further refined by Long (2015) and Willis and Willis (2007), shaped the instructional
design of this study.
Defining Pedagogical Tasks in EFL Contexts
A persistent challenge in the task-based literature concerns the definition of what, precisely,
a task is. The term has been used in ways that range from very broad, covering virtually any
classroom activity, to quite narrow, restricting it to activities that closely simulate real-world
communicative demands. Ellis (2003, p. 16) offered a definition that has become widely cited in
the field, describing a task as “a workplan that requires learners to process language pragmatically
in order to achieve an outcome that can be evaluated in terms of whether the correct or appropriate
propositional content has been conveyed.” Several aspects of this definition deserve comment in
relation to the present research. First, it is outcome-oriented, not process-oriented. That is, a task
is seen in terms of what the student does or produces, not in terms of how he or she does it.
Second, it places meaning at the heart of the task. The quality of the performance is assessed
communicatively, not structurally. Third, it refers to planning and design in the notion of a
‘workplan’. That is, tasks are seen as constructed, not spontaneous, interactions.
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3037
Bygate, Skehan, and Swain (2001, p. 11) offered a complementary definition that added a
key dimension by stating that tasks “require learners to use language, with a focus on meaning,
to achieve a goal.” The inclusion of the term ‘goal’ clearly sets tasks apart from exercises in a
practical way. An exercise usually targets a linguistic goal, such as practicing the present perfect
or transforming passive sentences correctly. On the other hand, the goal of a task is to achieve a
communicative goal, such as writing a letter to a friend describing your neighborhood or
presenting a short argument for or against a school rule. The difference is important because it
changes the focus of assessment from grammatical correctness to communicative achievement.
When learners have to achieve a communicative goal, they tend to use their full repertoire of
language skills more than when they have to focus on grammatical accuracy. It is for this reason
that task-based approaches tend to produce more and varied output than exercise-based
approaches.
In the specific context of EFL writing instruction at the primary level, the concept of a
writing task requires additional specification. Young learners in a context such as Ambato have
not yet acquired the metalinguistic knowledge which secondary-level learners will bring to the
explicit teaching of writing. Young learners’ knowledge of what a text is, what it is used for, and
how it should be constructed will be implicit and based on exposure, not instruction. A writing
task with this type of learner will require particular attention to the scaffolding provided in the
pre-task stage and to the genuineness of the communicative purpose set up. If the task does not
create a genuine reason to write, ten-year-old learners are unlikely to experience the sense of
communicative investment that researchers have identified as the primary driver of writing
growth in task-based conditions (Lamb, 2004; Graham and Perin, 2007).
Comprehensible Output and the Role of Writing in Language Development
The theoretical case for task-based writing instruction draws heavily on Swain’s (1985)
output hypothesis, which emerged as a corrective to Krashen’s (1982) influential but input-centred
account of language acquisition. Krashen had argued that comprehensible input is the primary,
and possibly the only, mechanism through which learners acquire new language. Swain
challenged this position on the basis of observations from immersion classrooms in Canada,
where learners who had received several years of comprehensible input in the target language still
produced output that was noticeably non-native-like in its morphosyntactic features. Her
conclusion was that comprehensible input alone is insufficient to drive full grammatical
development and that learners need opportunities to produce the target language in ways that force
them to notice the gaps between their current competence and the target norm.
Writing is, from this perspective, an exceptionally productive site for language
development precisely because it imposes a kind of deliberate attention that spoken
communication does not. When learners write, they must hold their intended meaning in working
memory while simultaneously selecting appropriate lexical items, constructing grammatically
Bygate, Skehan, and Swain (2001, p. 11) offered a complementary definition that added a
key dimension by stating that tasks “require learners to use language, with a focus on meaning,
to achieve a goal.” The inclusion of the term ‘goal’ clearly sets tasks apart from exercises in a
practical way. An exercise usually targets a linguistic goal, such as practicing the present perfect
or transforming passive sentences correctly. On the other hand, the goal of a task is to achieve a
communicative goal, such as writing a letter to a friend describing your neighborhood or
presenting a short argument for or against a school rule. The difference is important because it
changes the focus of assessment from grammatical correctness to communicative achievement.
When learners have to achieve a communicative goal, they tend to use their full repertoire of
language skills more than when they have to focus on grammatical accuracy. It is for this reason
that task-based approaches tend to produce more and varied output than exercise-based
approaches.
In the specific context of EFL writing instruction at the primary level, the concept of a
writing task requires additional specification. Young learners in a context such as Ambato have
not yet acquired the metalinguistic knowledge which secondary-level learners will bring to the
explicit teaching of writing. Young learners’ knowledge of what a text is, what it is used for, and
how it should be constructed will be implicit and based on exposure, not instruction. A writing
task with this type of learner will require particular attention to the scaffolding provided in the
pre-task stage and to the genuineness of the communicative purpose set up. If the task does not
create a genuine reason to write, ten-year-old learners are unlikely to experience the sense of
communicative investment that researchers have identified as the primary driver of writing
growth in task-based conditions (Lamb, 2004; Graham and Perin, 2007).
Comprehensible Output and the Role of Writing in Language Development
The theoretical case for task-based writing instruction draws heavily on Swain’s (1985)
output hypothesis, which emerged as a corrective to Krashen’s (1982) influential but input-centred
account of language acquisition. Krashen had argued that comprehensible input is the primary,
and possibly the only, mechanism through which learners acquire new language. Swain
challenged this position on the basis of observations from immersion classrooms in Canada,
where learners who had received several years of comprehensible input in the target language still
produced output that was noticeably non-native-like in its morphosyntactic features. Her
conclusion was that comprehensible input alone is insufficient to drive full grammatical
development and that learners need opportunities to produce the target language in ways that force
them to notice the gaps between their current competence and the target norm.
Writing is, from this perspective, an exceptionally productive site for language
development precisely because it imposes a kind of deliberate attention that spoken
communication does not. When learners write, they must hold their intended meaning in working
memory while simultaneously selecting appropriate lexical items, constructing grammatically
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3038
acceptable structures, and organising their ideas into a coherent sequence. This multiplicity of
demands can be cognitively demanding, particularly for young learners at low proficiency levels.
However, it also creates repeated opportunities for noticing, as Swain described, the engine of
grammatical development. Schmidt’s (1990) noticing hypothesis provides a compatible account,
arguing that conscious attention to formal features of the input and output is a necessary condition
for those features to become available for acquisition. Together, the output hypothesis and the
noticing hypothesis provide a strong theoretical warrant for designing tasks that push learners to
produce written texts that exceed their current comfort level.
The connection between output and accuracy development is more intricate than Swain and
Schmidt proposed. Skehan’s (1998) model suggests that limited attentional resources mean
fluency, accuracy, and complexity compete for cognitive capacity during tasks, with task
conditions influencing the balance among these factors. Tasks with high cognitive demands, such
as those involving unfamiliar content, often lead to less accurate output because attention is
focused on managing content rather than monitoring language. This has significant implications
for designing writing tasks in EFL settings, especially with young learners whose content
knowledge and language skills often differ greatly. Teachers should therefore choose topics that
reduce cognitive load related to content. When students write about topics they know well,
Skehan’s model predicts that attention shifts toward linguistic form, resulting in more accurate
and complex output. The data from this study support this prediction.
Sociocultural Theory and the Social Dimensions of Writing
A purely cognitive approach to the development of writing skills, no matter how
sophisticated its theoretical underpinnings, misses one important dimension that is clearly
highlighted in research on young writers: the social dimension. The zone of proximal
development as discussed in the work of Vygotsky (1978) clearly points to how the inclusion of
social factors in writing activities can promote the development of writing skills. According to
Vygotsky, the zone of proximal development is the difference between what the child can do on
his own and what he can do under guidance. The inclusion of this concept in the discussion of
how writing skills can be developed points to how the inclusion of social factors in writing can
promote the development of writing skills. Lantolf and Thorne (2006) extended Vygotsky’s
framework to the specific context of second language development and placed particular
emphasis on the concept of mediation: the idea that higher mental functions, including the ability
to produce written text in a second language, develop through the internalisation of cultural tools
and social practices. For second language writers, this means that the capacity to compose
independently in the target language emerges from a history of assisted performance in social
contexts. The implication for task design is significant. Tasks that ask students to write for a real
or simulated audience, that create conditions for peer feedback, and that situate writing within a
acceptable structures, and organising their ideas into a coherent sequence. This multiplicity of
demands can be cognitively demanding, particularly for young learners at low proficiency levels.
However, it also creates repeated opportunities for noticing, as Swain described, the engine of
grammatical development. Schmidt’s (1990) noticing hypothesis provides a compatible account,
arguing that conscious attention to formal features of the input and output is a necessary condition
for those features to become available for acquisition. Together, the output hypothesis and the
noticing hypothesis provide a strong theoretical warrant for designing tasks that push learners to
produce written texts that exceed their current comfort level.
The connection between output and accuracy development is more intricate than Swain and
Schmidt proposed. Skehan’s (1998) model suggests that limited attentional resources mean
fluency, accuracy, and complexity compete for cognitive capacity during tasks, with task
conditions influencing the balance among these factors. Tasks with high cognitive demands, such
as those involving unfamiliar content, often lead to less accurate output because attention is
focused on managing content rather than monitoring language. This has significant implications
for designing writing tasks in EFL settings, especially with young learners whose content
knowledge and language skills often differ greatly. Teachers should therefore choose topics that
reduce cognitive load related to content. When students write about topics they know well,
Skehan’s model predicts that attention shifts toward linguistic form, resulting in more accurate
and complex output. The data from this study support this prediction.
Sociocultural Theory and the Social Dimensions of Writing
A purely cognitive approach to the development of writing skills, no matter how
sophisticated its theoretical underpinnings, misses one important dimension that is clearly
highlighted in research on young writers: the social dimension. The zone of proximal
development as discussed in the work of Vygotsky (1978) clearly points to how the inclusion of
social factors in writing activities can promote the development of writing skills. According to
Vygotsky, the zone of proximal development is the difference between what the child can do on
his own and what he can do under guidance. The inclusion of this concept in the discussion of
how writing skills can be developed points to how the inclusion of social factors in writing can
promote the development of writing skills. Lantolf and Thorne (2006) extended Vygotsky’s
framework to the specific context of second language development and placed particular
emphasis on the concept of mediation: the idea that higher mental functions, including the ability
to produce written text in a second language, develop through the internalisation of cultural tools
and social practices. For second language writers, this means that the capacity to compose
independently in the target language emerges from a history of assisted performance in social
contexts. The implication for task design is significant. Tasks that ask students to write for a real
or simulated audience, that create conditions for peer feedback, and that situate writing within a
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3039
social purpose are not merely motivating. They are developmentally productive in a way that
isolated, teacher-directed writing assignments are not.
The sociocultural perspective also draws attention to the role of identity in second language
writing. Lamb (2004) argued that learners’ motivation to engage with a foreign language is shaped
by their sense of who they are and who they want to become, and that tasks which allow learners
to express aspects of their identity are more likely to produce sustained engagement than tasks
that are culturally neutral or distant. For children in Ambato, whose identity is tied to a specific
Andean community with its own cultural calendar, linguistic heritage, and geographic
particularity, this argument carries direct practical implications. Writing tasks that invite students
to represent their own world in the target language are not merely culturally responsive. They
create the conditions under which learners are most likely to experience what Lamb described as
integrative motivation, a motivational orientation that correlates strongly with writing persistence
and quality in EFL contexts.
EFL Writing Instruction in Latin American Primary Contexts
The specific context of EFL writing instruction in Latin American primary schools has been
underrepresented in the applied linguistics research literature, which has historically concentrated
on secondary and tertiary level learners in East Asian and European settings. The limited research
that does exist, however, suggests a pattern consistent with what was observed at the institution
in this study. Form-focused, grammar-centred instruction has been the dominant model in the
region, driven partly by national curriculum frameworks that prioritise structural coverage and
partly by the relatively low English proficiency of many primary school teachers, who tend to
feel more confident managing controlled practice activities than open-ended communicative tasks
(Chacón, 2005).
Ecuador presents a particular variant of this pattern. The Ministerio de Educación del
Ecuador (2019) introduced an updated national English curriculum that acknowledged the
importance of communicative competence and aligned the country’s learning objectives with the
Common European Framework of Reference. In practice, however, the transition from structural
to communicative instruction has been uneven and has proceeded more rapidly in urban private
schools than in fiscomisional or fiscal institutions serving working-class communities. Research
conducted in comparable Ecuadorian contexts has documented the persistence of a gap between
curriculum intentions and classroom practice that is particularly pronounced in the written skills
domain (Calle et al., 2012). Students are expected to develop communicative writing ability under
a national framework that endorses communicative approaches, but they are routinely taught
through methods that do not support that development.
This structural tension between curriculum intentions and classroom practice provides the
immediate research context for the present study. Task-based learning has been proposed as one
mechanism through which the gap might be bridged, but the empirical evidence for its
social purpose are not merely motivating. They are developmentally productive in a way that
isolated, teacher-directed writing assignments are not.
The sociocultural perspective also draws attention to the role of identity in second language
writing. Lamb (2004) argued that learners’ motivation to engage with a foreign language is shaped
by their sense of who they are and who they want to become, and that tasks which allow learners
to express aspects of their identity are more likely to produce sustained engagement than tasks
that are culturally neutral or distant. For children in Ambato, whose identity is tied to a specific
Andean community with its own cultural calendar, linguistic heritage, and geographic
particularity, this argument carries direct practical implications. Writing tasks that invite students
to represent their own world in the target language are not merely culturally responsive. They
create the conditions under which learners are most likely to experience what Lamb described as
integrative motivation, a motivational orientation that correlates strongly with writing persistence
and quality in EFL contexts.
EFL Writing Instruction in Latin American Primary Contexts
The specific context of EFL writing instruction in Latin American primary schools has been
underrepresented in the applied linguistics research literature, which has historically concentrated
on secondary and tertiary level learners in East Asian and European settings. The limited research
that does exist, however, suggests a pattern consistent with what was observed at the institution
in this study. Form-focused, grammar-centred instruction has been the dominant model in the
region, driven partly by national curriculum frameworks that prioritise structural coverage and
partly by the relatively low English proficiency of many primary school teachers, who tend to
feel more confident managing controlled practice activities than open-ended communicative tasks
(Chacón, 2005).
Ecuador presents a particular variant of this pattern. The Ministerio de Educación del
Ecuador (2019) introduced an updated national English curriculum that acknowledged the
importance of communicative competence and aligned the country’s learning objectives with the
Common European Framework of Reference. In practice, however, the transition from structural
to communicative instruction has been uneven and has proceeded more rapidly in urban private
schools than in fiscomisional or fiscal institutions serving working-class communities. Research
conducted in comparable Ecuadorian contexts has documented the persistence of a gap between
curriculum intentions and classroom practice that is particularly pronounced in the written skills
domain (Calle et al., 2012). Students are expected to develop communicative writing ability under
a national framework that endorses communicative approaches, but they are routinely taught
through methods that do not support that development.
This structural tension between curriculum intentions and classroom practice provides the
immediate research context for the present study. Task-based learning has been proposed as one
mechanism through which the gap might be bridged, but the empirical evidence for its
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3040
effectiveness at the primary level in Ecuador is thin. Most of the TBL research conducted in
Ecuador has focused on secondary and tertiary learners in urban centres, and relatively little
attention has been paid to the particular challenges that arise when task-based approaches are
introduced to young learners with minimal English exposure outside the classroom. The present
study attempts to contribute to this gap by documenting what happens to writing quality when a
carefully sequenced TBL intervention is introduced to a group of fifth-grade students in a
fiscomisional school in Ambato.
Writing Development in Young EFL Learners
Writing development in young EFL learners follows a trajectory that is shaped by both
cognitive and linguistic factors that are qualitatively different from those operating in adolescent
or adult writers. Cameron (2001) noted that primary-level language learners bring to the writing
task a set of cognitive tools that are still developing, including working memory capacity,
metalinguistic awareness, and the ability to plan and monitor extended written production. These
developmental constraints mean that writing tasks for young learners need to be designed with a
level of scaffolding that would be unnecessary for older learners and that the criteria used to
evaluate their output need to be calibrated to what is developmentally realistic at the relevant age
and proficiency level.
At the same time, young learners bring certain advantages to the language learning
enterprise that older learners do not. Their affective filters tend to be lower, their willingness to
engage with creative and imaginative tasks is generally higher, and their susceptibility to social
motivational influences, including the desire to share their writing with peers and to receive
recognition from classmates, is particularly pronounced (Pinter, 2006). Task-based approaches
that incorporate peer sharing and audience-oriented writing can exploit these motivational
resources in ways that more traditional instructional designs cannot. The challenge for the teacher-
designer is to balance the developmental constraints that limit what young learners can produce
with the motivational affordances that task-based conditions can activate.
Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) drew an influential distinction between two models of
writing: knowledge-telling and knowledge-transforming. Knowledge-telling describes the
process through which immature writers simply transcribe what they know about a topic in the
order in which it comes to mind, without engaging in the kind of goal-directed planning and
revision that characterises more developed writing. Knowledge-transforming describes the more
sophisticated process through which writers use the act of writing as a tool for refining and
developing their thinking about a topic, moving back and forth between content and form in a
recursive problem-solving process. Most young EFL learners at the A1 level operate in the
knowledge-telling mode, and the pedagogical task for a TBL intervention at this level is not to
push them prematurely into knowledge-transforming writing but to create conditions under which
knowledge-telling becomes progressively more organised, purposeful, and communicatively
effectiveness at the primary level in Ecuador is thin. Most of the TBL research conducted in
Ecuador has focused on secondary and tertiary learners in urban centres, and relatively little
attention has been paid to the particular challenges that arise when task-based approaches are
introduced to young learners with minimal English exposure outside the classroom. The present
study attempts to contribute to this gap by documenting what happens to writing quality when a
carefully sequenced TBL intervention is introduced to a group of fifth-grade students in a
fiscomisional school in Ambato.
Writing Development in Young EFL Learners
Writing development in young EFL learners follows a trajectory that is shaped by both
cognitive and linguistic factors that are qualitatively different from those operating in adolescent
or adult writers. Cameron (2001) noted that primary-level language learners bring to the writing
task a set of cognitive tools that are still developing, including working memory capacity,
metalinguistic awareness, and the ability to plan and monitor extended written production. These
developmental constraints mean that writing tasks for young learners need to be designed with a
level of scaffolding that would be unnecessary for older learners and that the criteria used to
evaluate their output need to be calibrated to what is developmentally realistic at the relevant age
and proficiency level.
At the same time, young learners bring certain advantages to the language learning
enterprise that older learners do not. Their affective filters tend to be lower, their willingness to
engage with creative and imaginative tasks is generally higher, and their susceptibility to social
motivational influences, including the desire to share their writing with peers and to receive
recognition from classmates, is particularly pronounced (Pinter, 2006). Task-based approaches
that incorporate peer sharing and audience-oriented writing can exploit these motivational
resources in ways that more traditional instructional designs cannot. The challenge for the teacher-
designer is to balance the developmental constraints that limit what young learners can produce
with the motivational affordances that task-based conditions can activate.
Bereiter and Scardamalia (1987) drew an influential distinction between two models of
writing: knowledge-telling and knowledge-transforming. Knowledge-telling describes the
process through which immature writers simply transcribe what they know about a topic in the
order in which it comes to mind, without engaging in the kind of goal-directed planning and
revision that characterises more developed writing. Knowledge-transforming describes the more
sophisticated process through which writers use the act of writing as a tool for refining and
developing their thinking about a topic, moving back and forth between content and form in a
recursive problem-solving process. Most young EFL learners at the A1 level operate in the
knowledge-telling mode, and the pedagogical task for a TBL intervention at this level is not to
push them prematurely into knowledge-transforming writing but to create conditions under which
knowledge-telling becomes progressively more organised, purposeful, and communicatively
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3041
adequate. The results of the present study suggest that a carefully sequenced task cycle can
produce meaningful progress along this developmental continuum over a relatively short
intervention period.
Motivation, Affect, and EFL Writing Engagement
The motivational dimensions of EFL writing have been explored through a number of
theoretical frameworks that converge on the conclusion that affective factors are not merely
supplementary to linguistic development but are constitutive of it. Dörnyei’s (2001) framework
of language learning motivation proposed that the motivation to engage in L2 writing is shaped
by three broad levels: the language level, which includes the learner’s orientation toward the target
language and its culture; the learner level, which encompasses stable personality traits and general
motivational dispositions; and the learning situation level, which includes course-specific and
teacher-specific motivational variables. The last of these three levels is the most directly amenable
to pedagogical intervention, and it is here that task design choices have the greatest leverage.
At the learning situation level, the factors that research has most consistently identified as
motivationally significant for young EFL writers include task relevance, perceived
communicative purpose, and the opportunity for social sharing of written products. Ryan and
Deci’s (2000) self-determination theory provides a compatible account, proposing that intrinsic
motivation for an activity is supported when three basic psychological needs are met: the need for
competence, the need for autonomy, and the need for relatedness. A well-designed writing task
can address all three of these needs simultaneously. By selecting topics within the learner’s
knowledge and experience, the task supports a sense of competence. By allowing open-ended
rather than template-based responses, it supports autonomy. By situating the writing in a social
context where peers will read and respond to the text, it supports relatedness. The convergence of
these motivational conditions in a single task is one of the reasons why task-based writing
approaches tend to outperform exercise-based approaches in motivational as well as linguistic
terms.
In the Andean highland context of this study, motivational considerations have an
additional cultural layer. Hornberger (1989) observed that learners in indigenous and mestizo
communities in the Andean region often experience foreign language instruction as linguistically
and culturally alienating, particularly when the content and topics of instruction are disconnected
from their everyday world. Writing tasks that draw on students’ knowledge of their own
community, its celebrations, its geography, and its social practices represent a form of culturally
responsive pedagogy that addresses this alienation directly. The evidence from this study,
discussed in the results section, suggests that this connection between task content and local
identity was one of the most consequential design decisions made during the intervention,
producing measurable differences in writing quality between locally grounded and globally
generic tasks.
adequate. The results of the present study suggest that a carefully sequenced task cycle can
produce meaningful progress along this developmental continuum over a relatively short
intervention period.
Motivation, Affect, and EFL Writing Engagement
The motivational dimensions of EFL writing have been explored through a number of
theoretical frameworks that converge on the conclusion that affective factors are not merely
supplementary to linguistic development but are constitutive of it. Dörnyei’s (2001) framework
of language learning motivation proposed that the motivation to engage in L2 writing is shaped
by three broad levels: the language level, which includes the learner’s orientation toward the target
language and its culture; the learner level, which encompasses stable personality traits and general
motivational dispositions; and the learning situation level, which includes course-specific and
teacher-specific motivational variables. The last of these three levels is the most directly amenable
to pedagogical intervention, and it is here that task design choices have the greatest leverage.
At the learning situation level, the factors that research has most consistently identified as
motivationally significant for young EFL writers include task relevance, perceived
communicative purpose, and the opportunity for social sharing of written products. Ryan and
Deci’s (2000) self-determination theory provides a compatible account, proposing that intrinsic
motivation for an activity is supported when three basic psychological needs are met: the need for
competence, the need for autonomy, and the need for relatedness. A well-designed writing task
can address all three of these needs simultaneously. By selecting topics within the learner’s
knowledge and experience, the task supports a sense of competence. By allowing open-ended
rather than template-based responses, it supports autonomy. By situating the writing in a social
context where peers will read and respond to the text, it supports relatedness. The convergence of
these motivational conditions in a single task is one of the reasons why task-based writing
approaches tend to outperform exercise-based approaches in motivational as well as linguistic
terms.
In the Andean highland context of this study, motivational considerations have an
additional cultural layer. Hornberger (1989) observed that learners in indigenous and mestizo
communities in the Andean region often experience foreign language instruction as linguistically
and culturally alienating, particularly when the content and topics of instruction are disconnected
from their everyday world. Writing tasks that draw on students’ knowledge of their own
community, its celebrations, its geography, and its social practices represent a form of culturally
responsive pedagogy that addresses this alienation directly. The evidence from this study,
discussed in the results section, suggests that this connection between task content and local
identity was one of the most consequential design decisions made during the intervention,
producing measurable differences in writing quality between locally grounded and globally
generic tasks.
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3042
MATERIALS AND METHODS
This study employed an action research design to align with its objectives. Burns (2010, p.
2) defined action research as “a self-reflective, systematic and critical approach to enquiry by
participants who are also the practitioners in an educational context.” This method was chosen to
generate insights from within the classroom rather than from an external viewpoint. Data
collection followed three iterative cycles, based on the spiral model described by Kemmis and
McTaggart (1988).
The participants were fifteen fifth-grade students from the same class in a fiscomisional
institution in Ecuador, assigned through standard procedures. At the start, they were aged ten to
eleven. Informal assessments showed most were at the A1 level of the Common European
Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2020). None attended private
language academies or accessed English through the internet, travel, or family. This profile
reflects the broader student population in similar institutions in Tungurahua province.
The intervention was conducted over ten weeks, with each session lasting ninety minutes
and taking place once a week. The activities were organized into three clusters, each with a
different thematic focus and increasing levels of communicative complexity. The first set of
activities, covering the first three weeks, was based on writing descriptive texts about familiar
spaces, objects, and people, with visual stimuli from Ambato. The second set, covering weeks
four to seven, included writing narrative texts about private experiences and events in the
community, including celebrations and geographical features. The third set, covering the last three
weeks, was based on writing simple opinion texts about school and neighborhood topics, with
open-ended prompts instead of sentence frames. Each session followed the three-stage structure
proposed by Willis (1996) and refined by Long (2015). In the pre-task phase, relevant vocabulary
was introduced through visual and contextual prompts, and a model text was provided to illustrate
communicative purpose, not for imitation. Skehan (1998, p. 95) noted that pre-task preparation
“allows learners to marshal the attentional resources that can then be directed toward form during
the task itself,” which guided session design. During the task phase, students worked individually
or in pairs, focusing on meaning over grammatical accuracy. The post-task phase included peer
sharing and brief attention to recurring language difficulties. This was done carefully, as Ellis
(2003) observed that too much focus on form after tasks can reduce fluency gains.
Writing quality was evaluated using an analytic rubric adapted from Jacobs et al. (1981),
customized for the group’s A1 proficiency. The rubric assessed textual organisation, lexical
diversity, grammatical accuracy, and communicative effectiveness, each scored on a five-point
scale for a total of twenty points. Two evaluators—the teacher-researcher and an outside EFL
assessment expert—independently scored all samples. Inter-rater reliability, determined by
MATERIALS AND METHODS
This study employed an action research design to align with its objectives. Burns (2010, p.
2) defined action research as “a self-reflective, systematic and critical approach to enquiry by
participants who are also the practitioners in an educational context.” This method was chosen to
generate insights from within the classroom rather than from an external viewpoint. Data
collection followed three iterative cycles, based on the spiral model described by Kemmis and
McTaggart (1988).
The participants were fifteen fifth-grade students from the same class in a fiscomisional
institution in Ecuador, assigned through standard procedures. At the start, they were aged ten to
eleven. Informal assessments showed most were at the A1 level of the Common European
Framework of Reference for Languages (Council of Europe, 2020). None attended private
language academies or accessed English through the internet, travel, or family. This profile
reflects the broader student population in similar institutions in Tungurahua province.
The intervention was conducted over ten weeks, with each session lasting ninety minutes
and taking place once a week. The activities were organized into three clusters, each with a
different thematic focus and increasing levels of communicative complexity. The first set of
activities, covering the first three weeks, was based on writing descriptive texts about familiar
spaces, objects, and people, with visual stimuli from Ambato. The second set, covering weeks
four to seven, included writing narrative texts about private experiences and events in the
community, including celebrations and geographical features. The third set, covering the last three
weeks, was based on writing simple opinion texts about school and neighborhood topics, with
open-ended prompts instead of sentence frames. Each session followed the three-stage structure
proposed by Willis (1996) and refined by Long (2015). In the pre-task phase, relevant vocabulary
was introduced through visual and contextual prompts, and a model text was provided to illustrate
communicative purpose, not for imitation. Skehan (1998, p. 95) noted that pre-task preparation
“allows learners to marshal the attentional resources that can then be directed toward form during
the task itself,” which guided session design. During the task phase, students worked individually
or in pairs, focusing on meaning over grammatical accuracy. The post-task phase included peer
sharing and brief attention to recurring language difficulties. This was done carefully, as Ellis
(2003) observed that too much focus on form after tasks can reduce fluency gains.
Writing quality was evaluated using an analytic rubric adapted from Jacobs et al. (1981),
customized for the group’s A1 proficiency. The rubric assessed textual organisation, lexical
diversity, grammatical accuracy, and communicative effectiveness, each scored on a five-point
scale for a total of twenty points. Two evaluators—the teacher-researcher and an outside EFL
assessment expert—independently scored all samples. Inter-rater reliability, determined by
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3043
Cohen’s kappa, ranged from 0.74 to 0.81, signifying substantial agreement (Landis & Koch,
1977). Any discrepancies were resolved through discussion before finalizing the scores.
Qualitative data were collected using two instruments. Students kept brief reflective
journals in English after each session. These journals were ungraded, and students were told that
their writing quality wouldn’t be assessed. Each entry responded to three prompts: what the task
asked for, what they found challenging, and whether they shared something meaningful. Boud
and Walker (1998, p. 363) described reflective writing as a way for learners to “re-examine and
make sense of their own experiences in ways that lead to new understandings,” which was the
goal of the journals. The second tool was the researcher’s teaching journal, kept over the ten
weeks to note observations of students’ engagement, implementation difficulties, and moments of
genuine communication.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The quantitative results reveal improvements across all four dimensions of the rubric during
the intervention, as shown in Table 1. The most significant gain was in textual organization, with
a group mean increasing from 1.80 to 3.60 by week ten. Lexical variety saw a similar rise, with a
mean increasing from 1.90 to 3.40. Communicative adequacy also improved, moving from 1.70
to 3.50. Grammatical accuracy exhibited the smallest increase, with a mean rising from 1.60 to
2.70 by the end of the study. All findings were statistically significant at the .001 level according
to paired-samples t-tests. Effect sizes were large for textual organization, lexical variety, and
communicative adequacy, and moderate for grammatical accuracy. These results largely align
with Rahimpour and Hashemi (2011), who observed greater improvements in discourse-level
features than in morphosyntactic accuracy among similar proficiency EFL students undergoing
task-based instruction, despite a shorter intervention duration.
Table 1
Writing Rubric: Pre- and Post-Intervention Mean Scores (N = 15)
Textual Organisation 1.80 3.60 +1.80 9.43 .000
Lexical Variety 1.90 3.40 +1.50 8.17 .000
Communicative
Adequacy
1.70 3.50 +1.80 9.72 .000
Grammatical
Accuracy
1.60 2.70 +1.10 4.58 .000
Note. M = mean score on a 1–5 scale. t (14) = paired-samples t-statistic with 14 degrees of freedom. All differences
were significant at p < .001. Gain = Post-M minus Pre-M.
The pattern in the grammatical accuracy data deserves closer attention. The students in this
group had not yet developed the kind of explicit monitoring capacity that enables writers to
systematically identify and correct their own errors. What was observed instead, particularly in
Cohen’s kappa, ranged from 0.74 to 0.81, signifying substantial agreement (Landis & Koch,
1977). Any discrepancies were resolved through discussion before finalizing the scores.
Qualitative data were collected using two instruments. Students kept brief reflective
journals in English after each session. These journals were ungraded, and students were told that
their writing quality wouldn’t be assessed. Each entry responded to three prompts: what the task
asked for, what they found challenging, and whether they shared something meaningful. Boud
and Walker (1998, p. 363) described reflective writing as a way for learners to “re-examine and
make sense of their own experiences in ways that lead to new understandings,” which was the
goal of the journals. The second tool was the researcher’s teaching journal, kept over the ten
weeks to note observations of students’ engagement, implementation difficulties, and moments of
genuine communication.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The quantitative results reveal improvements across all four dimensions of the rubric during
the intervention, as shown in Table 1. The most significant gain was in textual organization, with
a group mean increasing from 1.80 to 3.60 by week ten. Lexical variety saw a similar rise, with a
mean increasing from 1.90 to 3.40. Communicative adequacy also improved, moving from 1.70
to 3.50. Grammatical accuracy exhibited the smallest increase, with a mean rising from 1.60 to
2.70 by the end of the study. All findings were statistically significant at the .001 level according
to paired-samples t-tests. Effect sizes were large for textual organization, lexical variety, and
communicative adequacy, and moderate for grammatical accuracy. These results largely align
with Rahimpour and Hashemi (2011), who observed greater improvements in discourse-level
features than in morphosyntactic accuracy among similar proficiency EFL students undergoing
task-based instruction, despite a shorter intervention duration.
Table 1
Writing Rubric: Pre- and Post-Intervention Mean Scores (N = 15)
Textual Organisation 1.80 3.60 +1.80 9.43 .000
Lexical Variety 1.90 3.40 +1.50 8.17 .000
Communicative
Adequacy
1.70 3.50 +1.80 9.72 .000
Grammatical
Accuracy
1.60 2.70 +1.10 4.58 .000
Note. M = mean score on a 1–5 scale. t (14) = paired-samples t-statistic with 14 degrees of freedom. All differences
were significant at p < .001. Gain = Post-M minus Pre-M.
The pattern in the grammatical accuracy data deserves closer attention. The students in this
group had not yet developed the kind of explicit monitoring capacity that enables writers to
systematically identify and correct their own errors. What was observed instead, particularly in
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3044
the latter half of the intervention, was an emergent sensitivity to when something sounded wrong
without an ability to name the underlying rule. Swain (1985) described this phenomenon in her
discussion of comprehensible output and noted that pushing learners to produce language, rather
than to understand it, generates noticing processes that eventually feed grammatical development.
The journal entries from weeks seven through ten contain several unprompted observations by
students that their texts did not “feel right” in places they could not identify. That kind of
metalinguistic uncertainty, uncomfortable as it is for the learner, may, in fact, be a productive
precondition for later increases in accuracy.
The growth in textual organisation was the most immediately visible change in the writing
samples collected over the ten weeks. At the baseline, the majority of texts could be described as
inventories: strings of related sentences absent any clear opening or closing move. By week six,
most students had begun to produce texts that opened with some form of orienting statement and
closed with a sentence that signalled completion. This did not come from explicit instruction on
paragraph structure. It appears to have developed by repeated exposure to purposeful model texts
in the pre-task phase and through the gradual accumulation of what it feels like to finish saying
something. Graham and Perin (2007, p. 17) found, in their synthesis of writing intervention
research, that “the most consistent predictor of writing quality improvement is the frequency with
which students write for real audiences,” and the peer sharing component of the task cycle may
have created at least an approximation of that condition.
Three themes emerged from the qualitative analysis of student journals. The first was a
pattern of deliberately discomforting behavior in the early weeks. Several students described
feeling uncertain and frustrated when they were not provided with a model to copy. This initial
resistance is consistent with what Doughty and Williams (1998) observed in classrooms
transitioning from form-focused to meaning-focused instruction: learners accustomed to
reproductive tasks often experience the absence of a template as a kind of abandonment. The
discomfort diminished considerably from week four onwards,however, and the teaching journal
records a pronounced shift in tone during the sessions centred on narrative tasks tied to the local
context in Ambato. Several students wrote that they wanted to finish their texts correctly because
the topics were “real”, a word that appeared in six separate journal entries. Lamb (2004, p. 7)
argued that learner investment in a task is most durable when the task connects to an identity the
learner wants to project, and writing about one’s own city and community appears to have
activated something close to that kind of investment.
The second theme was social motivation. Students in this age group proved to be acutely
responsive to peer evaluation, and the post-task sharing phase rapidly became the most engaged
segment of the lesson. Multiple journal entries across the group referred to the experience of
having a classmate read their work as a reason to write more carefully. This finding corresponds
with the argument made by Storch (2013, p. 18) that joint writing tasks generate “a form of
the latter half of the intervention, was an emergent sensitivity to when something sounded wrong
without an ability to name the underlying rule. Swain (1985) described this phenomenon in her
discussion of comprehensible output and noted that pushing learners to produce language, rather
than to understand it, generates noticing processes that eventually feed grammatical development.
The journal entries from weeks seven through ten contain several unprompted observations by
students that their texts did not “feel right” in places they could not identify. That kind of
metalinguistic uncertainty, uncomfortable as it is for the learner, may, in fact, be a productive
precondition for later increases in accuracy.
The growth in textual organisation was the most immediately visible change in the writing
samples collected over the ten weeks. At the baseline, the majority of texts could be described as
inventories: strings of related sentences absent any clear opening or closing move. By week six,
most students had begun to produce texts that opened with some form of orienting statement and
closed with a sentence that signalled completion. This did not come from explicit instruction on
paragraph structure. It appears to have developed by repeated exposure to purposeful model texts
in the pre-task phase and through the gradual accumulation of what it feels like to finish saying
something. Graham and Perin (2007, p. 17) found, in their synthesis of writing intervention
research, that “the most consistent predictor of writing quality improvement is the frequency with
which students write for real audiences,” and the peer sharing component of the task cycle may
have created at least an approximation of that condition.
Three themes emerged from the qualitative analysis of student journals. The first was a
pattern of deliberately discomforting behavior in the early weeks. Several students described
feeling uncertain and frustrated when they were not provided with a model to copy. This initial
resistance is consistent with what Doughty and Williams (1998) observed in classrooms
transitioning from form-focused to meaning-focused instruction: learners accustomed to
reproductive tasks often experience the absence of a template as a kind of abandonment. The
discomfort diminished considerably from week four onwards,however, and the teaching journal
records a pronounced shift in tone during the sessions centred on narrative tasks tied to the local
context in Ambato. Several students wrote that they wanted to finish their texts correctly because
the topics were “real”, a word that appeared in six separate journal entries. Lamb (2004, p. 7)
argued that learner investment in a task is most durable when the task connects to an identity the
learner wants to project, and writing about one’s own city and community appears to have
activated something close to that kind of investment.
The second theme was social motivation. Students in this age group proved to be acutely
responsive to peer evaluation, and the post-task sharing phase rapidly became the most engaged
segment of the lesson. Multiple journal entries across the group referred to the experience of
having a classmate read their work as a reason to write more carefully. This finding corresponds
with the argument made by Storch (2013, p. 18) that joint writing tasks generate “a form of
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3045
accountability that individual writing assignments rarely produce,” though in this case the
accountability was peer-directed rather than built into a collaborative writing structure. The
observation suggests that incorporating structured audience-oriented writing into EFL
programmes at the primary level may produce motivational effects that more conventional tasks
do not.
The third theme was an increasing sense of lexical ownership. In the final weeks of the
intervention, several students noted in their journals that they had chosen words themselves rather
than borrowing them from the model text or from a classmate. This kind of ownership over one’s
personal linguistic choices may appear modest from the outside, but it amounts to a significant
shift for learners who had spent several years in an environment in which copying was the primary
mode of written production. Lantolf and Thorne (2006, p. 58) described the movement from
reliance upon external linguistic resources to the internalisation of those resources as a core
dynamic in language development, and the journal evidence suggests that something of that kind
was beginning to occur in this group by the end of the study.
An unanticipated finding concerned the relationship between local cultural content and
writing quality. Tasks that drew on shared knowledge of Ambato’s identity, including references
to the Festival de las Flores y las Frutas, the volcanic scenery of Tungurahua, or the city’s artisan
markets, consistently produced texts that were longer, better organised, and lexically richer than
tasks that used generic or globally sourced content. This was not simply a motivational effect.
Kellogg (2008, p. 6) argued that writing quality is partly a function of the cognitive demand
imposed by the topic, and that “when content knowledge is secure, working memory resources
are freed for the linguistic and rhetorical demands of the material.” When students wrote about
what they knew from lived experience, those resources appear to have been made available in
ways that more distant or abstract topics did not produce.
Taken together, the quantitative and qualitative strands of the data converge on a picture of
writing development that is consistent with what the theoretical framework would predict but that
is also shaped in important ways by the specific social and geographic context of this study. The
gains in textual organisation and lexical variety reflect the kind of discourse-level development
that Swain’s (1985) output hypothesis associates with pushed production under communicative
conditions. The motivational patterns documented in the journals align with Dörnyei’s (2001)
account of situation-level motivation and with Ryan and Deci’s (2000) framework of basic
psychological needs. The role of local cultural content as a predictor of writing quality is
consistent with Skehan’s (1998) resource allocation model and with Hornberger’s (1989)
observations about culturally responsive instruction in Andean settings. What the data add to these
theoretical frameworks is a concrete demonstration that their predictions hold for ten-year-old
A1-level learners in a resource-limited fiscomisional school in Ecuador, a population that has
accountability that individual writing assignments rarely produce,” though in this case the
accountability was peer-directed rather than built into a collaborative writing structure. The
observation suggests that incorporating structured audience-oriented writing into EFL
programmes at the primary level may produce motivational effects that more conventional tasks
do not.
The third theme was an increasing sense of lexical ownership. In the final weeks of the
intervention, several students noted in their journals that they had chosen words themselves rather
than borrowing them from the model text or from a classmate. This kind of ownership over one’s
personal linguistic choices may appear modest from the outside, but it amounts to a significant
shift for learners who had spent several years in an environment in which copying was the primary
mode of written production. Lantolf and Thorne (2006, p. 58) described the movement from
reliance upon external linguistic resources to the internalisation of those resources as a core
dynamic in language development, and the journal evidence suggests that something of that kind
was beginning to occur in this group by the end of the study.
An unanticipated finding concerned the relationship between local cultural content and
writing quality. Tasks that drew on shared knowledge of Ambato’s identity, including references
to the Festival de las Flores y las Frutas, the volcanic scenery of Tungurahua, or the city’s artisan
markets, consistently produced texts that were longer, better organised, and lexically richer than
tasks that used generic or globally sourced content. This was not simply a motivational effect.
Kellogg (2008, p. 6) argued that writing quality is partly a function of the cognitive demand
imposed by the topic, and that “when content knowledge is secure, working memory resources
are freed for the linguistic and rhetorical demands of the material.” When students wrote about
what they knew from lived experience, those resources appear to have been made available in
ways that more distant or abstract topics did not produce.
Taken together, the quantitative and qualitative strands of the data converge on a picture of
writing development that is consistent with what the theoretical framework would predict but that
is also shaped in important ways by the specific social and geographic context of this study. The
gains in textual organisation and lexical variety reflect the kind of discourse-level development
that Swain’s (1985) output hypothesis associates with pushed production under communicative
conditions. The motivational patterns documented in the journals align with Dörnyei’s (2001)
account of situation-level motivation and with Ryan and Deci’s (2000) framework of basic
psychological needs. The role of local cultural content as a predictor of writing quality is
consistent with Skehan’s (1998) resource allocation model and with Hornberger’s (1989)
observations about culturally responsive instruction in Andean settings. What the data add to these
theoretical frameworks is a concrete demonstration that their predictions hold for ten-year-old
A1-level learners in a resource-limited fiscomisional school in Ecuador, a population that has
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3046
rarely appeared in the task-based learning research literature and whose writing development has
therefore been imperfectly understood.
CONCLUSIONS
This study examined whether task-based learning could lead to significant improvements
in the EFL writing skills of fifth-grade students at a fiscomisional institution in Ambato, Ecuador.
The data gathered over ten weeks support an affirmative answer, qualified by important internal
variations. Writing quality improved across all four rubric dimensions, with the largest and most
consistent gains recorded in textual organisation, lexical variety, and communicative adequacy.
Grammatical accuracy also improved, but more slowly and with greater individual variation,
which is consistent with findings reported in similar intervention studies conducted at comparable
proficiency levels (Rahimpour & Hashemi, 2011; Ellis, 2003).
The qualitative evidence adds a dimension that the rubric scores alone could not capture.
Students experienced the shift from reproductive to communicative writing not simply as a change
in task type but as a change in their relationship to the language. The arc from purposeful
discomfort to lexical ownership that developed across the ten weeks of journal entries describes
a developmental process that is well documented in the theoretical literature on second language
writing (Swain, 1985; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006) but that has rarely been traced in a group of
primary-level EFL learners in an Ecuadorian highland context. Documenting it here is, in itself,
a contribution worth noting.
Two recommendations for practitioners follow from the evidence. The first concerns task
content. The data gathered here are consistent with the argument, advanced by Kellogg (2008)
and supported by the results of this study, that tasks anchored in students’ own cultural and
geographic knowledge reduce the mental effort associated with content retrieval and free working
memory for linguistic production. In situations where English instruction is disconnected from
the local world students inhabit, building that connection deliberately into the task design is not
simply a motivational gesture. It is a pedagogical one with measurable consequences for writing
quality. The second recommendation concerns the structure of the task cycle. The social
motivation produced by peer sharing in this study suggests that audience-oriented writing tasks
should be treated as a core feature of instruction at this level rather than as an optional enrichment
activity.
The theoretical framework developed in this article also points toward a broader
implication for the design of English language teacher education programmes in Ecuador. Many
primary school teachers in fiscomisional and fiscal institutions have been trained primarily in
structural approaches to language teaching and have limited experience designing or facilitating
communicative tasks. If task-based approaches are to be adopted more widely at the primary level
in the highland provinces, teacher preparation programmes will need to address not only the
rarely appeared in the task-based learning research literature and whose writing development has
therefore been imperfectly understood.
CONCLUSIONS
This study examined whether task-based learning could lead to significant improvements
in the EFL writing skills of fifth-grade students at a fiscomisional institution in Ambato, Ecuador.
The data gathered over ten weeks support an affirmative answer, qualified by important internal
variations. Writing quality improved across all four rubric dimensions, with the largest and most
consistent gains recorded in textual organisation, lexical variety, and communicative adequacy.
Grammatical accuracy also improved, but more slowly and with greater individual variation,
which is consistent with findings reported in similar intervention studies conducted at comparable
proficiency levels (Rahimpour & Hashemi, 2011; Ellis, 2003).
The qualitative evidence adds a dimension that the rubric scores alone could not capture.
Students experienced the shift from reproductive to communicative writing not simply as a change
in task type but as a change in their relationship to the language. The arc from purposeful
discomfort to lexical ownership that developed across the ten weeks of journal entries describes
a developmental process that is well documented in the theoretical literature on second language
writing (Swain, 1985; Lantolf & Thorne, 2006) but that has rarely been traced in a group of
primary-level EFL learners in an Ecuadorian highland context. Documenting it here is, in itself,
a contribution worth noting.
Two recommendations for practitioners follow from the evidence. The first concerns task
content. The data gathered here are consistent with the argument, advanced by Kellogg (2008)
and supported by the results of this study, that tasks anchored in students’ own cultural and
geographic knowledge reduce the mental effort associated with content retrieval and free working
memory for linguistic production. In situations where English instruction is disconnected from
the local world students inhabit, building that connection deliberately into the task design is not
simply a motivational gesture. It is a pedagogical one with measurable consequences for writing
quality. The second recommendation concerns the structure of the task cycle. The social
motivation produced by peer sharing in this study suggests that audience-oriented writing tasks
should be treated as a core feature of instruction at this level rather than as an optional enrichment
activity.
The theoretical framework developed in this article also points toward a broader
implication for the design of English language teacher education programmes in Ecuador. Many
primary school teachers in fiscomisional and fiscal institutions have been trained primarily in
structural approaches to language teaching and have limited experience designing or facilitating
communicative tasks. If task-based approaches are to be adopted more widely at the primary level
in the highland provinces, teacher preparation programmes will need to address not only the
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3047
theoretical rationale for task-based instruction but also the practical skills of task design,
scaffolding, and formative assessment that effective implementation requires. Cameron (2001)
argued that teaching language to young learners requires a specific pedagogical knowledge base
that is not reducible to knowledge of the language itself or to general pedagogical principles, and
that argument applies with particular force to the design of writing tasks for young EFL learners
in settings where out-of-class English exposure is minimal.
A final observation concerns the relationship between this study and the broader literature
on educational equity in Ecuadorian secondary and primary schooling. The students who
participated in this research are not exceptional. They are representative of a large population of
Ecuadorian children who receive their entire English education within the four walls of a
classroom taught by a teacher who is also working within significant resource constraints. The
evidence gathered here suggests that this population is capable of meaningful growth in EFL
writing quality when the instructional conditions are appropriately designed. That suggestion
challenges a deficit narrative about students in working-class fiscomisional schools that is
sometimes tacitly present in policy discussions about English language education in the region.
These students did not need more grammar drills. They needed writing tasks that gave them
something real to say and a reason to say it. The fact that they responded to those conditions in
ways the theoretical literature would predict is a finding that should carry weight in future
curriculum and teacher education decisions.
The limitations of this research are clearly defined. The sample consists of fifteen students
at a single institution, the timeframe is ten weeks, and the teacher-researcher dual role creates a
proximity that more controlled methodological designs avoid. Future studies should expand the
sample, extend the intervention across a full academic year, and include a comparison group to
distinguish the effects of task-based instruction from other variables. Within those boundaries,
this study has established a foundation that justifies further research in this context.
theoretical rationale for task-based instruction but also the practical skills of task design,
scaffolding, and formative assessment that effective implementation requires. Cameron (2001)
argued that teaching language to young learners requires a specific pedagogical knowledge base
that is not reducible to knowledge of the language itself or to general pedagogical principles, and
that argument applies with particular force to the design of writing tasks for young EFL learners
in settings where out-of-class English exposure is minimal.
A final observation concerns the relationship between this study and the broader literature
on educational equity in Ecuadorian secondary and primary schooling. The students who
participated in this research are not exceptional. They are representative of a large population of
Ecuadorian children who receive their entire English education within the four walls of a
classroom taught by a teacher who is also working within significant resource constraints. The
evidence gathered here suggests that this population is capable of meaningful growth in EFL
writing quality when the instructional conditions are appropriately designed. That suggestion
challenges a deficit narrative about students in working-class fiscomisional schools that is
sometimes tacitly present in policy discussions about English language education in the region.
These students did not need more grammar drills. They needed writing tasks that gave them
something real to say and a reason to say it. The fact that they responded to those conditions in
ways the theoretical literature would predict is a finding that should carry weight in future
curriculum and teacher education decisions.
The limitations of this research are clearly defined. The sample consists of fifteen students
at a single institution, the timeframe is ten weeks, and the teacher-researcher dual role creates a
proximity that more controlled methodological designs avoid. Future studies should expand the
sample, extend the intervention across a full academic year, and include a comparison group to
distinguish the effects of task-based instruction from other variables. Within those boundaries,
this study has established a foundation that justifies further research in this context.
Vol. 13/ Núm. 1 2026 pág. 3048
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language learning, teaching and testing. Longman.
Calle, A., Argudo, J., Cabrera, P., & Calle, P. (2012). How Ecuadorian EFL teachers understand
and implement communicative language teaching. PROFILE Journal, 14(2), 55–74.
Cameron, L. (2001). Teaching languages to young learners. Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511733109
Chacón, C. T. (2005). Teachers’ perceived efficacy among English as a foreign language teachers
in middle schools in Venezuela. Teaching and Teacher Education, 21(3), 257–272.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2005.01.001
Dörnyei, Z. (2001). Motivational strategies in the language classroom. Cambridge University
Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511667343
Hornberger, N. H. (1989). Continua of biliteracy. Review of Educational Research, 59(3), 271–
296. https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543059003271
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Long, M. H. (1985). Input and second language acquisition theory. In S. Gass and C. Madden
(Eds.), Input in second language acquisition (pp. 377–393). Newbury House.
Pinter, A. (2006). Teaching young language learners. Oxford University Press.
Prabhu, N. S. (1987). Second language pedagogy. Oxford University Press.
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motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68–78.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68
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11(2), 129–158. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/11.2.129
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Harvard University Press.
Boud, D., & Walker, D. (1998). Promoting reflection in professional courses: The challenge of
context. Studies in Higher Education, 23(2), 191–206.
https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079812331380384
Burns, A. (2010). Doing action research in English language teaching: A guide for practitioners.
Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203863466
Council of Europe. (2020). Common European framework of reference for languages: Learning,
teaching, assessment – Companion volume. Council of Europe Publishing.
https://www.coe.int/en/web/common-european-framework-reference-languages
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acquisition. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587684
Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/cci005
Graham, S., & Perin, D. (2007). A meta-analysis of writing instruction for adolescent students.
Journal of Educational Psychology, 99(3), 445–476. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-
0663.99.3.445
Graham, S., & Sandmel, K. (2011). The process writing approach: A meta-analysis. Journal of
Educational Research, 104(6), 396–407. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220671.2010.488703
Jacobs, H. L., Zinkgraf, S. A., Wormuth, D. R., Hartfiel, V. F., & Hughey, J. B. (1981). Testing
ESL composition: A practical approach. Newbury House.
Kellogg, R. T. (2008). Training writing skills: A cognitive developmental perspective. Journal of
Writing Research, 1(1), 1–26. https://doi.org/10.17239/jowr-2008.01.01.1
Kemmis, S., & McTaggart, R. (1988). The action research planner (3rd ed.). Deakin University
Press.
Lamb, M. (2004). Integrative motivation in a globalizing world. System, 32(1), 3–19.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2003.04.002
Landis, J. R., & Koch, G. G. (1977). The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data.
Biometrics, 33(1), 159–174. https://doi.org/10.2307/2529310
Lantolf, J. P., & Thorne, S. L. (2006). Sociocultural theory and the genesis of second language
development. Oxford University Press.
Long, M. H. (2015). Second language acquisition and task-based language teaching. Wiley-
Blackwell. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781118914069
Ministerio de Educación del Ecuador. (2019). Currículo de los niveles de la educación obligatoria.
Ministerio de Educación.
Nunan, D. (2004). Task-based language teaching. Cambridge University Press.
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511667336
Rahimpour, M., & Hashemi, R. (2011). Textbook selection and evaluation in the EFL context.
World Journal of Education, 1(2), 62–68. https://doi.org/10.5430/wje.v1n2p62
Shoulders, T., & Krei, M. (2015). Rural High School Teachers' Self-Efficacy in Student
Engagement, Instructional Strategies, and Classroom Management. American Secondary
Education, 44(1), 50-61.
Skehan, P. (1998). A cognitive approach to language learning. Oxford University Press.
Storch, N. (2013). Collaborative writing in L2 classrooms. Multilingual Matters.
https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847699954
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