Abstract

This study investigates Korean university English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ task preference among three different speaking tasks. Quantitative data were collected through questionnaires and qualitative data were collected from interviews. Quantitative datawere obtained from 88 survey respondents and qualitative data from 50 interview participants. Two sets of identical questionnaires were used before and after the semester in which the study took place. Learners were askedto rate their degrees of task preference and their levels of task interest and task satisfaction in the classroom. The results show that “Discussion task” is the most preferred task type among the three different speaking tasks: “Discussion task,” “Information-exchange task,” and “Summary task.” However, learners report that “Information-exchange task” is the most difficult and their topic preference for the “Information-exchange task” is the lowest. In terms of the correlations between topic preference and speaking performance, moderate levels of positive correlations are shown. The findings suggest that task-based learningshould be widely utilized inuniversity-level EFL classrooms.

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