Structural and linguistic features of educational task formulation

Abstract

This article aims at examination of task formulations in English-language textbooks as a stable type of educational text and offers a linguistic description of them at the Elementary and Intermediate levels according to CEFR. Using the English File 4th edition (Oxford) series of textbooks, a specialized corpus of task formulations was built. Next, it underwent manual linguistic markup to identify morphosyntactic, lexical semantic and formal features. Each formulation was segmented into two functional zones: a "basic" one, which specifies a directive action, and a "special" one, which parameterizes task completion through references to the source, criteria, and response format. A comparative analysis revealed a relationship between the gradation of the difficulty level of the language and the task formulation: at the Elementary level, short linear formulations with imperatives and minimal parameterization predominate; At Intermediate, syntactic and lexical variability increases, modality is activated, instructions become multi-step and rely on "analytical" operators (compare, analyze, suggest). Thus, the study yielded an operationalized model of task formulations as a type of directive microtext and an inventory of features suitable for linguistic and pedagogical purposes. The results of the study can be used to automate the linguistic tagging of texts, automated validation of compliance with CEFR levels, and the design of effective task formulations with controlled difficulty.