The Difference between Rural and Urban EFL Learners' Achievement through Different Types of Task

Abstract

Task-Based Language Teaching (TBLT) has recently been addressed in a good proportion of research in the scope of applied linguistics. Consequently tasks are widely used in most English teaching course books. With regard to increasing interest of learning English which has, nowadays, been expanded to even rural areas, the question of compatibility of different types of task with rural areas arises. Thus, the present study is aimed at comparing language learners’ achievement (performance) in Real-world task and Pedagogical task in rural and urban areas. Participants are 80 female English language learners at elementary level aged from 15 to 25. Half of the participants are selected from an urban area, and another half are from a rural area. To measure participants’ language achievement (performance) through each task type, two different Real-world Task Test and Pedagogical Task Test were given to the students at the end of the term. To analyze the data, two T-Tests were run. The results showed that urban participants had a better performance in real-world task compared to rural participants, but both rural and urban groups did not differ in their performance in pedagogical task. The findings of this study, on the one hand, are in line with some theories and models in the related literature, and on the other hand, can appeal not only to English language teachers working in different urban and rural institutes or schools but also appear to be of high importance for English language teaching material developers.