This study critically explores how teachers and students have changed the methods to teach and learn English in recent times. Writing has always been perceived as a difficult task for English Foreign Language students at Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) Open University, most of whom are at elementary level of English with significant challenges in writing, including lack of confidence in communicative skills resulting in their inability to communicate efficiently in authentic out-of-class scenarios. In line with recent empirical scholarship on EFL pedagogies, Task-based Language Teaching (TBLT) is proposed as an effective approach that facilitates both the teaching of communicative skills and engagement through the use of the target language and tasks in an authentic manner as used outside of the classroom. This paper, drawing on a mix-methods case study with 60 Vietnamese non-English major EFL students who are learning English as a compulsory subject at elementary level at HCMC Open University, examines what to extent TBLT can help improve writing skills for these students and the factors that influence teacher’s use of TBLT to facilitate effective writing skills at the tertiary level. The data were collected via questionnaire, writing tests, and observation results. The findings indicated that the implementation of TBLT tasks in writing lessons provided by the teacher resulted in crucial improvements in students’ writing performance. Further, the presentation will discuss and critically analyse some of participants’ statements in the experiment to better understand their perceptions of the effectiveness of this pedagogical approach.