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Volume 11 Number 1, Spring 2014, Pages 1-148   


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Forms or Meaning? Teachers' Beliefs and Practices Regarding Task-based Language Teaching: A Vietnamese Case Study

    Nguyen Gia Viet


The increasing body of research work in the area of language teacher beliefs shows that this research domain has been of particular interest and now well-established (Borg, 2006). One question that arises is that teachers' beliefs in general are too broad to conceptualise and investigate. In fact, recent research work has seen the increasing popularity of studies that specifically address the question raised more than two decades ago by Pajares (1992) about the need to investigate teachers' beliefs about specific aspects of their work, such as grammar instruction (e.g., Burgess & Etherington, 2002; Canh, 2011), communicative language teaching (e.g., Sato & Kleinsasser, 1999), and codeswitching (e.g., Barnard & McLellan, 2014). However, little research has been carried out into teachers' beliefs regarding Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT), and none has been done in the context of Vietnam, a context where the current curriculum and accompanying textbooks are claimed to adopt TBLT as the principal teaching method. This qualitative case study uses a number of data collection methods, including audio-recorded lesson planning sessions, classroom observation, stimulated recall, and focus groups. The findings show that there is a significant gap between teachers' current beliefs, intention, practices and the general principles of TBLT identified in the literature. The findings have implications for pedagogy and research not only in the Vietnam, but also in relatable contexts.

Keywords: beliefs, TBLT, Vietnam, curricular innovation, language teachers