We are pleased to share an interview with Dr. Shoko Sasayama, Associate Professor at Waseda University and a leading scholar in task-based language teaching (TBLT), second language acquisition, and language assessment. Dr. Sasayama teaches applied linguistics courses and manages a college-wide English language program at Waseda University. Prior to joining Waseda, she worked as a researcher at Educational Testing Service (ETS) and served as a professor at the University of Tokyo.
Dr. Sasayama’s research examines the relationship between task design, cognition, communicative performance, and language learning, with the goal of informing instructional design, assessment practices, and learner development. Her work has been widely published, including “Why task? Task as a unit of analysis for language education” (Sasayama, 2021) in The Cambridge Handbook of Task-Based Language Teaching and “Designing speaking tasks for different assessment goals” (Sasayama & Norris, 2022) in TASK: Journal on Task-Based Language Teaching and Learning. More recently, she co-authored Second Language Cognitive Task Complexity: A Research Synthesis (Sasayama et al., 2025) and contributed to the Official TOEFL® Vocabulary Guide (ETS et al., 2024). In recognition of her research, she received the Paul Pimsleur Award in 2017 for her article Is a ‘complex’ task really complex? Validating the assumption of cognitive task complexity, published in The Modern Language Journal. She is also active in teacher education, regularly offering workshops on TBLT, vocabulary instruction, and performance assessment. Dr. Sasayama served as a Plenary Speaker at JALT2025.
Dr. Sasayama was interviewed by Kevin Ballou, Associate Professor at Kindai University in Osaka, Japan. He holds an MA in English as a Second Language from the University of Hawai‘i and has over 25 years of experience teaching English in the Asia-Pacific region. At Kindai University, he teaches English courses for architecture students and coordinates curriculum development projects. His research interests include study abroad, curriculum and materials design, project-based learning, task-based language teaching, and educational technology, with recent work focusing on the integration of AI tools into classroom materials development and teacher practice. So, without further ado, to the interview! We invite readers to join the conversation that follows.
Kevin Ballou: Dr. Sasayama, thank you very much for agreeing to speak with me today. Before we get into some of the themes of your JALT2025 plenary, could you tell our readers about your background and your path from young language learner to teacher and TBLT scholar.
Shoko Sasayama: Sure, I was born and raised in Japan, and my first-time abroad was when I was 12 years old. The elementary school where I was going back then had a sister school in the Seychelles. So, I had an opportunity to go there as an exchange student. It was just a short, 10-day trip, but it’s probably not too much to say it completely changed my life.
Growing up in Japan as a kid, you don’t realize the importance of language necessarily. I was able to use Japanese everywhere in Japan and I had no trouble communicating with people. But, when I went to the Seychelles, I realized, wow, there are people out there who don’t speak Japanese, and you have to be able to speak other languages to be able to communicate with people outside of Japan. That was a fascinating experience for me. I was 12, a 6th grader, back then. You can imagine how excited I was coming back to Japan and starting formally to learn English at a junior high school. But, surprise, surprise, all I got to do in English classes was to learn grammar and vocabulary. But still, I wanted to learn to communicate in English.
What I had to do as a young English learner was to look for opportunities outside of the classroom to practice communicating in English, so I went to conversation schools. I also did a lot of volunteer work that required the use of English. Whenever exchange students would come to our school, I would be the first one to say, “Okay, I’ll work with them!” I would sometimes talk to my friends, my Japanese friends, in English because they wanted to improve their communication skills as well, so we would try to chat in English. Or, I would change the phone setting from Japanese to English, so I could get exposed to more English and so on and so forth. Critically, I myself had to search for all of these opportunities to be able to learn to communicate in English. I wasn’t able to experience any of those kinds of opportunities in the classroom.
When I entered college, I decided to major in English education. I always wanted to become a teacher of some sort. And I liked English, so English education made a lot of sense. Then, I got to study abroad. I studied abroad at the University of Melbourne for a year as an exchange student, and there I encountered the notion of task-based language teaching for the first time. I thought, “This is it!” As a language teacher, I thought I would be able to help students actually practice their communication skills inside the classroom using tasks. They wouldn’t have to go outside the classroom to look for the kinds of opportunities that I had to look for as a learner. If we use a task-based language teaching approach, [then] we can have the students practice communication skills—practice the kinds of tasks that are important for them in the real world, within the classroom. That was an eye-opening experience for me to learn about TBLT for the first time.
And I guess another aspect of TBLT that I was drawn to was the fact that you can actually teach grammar and vocabulary in context. Obviously, communication isn’t just about getting the meaning across. To do so effectively, we also have to be able to use grammar and vocabulary appropriately in context. But when they’re decontextualized, it can make for a mundane and boring learning experience, and we can’t really expect our students to be able to use explicit forms of knowledge in context if they haven’t really done any practicing of that sort. I think that’s another aspect of TBLT that I am very fascinated by, so, the fact that you can combine communication and the teaching of language forms. Anyway, since those early encounters, I’ve been a strong advocate for the use of TBLT in any language program.
Great, thank you. That’s a really wonderful story and explanation for teachers in different stages of their careers. Now, I’d like to explore that more deeply. You started talking about TBLT, and I’d like to hear more about that, especially for teachers who may not be experts on TBLT. When they hear task-based learning, they might imagine complex frameworks or debates about what constitutes a task. So, for someone new to the approach, what would a task look like in an everyday classroom?
I think the question of “What is a task?” is sometimes very complicated, and different scholars would have different answers to that question. But, to me anyway, the most important aspect of a task is that there’s some sort of communication gap to fill. You have to have a purpose for communication, right? So there has to be a real communication gap, and you have to have a reason to communicate in the target language.
In a TBLT program, I would say the starting point should be to identify the kinds of target tasks that our students should be able to do in the real world. For example, students might have to be able to engage with foreign customers and offer drinks and food and whatnot at a restaurant for their part-time jobs. Or, they may be pursuing a business career and they might have to be able to do business-related tasks, like giving a business presentation in English. I think the starting point should be what are the kinds of tangible tasks that our students have to be able to do in the real world? And working backwards, we can decide what kind of pedagogic tasks should be used to help the students become able to do those tasks successfully.
Let me give a more concrete example. I’ll use an example from my plenary. Over several years, I taught an English class that simulated working in a company where English was the official language. My students were all business majors and they knew they would need to use English one way or another in their future workplaces. One of the important target tasks for them to learn was to give business presentations. In class, they learned to design and deliver an effective presentation very quickly. But they really struggled with the Q&A session, which is a pretty common component of presentations. So then, I thought, “That’s a really good target task for them.” Working backwards, I asked myself if I wanted to help my students become able to answer questions in a spontaneous Q&A, what kind of tasks did I need to use in the classroom to help my students towards that particular goal?
Now, I won’t talk about all the associated pedagogic tasks, but one of the first pedagogic tasks I used with them addressed the fact that they obviously needed to comprehend the questions first. To help them do that, I read aloud a list of questions that they might hear after the kind of presentation that they were expected to give, and their task was to fill out a chart. It asked, “What is the main question word?” and “What is the main content word?” So that was one pedagogic task I used with my students to begin scaffolding their ability to handle spontaneous Q&A sessions.
And I think one important point here is pedagogic tasks may not always look like real-world tasks. In the real world, students may not need to fill out a chart, write down the main question word and the main content word while listening to questions. But, that’s a really good pedagogic task if our goal is to help our students learn relevant language forms and practice listening strategies, so that they can learn to comprehend questions asked during a Q&A more readily. I think it’s important to be aware of those two different types of tasks: target tasks and pedagogic tasks. Target tasks are the real-world tasks that our students have to be able to do, and they serve as a goal of instruction. Pedagogic tasks might not be something that the students would do in the real world, but they’re very helpful pedagogically to help the students learn language and become able to achieve the target tasks that are important for them.
So, when you’re choosing those more language-oriented tasks, is it because you feel that it’s necessary for them to accomplish the overall task? Or, is it because as a language teacher, you think they should be doing vocabulary development or something, or is it some of both? For example, these are university students, so do you have kind of a hierarchy of their linguistic development in mind in terms of they’re at this particular level, so they should be learning the thousand most common words at that level, or are you just focused on for them to be able to answer Q&A, these are the words they would need, or is it kind of a blend of those?
I would say from the task-based language teaching perspective, the latter. What’s most important is for our students to be able to achieve the target tasks, right? So, if the target task is for students to be able to answer questions in a spontaneous Q&A, [then] what they need is vocabulary and grammar and strategies, [that] are necessary for that particular goal. And from my perspective, we don’t have to teach a vocabulary list just because there’s a vocabulary list, if it’s unrelated to the contextual realities of a communication task. When we take a task-based approach, target tasks come first before form. Target tasks inform what language forms should be taught and not vice versa. If we take a strict TBLT approach, that’s probably how I would approach it. But, that doesn’t mean that we can’t start with a list of vocabulary if we think that it will be relevant to the general needs of the learners. We can augment their learning in this way, but then we’re going to start calling it task-“supported” language teaching instead of task-based language teaching, if we want to be strict about it. So, I would say ideally, tasks should come first, but starting with a form is also a possibility if there’s some sort of communication goal that we are ultimately striving to achieve.
I’m thinking a teacher might have program needs that aren’t necessarily on board with the task that you believe would be most useful for them in the real world. For example, the department might say that they need these students to reach a certain TOEIC level. And you’re trying to get them to be able to answer a Q&A because you know that would be useful for them. Is there a time where you’re balancing those needs that could be overlapping?
Yeah, I guess it depends on the kind of vocabulary list we have. So, the example that you gave - students have to get a certain score on TOEIC and students are also learning how to answer questions after a business presentation. There’s a clear alignment between the two. So, whatever vocabulary that they might learn for TOEIC test prep purposes is probably going to be useful when they answer questions during the Q&A. This reminds me of the vocabulary workshop I gave at the conference. There, I used the TOEFL official vocabulary guide as a resource. There’s no reason why we couldn’t incorporate a vocabulary book like that into a TBLT program. If our students are preparing to study abroad, [then] the TOEFL vocabulary is helpful for that purpose, in [that] it is directly related to the academic context. I think if a list of vocabulary is just sort of random or like a general service list and [then,] if you’re having your students prepare for a Q&A of a business sort or for study abroad, [then] there’s a gap. But I think, if we can make sure that there’s an alignment between a vocabulary list and the kinds of target tasks that they’ll engage in, [then] I think it makes perfect sense to incorporate that.
Great, and that’s an excellent segue to my next question. Do you have any suggestions for teachers to transform a typical non-TBLT textbook activity or unit into a more purposeful task?
Okay, that’s a really hard question. But like I said, to me, the most important aspect of a task is that there is some sort of communication gap to fill. I think as long as students can practice communication, that’s a good start. In a typical English lesson, when students practice ordering food at a restaurant, for example, often times they are given a script to read out loud. One student might pretend to be a customer and the other one a waiter, and they practice reading a script aloud. Or, there might be a blank in the script, so a student can practice substituting a hamburger with a Coke or a cheeseburger, right? Something like that. At face value, it seems like they’re practicing communication, but there’s no real reason for communication. There’s no real communication gap, right? You know what your partner is going to say, so you can complete the activity without really paying attention to what your partner is saying. I think creating that reason for communication is really important when we “taskify” an activity. So, it’s important to check and make sure if there’s an actual reason for communication.
I do want to reiterate that it doesn’t mean we can’t use language-focused activities in a TBLT lesson. So, for example, by having students analyze a script, we can teach them useful vocabulary and expressions in context. Even [though] practicing a script may be a good idea for fluency development, I think there has to be a bigger communication goal within which these activities occur. So, the language-focused activity cannot be the end goal. We can have our students engage in them, but there has to be a bigger communication goal of actually going out to order food at a restaurant or simulating that scenario, for example. I think we can use language-focused tasks, but it’s important to make explicit connections between those language-focused activities and real communication goals.
Okay, thank you. That’s very clear. I know you also touched upon assessment in your plenary talk. What suggestions would you have for teachers to make traditional assessments more meaningful?
Right, okay. I think it’s critical to be aware of the purpose of assessment. We use assessment for different purposes, right? We might use assessment to gauge students’ learning. We might use assessment to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses. We might use assessment even to motivate students. So, depending on the purpose of assessment, I think an appropriate assessment task would look very different. If we want to, for example, encourage our students [and] motivate our students, we don’t want to use a task that is overly challenging. But, if we want to push students [and] if we want our students to stretch their interlanguage, we might give them a task that is a little bit challenging for them. I think it’s very important for us language teachers to be aware of the goal or purpose of an assessment task.
Also, when it comes to using assessment for learning purposes, feedback plays a critical role. Using performance assessment—having students do actual communication tasks for the assessment—is sometimes really time consuming especially when you have 30, 40 students in the classroom. Ideally, you’d want to give students individualized feedback. But if that’s difficult, one idea is to use group assessment. That’s less ideal of course but it’s better than giving up on using performance assessment in a large classroom. So, what I tend to do is I have my students do group work. For example, [I] give a group presentation as a type of performance assessment and I give feedback to each group with some individualized elements like how well each student was able to make eye contact. I think group work is a good idea if you don’t have a lot of time to give feedback. But, you still want to use performance assessment. And I also do a lot of peer assessment and self-assessment. For peer assessment to work, it’s very important for everybody to be on the same page about what makes a good task performance. To do that, it takes a lot of training and practice like first having students analyze a model of a good performance. Then, as a class, we can think about “Why is this a good task performance?” Based on that discussion, I sometimes invite my students to create assessment rubrics with me so that we can collectively come to a consensus about what criteria constitute a good task performance. And I have the students use those assessment rubrics to give each other feedback. My students typically enjoy peer feedback sessions quite a bit especially if they’re all on the same page about what makes a good task performance and what aspects of task performance they need to focus on. So that’s one way to make our assessment more meaningful, engaging, and effective for our students.
Great. If I could just follow up on one thing. So maybe it sounds like there are three categories of assessment—the teacher assessment and feedback, peer, and self. As a university professor, when you have to give a student a score or a grade, do you incorporate the peer and the self into that, or is the actual score based purely on your own judgment?
Depending on the course, I sometimes do include the peer, but I rarely include self-assessment. I have my students engage in self-assessment so that they can become autonomous learners. But, I don’t necessarily take that into account when I give them a grade, [that] might lead to the wrong kinds of motivations for assessing themselves. Peer assessments, sometimes I do take them into account especially if I know the class is all on the same page about what a successful task performance should look like. In my academic writing course, for example, I have my students engage in peer review activities and give feedback to each other. They use assessment rubrics to give each other a score as well. And the scores given by peers become a small part of their grade. In addition, how well they do on the peer evaluation—[so] how close the score they give a peer—is to mine. [It] also becomes a small part of their grade.
Right. So, you’re giving them credit for doing the evaluation for this. Great. And then my final question is, could you share a little bit about how technology, in particular AI, can be used in the language classroom or in terms of any aspect of language teaching?
Sure. I think technology can be useful for language instruction, particularly to help students become autonomous learners. In a language classroom, if we adopt a TBLT approach, we do our best to provide students with lots of opportunities for communication. But, in a situation like Japan, once they go outside of the classroom, they don’t necessarily have a lot of opportunities to use English for communication purposes. So, in a situation like that, I think technology can offer some quite useful solutions.
Students just have to go onto YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, wherever, and instantly they get lots of authentic input. They can read news, blogs, and you name it in many different target languages. So, in that sense, technology is very helpful. These days, students can even interact with an AI agent, to practice productive communication in the target language. So, I think for developing a sense of learner autonomy. Technology plays an important role. My students often tell me they practice communication with an AI agent because they feel it’s less face threatening. They feel like it’s okay to make mistakes because they know it’s not a human they are talking to. I guess if you’re sort of an introvert or if you’re shy, talking to an AI may be a good idea for initial efforts to practice communicating. As a language teacher, it’s important to help students be aware of these opportunities so that they can get extra exposure to English outside of the classroom. At the same time though, we have to be aware of the limitations associated with the use of technology. When practicing writing, for example, students might use generative AI to elicit feedback. AI can do that fairly well, though it depends on the kinds of prompt we use. While getting additional feedback from AI can be helpful, it might miss something that we as language teachers think is important. So, I think it’s our responsibility to help students be aware of those limitations. Going back to the topic of interaction, students might feel comfortable talking to an AI agent because it’s not a person. But, if the ultimate goal [and] if the target task is to actually talk to a person in the target language, [then] obviously, we have to give students an opportunity to actually practice talking to a person. They can’t just, you know, keep practicing with an AI and assume it will be the same. So, I do think we should take advantage of technology and AI but at the same time human-human interaction remains to be the key. And it’s our responsibility to help students develop AI literacy along the way.
It’s one tool. It’s one tool among others and maybe a step. Great, that’s fantastic. Dr. Sasayama, thank you so much for your time.
My pleasure! I hope some of my stories inspire others to consider the value of TBLT in Japan.
References
Benevides, M., & Valvona, C. (2018). Widgets Inc. A task-based course in workplace English (2nd ed.). Atama-ii Books.
ETS, ETS Japan, & Sasayama, S. (2024). Kōshiki TOEFL® Eitango [Official TOEFL® vocabulary guide]. The Japan Times Publishing.
Sasayama, S. (2021). Why task? Task as a unit of analysis for language education. In M. J. Ahmadian & M. Long (Eds.), The Cambridge handbook of task-based language teaching (pp. 55–72). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108868327
Sasayama, S., Malicka, A., & Norris, J. M. (2025). Second language cognitive task complexity: A research synthesis. John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/tblt.18?locatt=mode:legacy
Sasayama, S., & Norris, J. M. (2022). Designing speaking tasks for different assessment goals: The complex relationship between cognitive task complexity, language performance, and task accomplishment. TASK: Journal on Task-Based Language Teaching and Learning, 2(2), 184–217. https://doi.org/10.1075/task.21020.sas
