The Common European Framework in its political and educational context What is the Common European Framework?

Involvement and motivation: successful task performance is more likely where the
learner is fully involved; a high level of intrinsic motivation to carry out the task – due
to interest in the task or because of its perceived relevance, for example to real life needs
or to the completion of another linked task (task interdependence) – will promote greater
learner involvement; extrinsic motivation may also play a role, for example where there
are external pressures to complete the task successfully (e.g. to earn praise or in order
not to lose face, or for competitive reasons).
State: performance is influenced by the learner’s physical and emotional state (an
alert and relaxed learner is more likely to learn and to succeed than a tired and anxious
one). 
Attitude: the difficulty of a task which introduces new sociocultural knowledge and
experiences will be affected by, for example: the learner’s interest in and openness to oth-
erness; willingness to relativise his or her own cultural viewpoint and value system; will-
ingness to assume the role of ‘cultural intermediary’ between his or her own and the
foreign culture and to resolve intercultural misunderstanding and conflict.
7.3.1.3
Linguistic factors
The stage of development of the learner’s linguistic resources is a primary factor to be
considered in establishing the suitability of a particular task or in manipulating task
parameters: level of knowledge and control of grammar, vocabulary and phonology or
orthography required to carry out the task, i.e. language resources such as range, gram-
matical and lexical accuracy, and aspects of language use such as fluency, flexibility,
coherence, appropriacy, precision. 
Tasks and their role in language teaching
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A task may be linguistically demanding but cognitively simple, or vice versa, and
consequently one factor may be offset against the other in task selection for pedagogic
purposes (although an appropriate response to a cognitively demanding task may be
linguistically challenging in a real life context). In carrying out a task learners have to
handle both content and form. Where they do not need to devote undue attention to
formal aspects, then more resources are available to attend to cognitive aspects, and
vice versa. The availability of routinised schematic knowledge frees the learner to deal
with content and, in the case of interaction and spontaneous production activities, to
concentrate on more accurate use of less well established forms. The learner’s ability
to compensate for ‘gaps’ in his or her linguistic competence is an important factor in
successful task completion for all activities (see communication strategies, section
4.4).
7.3.2
Task conditions and constraints
A range of factors may be manipulated with regard to conditions and constraints in class-
room tasks involving:
•
interaction and production;
•
reception.
7.3.2.1
Interaction and production
Conditions and constraints affecting the difficulty of interaction and production
tasks:
•
Support
•
Time
•
Goal
•
Predictability
•
Physical conditions
•