This course will provide learners with a practical foundation for doing experimental research involving pedagogic L2 learning tasks. The course will focus on variables in the design of tasks and how they are hypothesized to relate to developmentally-relevant aspects of L2 variation. The first part of the course will focus on pedagogic tasks and their design, whereas the second part will focus on how the effects of task design on language use and development can be measured. The two assignments for the course will parallel these two parts. The first assignment will involve preparing a task set which isolates a specific variable of interest in L2 task design. The second assignment will then involve analyzing, comparing and interpreting performance data. Learners will be strongly encouraged to collect data for a case study using their own task set, but for those who cannot do so, a small data set will be provided. By the end of the course, learners should be able to: (1) explain what L2 pedagogic tasks are, (2) provide a rationale for their own approach to using tasks in L2 instruction and research, (3) design original task materials for L2 research and L2 instruction, and (4) be prepared to document the hypothesized effects of task design using appropriate analytic techniques.