Teacher‐ and Learner‐Led Discourse in Task‐Based Grammar Instruction: Providing Procedural Assistance for L2 Morphosyntactic Development

This study compares quantitative and qualitative results for task‐based second language (L2) grammar instruction conducted as whole‐class, teacher‐led discourse (TLD) versus small‐group, learner‐led discourse (LLD). Participants included 78 English‐speaking adults from six university classes of beginning L2 Spanish, with two assigned to each treatment (LLD = 25; TLD = 28) and two others comprising a control group ( n = 25). Instruction involved seven lessons targeting the anticausative clitic se , with one recorded and transcribed in each treatment. Results on grammaticality judgment and guided production tasks administered as a pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest indicated a stronger performance for TLD learners on both tasks. The transcript data suggest a potential for teachers to facilitate L2 learning by directing attention to target structures and providing procedural assistance for processing output.