A comparative study on the effectiveness of task-based and traditional instruction of intermediate Italian: Findings on accuracy and fluency

This dissertation reports an experimental investigation on the relative effects of traditional instruction and task-based instruction on the acquisition of accuracy (grammatical gender agreement) and fluency (oral and written) in Italian as a foreign language. Subjects were divided into two groups: the first received traditional instruction of intermediate Italian; the second received task-based instruction of intermediate Italian. Two controlled-production measures, and two spontaneous-production measures were used in a pre-, post-, and delayed posttest design (testing for both immediate and sustained effect). The results showed that, for accuracy, on all four tests, results were nearly equal across both treatment groups, with a marginal advantage displayed by the task-based group. For fluency, on the three tests that were amenable to such a measure, the task-based group demonstrated significantly greater gains (measured as syllables per minute for the two oral fluency measures, and words per minute for the one written fluency measure). The findings confirm one of the two modes of the research project's central hypothesis: task-based instruction better promotes the acquisition of fluency than traditional instruction in intermediate Italian as a foreign language; the findings are inconclusive as to the other mode of the central hypothesis: task-based instruction better promotes the acquisition of accuracy than traditional instruction in intermediate Italian as a foreign language.