Task research and models of second language speaking
Join this event to hear Peter Skehan discuss models to understand task-based spoken language performance.
Task research and models of second language speaking
03 Dec 2025, 17:30 – 19:00
This talk will explore how one can develop a model, which has some grounding in empirical findings, to understand task-based spoken language performance. Two relevant models of speaking (Levelt, for first language speaking, and Kormos, for second) are briefly outlined, together with some extensions, to make these models appropriate for a task context.
A major impetus for the talk is the recent meta-analysis of task complexity influences on performance (Sasayama, Malicka, Norris, 2025), together with a range of results from other, more specific task-linked studies. All these findings have implications for how we understand task performance, and as a result, Peter Skehan suggests three general additions to the Levelt-Kormos models.
This event will be particularly useful for researchers.
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Peter Skehan
Honorary Research Fellow
UCL Institute of Education
Peter Skehan is an Honorary Research Fellow at the UCL Institute of Education. He has taught at this same institution, as well as at other universities in the UK, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. He is interested in task-based instruction and research, language testing, and foreign language aptitude. He is currently focussing on the measurement of second language task-based spoken language performance within a CALF (complexity-accuracy-lexis-fluency) framework.
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