Task Difficulty

Cummins has devised a model whereby the different tasks we expect our students to engage in can be categorized. In the diagram below tasks range in difficulty along one continuum from cognitively undemanding to cognitively demanding; and along the other continuum from context-embedded to context-reduced. A context-embedded task is one in which the student has access to a range of additional visual and oral cues; for example s/he can look at illustrations of what is being talked about or ask questions to confirm understanding. A context-reduced task is one such as listening to a lecture or reading dense text, where there are no other sources of help than the language itself. Clearly, a D quadrant task, which is both cognitively demanding and context- reduced, is likely to be the most difficult for students, particularly for non-native speakers in their first years of learning English. However, it is essential that ESL students develop the ability to accomplish such tasks, since academic success is impossible without it.

Bloom's taxonomy (Knowledge > Comprehension > Application > Analysis > Synthesis) provides a useful way of determining whether a task is demanding or undemanding. So activities which fall within the category of Knowledge – such as collecting, naming, showing etc. – will clearly be less demanding than Analysis activities such as comparing, explaining and inferring.

The degree to which a task is context-embedded depends on the number of channels of information available to the student. So a student who listens to a news report on the radio has only one channel of information – this is a context-reduced learning experience. Compare this with the student who reads a report about the same event in a newspaper article which contains photographs and diagrams. The student can read at her own speed and has access to a dictionary. If she can also ask another student or her parents to explain parts of the text, then she has many channels of information available to her. This is clearly a context-embedded activity and as a result is much more manageable.

It is difficult to see the value of any tasks that are cognitively undemanding and context-reduced. Copying a list of the kings and queens of England from a textbook to an exercise book is an example of such an activity. It is sometimes called busy work.