New research directions for the cognitive approach to task

This article presents the cognitive framework of L2 language-processing whose primary aim is to investigate cognitive patterns in learners’ written/oral input and output. The adoption of information-processing by L2 researchers since the 1990s (e.g., McLaughlin, 1990; Skehan, 1996) has been tightly associated with the then emerging task-based approach, namely through the synergy between task characteristics, cognitive resources, and performance measures. To date, such synergy has been prolific seeing its sizeable contribution to the growing body of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) theory and its promising insight into how teachers may envision instructional events, particularly speaking events that will activate the processes underlying language learning. In addition to reviewing core processing concepts (i.e., attention, memory and controlled-versus-automatic processing), this paper discusses the limitations of the information-processing approach. It also calls further research avenues that probe the strength of relationship between mental processing and interlanguage development as well as individual differences.