• In this seminar we started the class by discussing the difference between task, activity and exercise and we found these three concepts are used alternatively by teachers. According to Jack Richards (2014) An exercise is a controlled and guided practice of a particular language aspect such as a reading comprehension. And an activity describes any procedures in which learners work towards a goal such as play a game or engaging in a discussion. Finally,he defined task as something undergone by students using pre-existing or scaffolded language resources. Tasks are meaning focused and they are evaluated on whether it helps to attain specific objective.

Ellis (2003 4-5) defined task as a language activity which meets these criteria:

*A primary focus on meaning. (students should understand both semantic and pragmatic meaning)

*There needs to be a ‘gap’( Information Gap,decoding or encoding of information from or into language. Opinion Gap,which involves identifying and articulating a personal preference, feeling, or attitude in response to a given situation. and Reasoning Gap,which involves deriving some new information from given information through processes of inference, deduction, practical reasoning, or a perception of relationships or patterns).

*Learners use own resources (linguistic and non linguistic) in order to complete the activity.

*Clear outcome that is not language based.

While, Nunan (1989,p.264) defines task as piece of classroom work that involves learners in comprehending, manipulating,producing or interacting in the target language while their attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order to express meaning, and in which the attention is to convey meaning rather to manipulate form. And also he states that task should also have a sense of  completeness, it is able to stand alone as a communicative act in its own right with a beginning, middle and an end. Task can be distinguished in multiple ways;

*it can be focused or unfocused. Focus task require learners to communicate in target language using grammatical structure and unfocused task provide learners with opportunities for using language communicatively in general.

*it can be input providing or output prompting. Input providing task engage students in listening and reading and output prompting task engage students in speaking or writing.

*it can have closed outcomes or open outcomes. A closed task has one or a limited number of outcomes while the other task has many possible outcomes.

Robinson (2001, 2003),argues that successful task performance depends on the interaction of multiple factors that operate in three different dimensions: task complexity (cognitive demands that the structure of task imposes on learner). According to Robinson,2001, task complexity, is the result of the attentional, memory, reasoning and other information processing demands imposed by the structure of the task on the  language learner. difficulty (learners’ factors that may make a task more or less difficult)and task conditions.

Evaluation of task

Even though Various definitions have been proposed for the term ‘evaluation’, One of the most ‘workable’ definitions of evaluation was provided by Richards et al. (1985:98), who described evaluation as ‘the systematic gathering of information for purposes of making decisions’

Teachers are often faced with difficulty in choosing appropriate teaching activities for use in their classroom. In selecting suitable materials for their learners, teachers need to be able to analyze any tasks (i.e., their objectives, procedures and intended outcomes) before they are applied in the classroom (Vasiljecvic Z.2011,p.1). The evaluation of teaching materials may be done before they are used in the classroom  to analyse whether they suit the needs of the particular group of learners (predictive evaluation), or after the materials have been used in the classroom  to evaluate their effectiveness and efficiency, and teachers’ and learners’ attitudes towards them (retrospective evaluation).  Evaluations can be macro or micro in scale and can be carried out for either accountability or developmental purposes or both of these. In macro evaluation, various administrative and curricular aspects are examined (e.g. materials evaluation, teacher evaluation, learner evaluation), while micro evaluation focuses on the specific aspect of the curriculum or the administration of the program such as evaluation of learning tasks, questioning practices, learners’ participation etc. (Ellis, 1998).

Macro evaluation is concerned with curriculum,syllabus, administration(logistical and financial)e.g material evaluation, teacher evaluation and learner evaluation), syllabus and it is less time consuming. Micro evaluation are much more time consuming as it concerned on specific aspects of the curriculum or the administration of the programme. (evaluation of learning tasks, questioning practices, learners’ participation etc)

Robinson (2001, 2003),argues that successful task performance depends on the interaction of multiple factors that operate in three different dimensions: task complexity (cognitive demands that the structure of task imposes on learner),task complexity, I argue,is the result of the attentional, memory, reasoning and other information processing demands imposed by the structure of the task on the  language learner. Task difficulty (learners’ factors that may make a task more or less difficult) Skehan’s (1998) work, task difficulty is conceptualized in a more general sense to denote differences in overall task demands. Skehan regarded tasks as more difficult if they pose increased demands in terms of any of the three types of task factors proposed in the limited capacity model—code complexity, cognitive complexity, or communicative stress and Task condition or interactive demands of task involve neither task factor nor learners alone, but rather participation factor such as the direction of information flow[(one way or two way) and the communicative goals.

A systematic predictive task evaluation should enable teachers to anticipate how specific features of task design may affect learners’ performance and thus allow them to make more informed choices about suitability of particular activities for different learning situations.