compileKotlin block in build.gradle file throws error “Could not find method compileKotlin() for arguments […]”

The error you are getting means that there’s no compileKotlin task in the project, and that’s expected for Android projects.

The Kotlin compilation task names in Android projects contain the build variant names (those are combined from build type, product flavor and other settings and look like debug or releaseUnitTest — the tasks are compileDebugKotlin and compileReleaseUnitTestKotlin respectively). There’s no compileKotlin task, which is usually created for the main source set in ordinary Java + Kotlin projects.

Most probably, you want to configure all Kotlin compilation tasks in the project, and to do that, you can apply the block as follows:

tasks.withType(org.jetbrains.kotlin.gradle.tasks.KotlinCompile).all {
    sourceCompatibility = JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8
    targetCompatibility = JavaVersion.VERSION_1_8

    kotlinOptions {
        jvmTarget="1.8"
        apiVersion = '1.1'
        languageVersion = '1.1'
    }
}