Project-Based Modular Designs in English Language Acquisition: bridging Tasks, Structures, and Classroom Realities

This book revisits a long-standing question in language pedagogy: should English instruction prioritise task-based learning, which fosters implicit knowledge through communication, or structure-based teaching, which ensures explicit control of forms? Building on Rod Ellis’s modular framework (2019), the volume proposes a project-based, task-centred modular curriculum (PBTMC) that reconciles these approaches within institutional realities such as Italian secondary schools. Drawing on Second Language Acquisition (SLA), English Language Teaching (ELT), and English Linguistics, the book situates the modular curriculum at the intersection of theory and practice. Task-based and structure-based phases alternate and run in parallel, each serving a realistic communicative purpose. Every stage contributes to and ultimately converges on a macro-task, the final outcome of the project. The selection of language forms to focus on is not predetermined, but follows a flexible structural checklist that prioritises features known to be particularly challenging for learners, like complexity, low salience, susceptibility to stabilisation, and risk of fossilisation. Teachers can adapt this checklist according to learner readiness, classroom evidence, and to the communicative needs of the tasks proposed. Through design-based classroom research, three empirical projects are investigated, exemplifying the model’s application across different proficiency levels and interdisciplinary settings. The final chapters reimagine the future of language materials. Instead of relying on linear, form-focused textbooks, a task-centred curriculum could draw on a generative toolkit of versatile and reusable materials, supported by a task-tank guidebook offering adaptable ideas and scaffolds for task design. Ultimately, the PBTMC offers a context-sensitive and adaptable framework for sustainable, research-informed language teaching, a principled yet imaginative path towards more authentic and transformative language education.