this study should be characterized as a quasi-experiment rather than a strict experiment. As explained above, participants were all drawn from an intermediate level class, but as a safeguard against outliers or unbalanced groups, the director of the institute reviewed group membership and determined the groups to be roughly equivalent in terms of
English proficiency.
Afterwards, students in each group were randomly paired to form dyads. There were 10 dyads in the study, five in each of the two treatment conditions. Both groups were provided with the online TBLL environment; however, unlike the control group, the experimental group had access to subtitled similar task videos within the environment that they could watch before task completion.
5 Subtitled similar task videos
Each subtitled similar task video presents a short dialogue between two native English speakers engaged in a task similar to – but not the same as – the one students are about to complete. The videos were recorded in real-life settings, and subtitles were provided below the videos. Language spoken by the native speakers in the videos was not prescribed and prepared prior to the recordings. Native speakers were asked to complete tasks using language as if they were in real-life situations. The primary function of the
Figure 4 Gifts for a family task
Downloaded from