This study was an attempt to investigate whether the Task-Based Instruction (TBI) can fulfill its promises by looking into how a group of EFL college learners would perform in a TBI course. The research findings based on the analyses of the participants'performance on the proficiency tests of speaking and writing, the writing samples produced by the weekly journal task, and their responses to a questionnaire showed that the TBI course was effective enough to assist the learners to significantly improve proficiency levels of the L2 during such a time period of a 15-week long semester. The study also revealed that whether the learners would find the task topic interesting was significantly related to their confidence in using the L2, evaluation on the instructor's way of teaching, and overall evaluation on the TBI course. It also found that the college-level learners did not favor grammar instruction provided in an explicit way while appreciating opportunities to use the L2 in productive modes.

This study investigated how task involvement should be practiced to fulfill the theoretical assumptions of Task-Based Instruction (TBI). As the task involvement is to be understood as an indispensable component of TBI, how a high degree of task involvement can be secured and exerted in a most effective way was examined. Having analyzed the data obtained from questionnaire, interviews, reflection papers and proficiency tests, the study indicated that customized and timely feedback and comments on the learners’ performances as well as learners’ sense of responsibility were critical if the task involvement leads to desirable learning outcomes. The study also showed that consciousness-raising (CR) task originated from an authentic task was effective enough to help learners acquire linguistic knowledge in a contextual situation. It made suggestions for how to promote task involvement to better implement TBI, through which the learners can improve language proficiency fully taking advantage of their educational and cognitive experiences.