The Effect of Task Base Language Teaching (TBLT) on Tertiary ESOL Learners' Academic Writing Achievement

The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of Task Base Language Teaching (TBLT) on tertiary ESOL learners' academic writing achievement in tertiary level. Therefore, the experimental research was applied to this study. The control group was taught through Classical Method (CM) while the experiment group was taught through Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) method. Furthermore, the pre-test and post-test were administered to students in control group and experiment group (30 students in each group). The data were tabulated by employing t-test in Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 21. Based on the data analysis, the result indicated that the null hypothesis (Ho) was rejected and the alternative hypothesis (Ha) was accepted. It can be concluded that there was a significant effect of Task Based Language Teaching (TBLT) method on tertiary ESOL learners' writing achievement compared to Classical Method (CM) of teaching.


INTRODUCTION 1.Background of Study
English is an important language now days for everyone in the world in any purposes such as medium of study, job requirement, and communication in society and even for life status. Therefore, every country emphasizes that English subject should be taught in school, college and university but of course the result of the teaching and learning process is different since it is depending on the approach and practice of teaching English itself.
On the other hand, every country has recognized that in teaching and learning English, there are four skills that need to be taught to the students namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. In so doing, the students in every level of education should master those four skills event many countries put the minimum criteria for every English language skill.
Universitas Negeri Medan is one of the universities, which has English Department. The students in this department are taking English and Literature as their major but it does not mean that they could use English properly in their academic activities since they were still in foundation level. In addition, most of the students are from rural area and they hardly use English in their daily life. Therefore, language skills are kind of difficult subjects for them especially writing skill because practically, writing skill is taught after the three other language skills because writing skill is very complicated and tends to be avoided by Indonesian learners [1].
Furthermore, Academic writing, one of the genres in writing skills, is very difficult and it needs a ORQJ WLPH WR LPSURYH WKH (62/ OHDUQHUV ¶ academic writing achievements [2]. Therefore, it should be notified that writing skill is not a product but it is rather a process for both native speakers and learners of ESOL. Even though writing skill is a skill, which most of students do not like to learn because it is not only difficult but also boring, there is of course a way to teach the learners on this skill. Literally, there have been so many methods of teaching writing skill implemented in university level but many agree to Larsen-Freeman and Anderson who said that there is no single best method in teaching English but may be there is an appropriate method to the student context [3]. Fundamentally, there are differences among the methods. One of the significant differences is in 1976; Wilkins distinguished between two types of syllabi, which are synthetic syllabi and analytic syllabi. Synthetic syllabi focus on linguistics units: grammar, structures, vocabulary items, functions, etc [4] 7KHQ LW LV WKH VWXGHQWV ¶ UHVSRQVLELOLW\ WR implement the linguistic units for the purpose of communication. On the other hand, analytic syllabi are well organized in terms of the purposes for which people are learning language and the kinds of language performance that are important to meet those objectives [4]. Current result of research on Second Language Acquisition (SLA) supports the use of analytic syllabi because such research shows that learners do not learn linguistics part one in a time. Instead, they induce linguistic information from the language samples they work on, and they acquire language items only when they are ready to do so [3].
In accordance with, Task-base Language Teaching (TBLT) is the method of teaching language in which language is acquired through use. This method is the strong version of the communicative approach, and this method implies the use of analytic syllabi [3,5]. Therefore, the implementation of TBLT to enhance the (62/ OHDUQHUV ¶ DFKLHYHPHQW LQ ZULting skill is strongly supported in Indonesian context. In so doing, this UHVHDUFK FUXFLDOO\ QHHGHG WR EH FRQGXFWHG WR LQYHVWLJDWH WKH HIIHFW RI WKH 7%/7 PHWKRG RQ (62/ OHDUQHUV ¶ academic writing achievement.

Objectives of Study
In accordance with the background of study, the objectives of this study are formulated as below: 1) To test the significant difference between experimental and control groups when the ESOL learners were taught by using TBLT method and Classical method respectively. 2) To test the VLJQLILFDQW HIIHFW RI 7%/7 PHWKRG RQ (62/ OHDUQHUV ¶ DFDGHPLF ZULWLQJ DFKLHYHPHQW LQ Indonesia.

Task Bases Language Teaching
One of the most prominent perspectives within the CLT framework is Task Base Language Teaching (TBLT). While other researcher [6] argues that TBLT is significantly different approach, other proponent [7] would claim that TBLT is at the very heart of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT). This approach put the use of task at the core of language teaching. Where there is a good deal of variation among experts on how to illustrate task, the concept of task still captures the essentials [8]. Task is defined as an activity in which [8]: x Meaning is primary x There is some communication problem to solve x There is some sort of relationship to comparable real-world activities x Task completion has some priority; and x The assessment of the task is in terms of outcome.
On the other hand, task is an activity, which requires learners to use language, which emphasis on meaning, to attain objectives [9]. Furthermore, Task-base teaching makes an important distinction between target tasks, which students must accomplish beyond the classroom, and pedagogical task, which form the nucleus of the classroom activity.
Task-base instruction is not actually a new metKRG 5DWKHU LW SXWV WDVN DW WKH FHQWHU RI RQH ¶V methodological focus. It views the learning process as a set of communicative tasks that are directly linked to the curricular goals they serve, the purpose of which extend beyond the practice of language for its own sake. Research on task-base learning, some study has attempted to identify types tasks that enhance learning (such as open-ended, structured, teacher-fronted, small group, and pair work) to define task-specific learner factors (for example, roles, proficiency levels, and styles), and to examine teacher roles and other variables that contribute to successful achievement of objectives. [6], [7], [10]- [12]. Therefore, the concept above leads to the characteristics of Task Base Language Teaching (TBLT) as follows: x Task ultimately point learners beyond the forms of language alone to real-world contexts.
x Tasks specifically contribute to communicative goals.
x Their elements are carefully designed and not simply haphazardly or idiosyncratically thrown together.
x Their objectives are well specified so that you can at some later point accurately determine the success of one task over another.
x Tasks engage learners, at some level, in genuine problem-solving activity.

Writing Achievement
Writing is a process of formulating and organizing ideas in appropriate language to send the passage through a piece of paper. According to Jones in Cooper and Odell [13] writing is synonymous with discourse, and discourse is discussed in terms of its aims, it relate to the function of language, and in terms of its feature, which are the separate elements, devices, and mechanism of language. On the other hand, Reinking, Hard and Osten [14] state that writing is a way of communication and of course communicates all the time. And then Deporter and Heracki [15] explain that writing is a whole brain activity, which uses right brain side (emotion) and left-brain side (logic).
From the H[SHUWV ¶ definitions, it can be stated that writing is a composition task to formulate and organize ideas in proper language to deliver and communicate the passage to the reader and present it on a piece of paper. In order to deliver the passage effectively, the writing logically should be effective as well. Travers [16] states that achievement is the result of what an individual has learned from some education experience. Then, Yelon, Weinstein, and Weener [17] express achievement as the successfulness of individual learning, while another source Smith and Hudgins [18] VD\V WKDW DFKLHYHPHQW LV WR GR RQH ¶V EHVW to be successful to accomplish tasks requiring skill and effort and to be recognized by authority.
Completely, achievement is the result, the successfulness, the extent or ability, the progress in learning education experiences that the individual indicates relation with his/her educational learning. Achievement concerns with what someone has actually learnt whereas aptitude is the potential for learning something. In other words, achievement is a success in reaching particular goal/status or standard, especially by effort, skill, courage, and so on. Therefore, the writing achievement is the successfulness of the learners in fulfilling the requirement in composing the writing task. The achievement in writing in this case is if the students can write the essay properly and fulfill all the indicators in writing rubrics.

Review of TBLT on Writing
Task-based writing instruction within the larger framework of TBLT makes learners involved in active mutual work on tasks that are reasonable for them and related to their real life experience [19,20]. Concerning writing task features, researchers have argued over some characteristics of tasks such as the amount of time available to learners, [21] whether the task is completed individually or collaboratively [22], whether the task is reciprocal or nonreciprocal [23], and concluded that all these factors affect the process of learning how to write.
There exist different types of tasks to foster the writing performance of the learners. Yet despite their diversity, task-EDVHG ZULWLQJ DFWLYLWLHV ³DUH GRQH ZLWK WKH SXUSRVH RI SURGXFLQJ VRPHWKLQJ UHDFKLQJ D conclusion, or creating a whole picture of something within a preset fUDPHZRUN´ [24]. Furthermore, numerous researches had been done by many scholars on the effectiveness of TBLT to writing skill. Most of the result of the study tended to support the use of TBLT method to teach writing skill for instance: Jong [25] did a surYH\ WR (QJOLVK WHDFKHUV LQ .RUHD )URP WKH VXUYH\ DJUHHG 7%/7 LPSURYHV OHDUQHUV ¶ interaction skill. On the other way of research, Marashi and Dadari [26] had conducted an experimental research on the impact of using task-base writing on EFL leaUQHUV ¶ ZULWLQJ SHUIRUPDQFH DQG FUHDWLYLW\ 7KH SDUWLFLSDQWV RI WKH VWXG\ ZHUH 7HKUDQ ¶V SULYDWH ODQJXDJH VFKRRO 7KH\ IRXQG WKDW WKHUH ZDV D VLJQLILFDQW HIIHFW RQ VWXGHQWV ¶ ZULWLQJ SHUIRUPDQFH DQG FUHDWLYLW\ Furthermore, TBLT benefited both teacher and students since it reduce the stress for teaching big classes. In addition, students found more opportunities to clarify meaning through interaction and negotiation of meaning and they were willing to cooperative with their class-mates [27]. Current other findings come from Ahmad and Bidin [28], they did experimental research on the effect of TBLT on writing skills of EFL learners in Malaysia. From the results, they concluded that there was an improvement in writing L2 performance indicators in terms of L2 FRPSOH[LW\ IOXHQF\ DQG DFFXUDF\ RI VWXGHQWV ¶ ZULWLQJ Based on the review of the theories and result of the previous researches, TBLT is a useful method to teach writing on any level of students. Therefore, it is undeniable to implement TBLT method to teach writing in Indonesia and conduct an experimental research to find the effect of TBLT on Indonesian students writing achievement. In concordance with the theory and previous researches, hypothesis of this research has been formulated.

Hypothesis
The hypothesis of this research can be formulated in terms of (Ha and Ho). Ha-means alternative hypothesis and Ho-means null hypothesis. Ho: 7KHUH LV QR VLJQLILFDQW LPSDFW RI DSSO\LQJ 7%/7 PHWKRG RQ VWXGHQWV ¶ ZULWLQJ DFKLHYHPHQW. Ha: There is significant impact of applying TBLT method RQ VWXGHQWV ¶ ZULWLQJ achievement.

RESEARCH METHOD 2.1. Participants
This study was conducted with 30 students in experimental group and 30 students in control group. The students are from English Department, Universitas Negeri Medan. Actually, the students are taking English Language Teaching Program but they are still in foundation level (semester ONE (1) and TWO (2)). The population in both semesters was 180 students. The ranges of the ages are from 19 to 21 years old. Furthermore, the students were selected by using random sampling technique because the population has the equal chance to be a sample in this study.

Materials
Academic Writing: WKH PDWHULDO XVHG LQ WHDFKLQJ DQG WHVW WKH VWXGHQWV ¶ DFDGHPLF ZULWLQJ LV Achieve IELTS 2 English for International Education; Second EdiWLRQ´ This book is following the Common European Framework of References (CEFR), in which this book is suitable for B2 to C1 Level or Band 5.5 to 7 in IELTS score. Furthermore, this book is written by Louis Harrison, Caroline Cushen and Susan Hutchison and published in 2013. From this book, the students were only taught academic writing task 1, which is descriptive and report writing.
Writing Rubric/Evaluation Checklist: The rubric is taken from takeielts.britishcouncil.org. This rubric applied 4 indicators in assessing the writing task 1. The 4 indicators are task achievement, coherent and cohesion, lexical resource, and grammatical range and accuracy. The band given is from 0 to 9. For additional information, this rubric is used by British Council, IDP and University of Cambridge ESOL examination.

Instrument
Composition test: writing pre-test and post-test were administered to both groups of students, which are experimental and control groups. The test was asking the students to describe and report the data given in charts. The chart gives information about science qualifications held by people in two countries. Thus, the task was only asking the students to summarize the information by selecting and reporting the main features, and make comparisons where relevant but the students were only given 30 minutes to complete the writing task and they need to write about 150 words.

Procedures
Step one: Preparation for the materials, test and measuring the validity and reliability of the test was administrated and tabulated. The material that had been set up for the treatment was teaching materials for IELTS Writing Task 1 including lesson plan, topic explanation, writing task and exercise. In order to measure the validity of the test, the constructive validity was conducted. The writing test had been validated by two experts in writing skills. The two experts are from State University of Medan and Australian Centre in Medan City. Then, for the reliability of the test, the researcher used the inter rater reliability test that was using the two experts to score the students writing test in pilot study. The examiners were two lecturers in the English Education Study Program, State University of Medan. The result shows that there was no great discrepancy among the score mean from the first, and the second examiner on scoring the tertiary ESOL OHDUQHUV ¶ ZULWLQJ WDVN ZLWK WKH IDFW WKDW E\ XVLQJ 6WDWLVWLFDO 3DFNDJH IRU 6RFLDO 6FLHQFH 6366 SURJUDP 21.0 Version, the result of the Inter Rater ReliabiliW\ ,55 RU .DSSD RQ WKH VWXGHQWV ¶ ZULWLQJ VFRUH ZDV Step two: after selecting the sample by using random sampling technique, the pre-test was administrated to the samples. Then, both groups had been taught for four meetings each. The treatment was teaching the experimental group through the implementation Task-Base Language Teaching method, while the control was taught through the implementation of classical method. The treatment for the experimental group was implementing Task-Base Language Teaching (TBLT) method. There are three (3) stages in implementing the TBLT method, namely pre-task, during-task and post-task. The activities in each stage are presented in the following table: Then the teacher can divide the students into pairs to discuss these questions. Meanwhile, the WHDFKHU VKRXOG QRW LQWHUYHQH LQ WKH VWXGHQWV ¶ GLVFXVVLRQ VR DV WR DOORZ QDWXUDO ODQJXDJH DFTXLVLWLRQ processes to operate; but whenever the students need help, the teacher should stand out. After this preliminary discussion, the students may be asked to report the results of their pair work.
2) Group Discussion Compared with pair work, the advantage of group discussion is self-evident: every participant has his share of information to contribute to the communication process, and therefore more participants made the communication livelier and more meaningful. At the same time, the teacher should monitor the whole process and offer help if possible. The students were divided into small groups of more than three people to re-discuss the above questions and to determine what they wrote.

3) First Draft
Students can think over what they have discussed up till now, and plunge directly into writing. At this moment, the students should not worry about grammatical mistakes, and all they should do is to put down their ideas. At this stage, the teacher should withdraw so as not to prevent the natural IORZ RI WKH VWXGHQWV ¶ LGHDV DQG Wheir expressiveness. This is also done to elicit personal opinions from students so as to get them more involved in the completion of the task. As for this kind of ZULWLQJ VWXGHQWV ¶ WDVN LV WR SXW WKH LQIRUPDWLRQ RQWR SDSHU LQ D ORJLFDO PDQQHU QRW ZRUU\Lng about grammar, spelling or handwriting. 4) Discussion of the Product After the completion of the first draft, the students were divided into small groups, and a group leader was nominated. Students were required to exchange their first drafts of writing and criticisms concerning vocabulary, grammar, punctuation, structure and logic were welcome. It was then the group OHDGHU ¶V GXW\ WR UHSRUW WKH UHVXOWV RI WKH JURXS GLVFXVVLRQ 3 Post-Task On this stage, the emphasis is on the meaningfulness and fluency of the communication process, and the expressiveness of ideas. However, this alone could not guarantee good writing in itself, as we also need accuracy and refined language to call good writing. Therefore, at this stage, the teacher should direct tKH VWXGHQWV ¶ DWWHQWLRQ WR WKH DFFXUDF\ RI language and the way of restructuring their sentences so as to better their writing. Based on the JURXS OHDGHU ¶V UHSRUW WKH WHDFKHU JRW D EULHI LGHD RI WKH VWXGHQWV ¶ ZHDNQHVVHV DQG VWUHQJWKV ,Q order to present in a more clear way, the teacher could write down the language points, chunks or functionality patterns on the whiteboard.
After the treatment, post-test were administered to both groups. Then, the scores of pre-test and post-test from both groups were collected as quantitative data.
Step three: the data were tabulated by using Statistical Package of Social Science (SPSS) version 21. Since this study is to examine the effect of Task-Base Language Teaching (TBLT) method on the students writing achievement, the data were tabulated by using independent sample t-test, which means to examine the difference between (pre-test and post-test) control and (pre-test-test and post-test) experimental groups.  Table 1 shows the values of means and standard deviation along with standard error of the mean for the two groups on academic writing. The mean score of the experimental group was 1.367 points higher than that of the control group in terms of. In conclusion, the experimental group outperformed the control group. To show clearly the difference between control and experimental group, the estimated marginal means of difference between both groups are presented on the following figure.  The t-test procedure (table 2) offered two tests of the contrast between the control and experimental groups. In terms of writing score mean, the significance index of the Levene statistic was .560 (greater than .05); it could be assumed that the groups had equal variances. Based on Table 2, there was significant difference between the mean scores of the two groups in terms of their academic writing scores (F=0.344, p=0.00<0.05). Therefore, the control and experimental groups were not at the same level of achievement in terms of their writing ability in the administered academic writing test. Despite the difference prior to the treatment, the effect of the treatment indeed turned out to be statistically significant (F=56.096, p=0.00<0.05). Hence, the null hypothesis of the study which stated that XVLQJ 7DVN %DVHG /DQJXDJH 7HDFKLQJ 7%/7 PHWKRG KDG QR VLJQLILFDQW HIIHFW RQ WHUWLDU\ (62/ OHDUQHUV ¶ academic writing achievement was rejected with those receiving the treatment outperforming significantly those in the control group. In other words, the alternative hypothesis of the study, which stated that there is a VLJQLILFDQW HIIHFW RI 7%/7 PHWKRG RQ (62/ OHDUQHUV ¶ DFDGHPLF ZULWLQJ DFKLHYHPHQW ZDV DFFHSWHG

CONCLUSION
There have been many studies conducted to prove the significant effect of TBLT on the writing ability of ESOL learners. In addition, Latchem et al. [29] also concluded that the task-based approach while XVLQJ PXOWLPHGLD HQKDQFHG OHDUQHUV ¶ DFKLHYHPHQW 7KH ILQGLQJV Rf this study of course corroborated the findings from those studies.
Furthermore, TBLT carries out more successful language learning on the part of the learners by actively involving them in doing tasks, which indeed result in their higher levels of motivation [30]. From this study, the researchers clearly observed that employing real world tasks, following task cycles, making use of cooperative learning, creating authentic data and different kinds of feedback provide the learners in the experimental group with an environment in which they were really interested in what they were writing. In fact, the significant difference between experimental and control group in this study was clear and the result was experimental group outperformed the control group which is 1.367 higher. This finding fulfilled the research objective one in this study. Then, according to the ANCOVA test result, the effect of TBLT within the group was significant. This result pursued the research objective two and confirmed the alternative hypothesis (Ha).
Therefore, the result of this study supported by Grainger et al [31] who said that environment is characteristically conducive towards the academic writing skill which has the potential of communication and motivation in class and can together with certain other factors, result in the enhancement of academic writing capacity of ESOL learners.
Based on the result, it can be concluded that the TBLT method has a significant effect on tertiary (62/ OHDUQHUV ¶ DFDGHPLF ZULWLQJ DFKLHYHPHQW LQ Indonesia. In addition, this finding has the same conclusion with previous researchers who supported the implementation of TBLT method to writing skill. Therefore, this language teaching method is suggested to be used by the language teachers in Indonesia particularly and in any countries generally. Furthermore, this method also can be implemented to teach any skills in language teaching such as speaking, listening and reading and any different level of studHQWV ¶ SURIiciencies and ages.