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The effect of ‘massed’ task repetitionson complexity, accuracy and fluency:does it transfer to a new task?Mohammad Javad Ahmadian aa Department of English, University of Isfahan, IranPublished online: 23 Feb 2011.
To cite this article: Mohammad Javad Ahmadian (2011) The effect of ‘massed’ task repetitions oncomplexity, accuracy and fluency: does it transfer to a new task?, The Language Learning Journal,39:3, 269-280, DOI: 10.1080/09571736.2010.545239
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2010.545239
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The effect of ‘massed’ task repetitions on complexity, accuracy
and fluency: does it transfer to a new task?
Mohammad Javad Ahmadian*
Department of English, University of Isfahan, Iran
To date, research results suggest that task repetition positively affects oral taskperformance. However, researchers have not yet shown the extension of thebenefits of repeating the same task to performance of a new task. This article firstprovides an overview of the currently available research findings on taskrepetition and then presents the results of a six-month study which aimed to findout whether or not the effects of massed repetitions of the same task carry over toperformance of a new task. Thirty intermediate EFL learners from two intactclasses participated in this study. Participants in the experimental group wererequired to engage in a dialogic narrative task on Occasions 1 to 11 and then aninterview task on Occasion 12, each occasion being two weeks apart. Participantsin the control group, meanwhile, were only required to perform the oral narrativetask at Time 1 and to engage in the interview task at Time 12. Results revealedthat massed repetitions of the same task assisted subjects in the experimentalgroup to outperform those in the control group in terms of complexity andfluency but not accuracy. In conclusion, it is claimed that the benefits of massedrepetitions of the same task transfer to performance of a new task but notnecessarily in all areas of performance.
Introduction
Task repetition is characterised as ‘repetition of the same or slightly altered task –whether the whole tasks, or parts of a task’ (Bygate and Samuda 2005: 43). Secondlanguage acquisition (SLA) researchers now conceive of task repetition as essentiallya kind of planning which is particularly promising for manipulating and channelinglearners’ limited attentional resources (Ahmadian and Tavakoli in press; Bygate2006; Bygate and Samuda 2005; Ellis 2005b, 2008, 2009a; Skehan 2007). There is alsosome good evidence suggesting that this implementation variable positively affectsoral production in general (see Ellis 2009a). However, researchers have not yetdemonstrated the extension of the benefits of repeating the same task to performanceof a new task. This issue assumes particular importance in that if the positive effectsaccruing from task repetition do not transfer to performance of a new task, itscontribution to interlanguage development and second language acquisition could becalled into question. The aim of this article is to outline the major findings of thestudies that have so far addressed task repetition and to report on a study into the
*Email: [email protected]
The Language Learning Journal
Vol. 39, No. 3, November 2011, 269–280
ISSN 0957-1736 print/ISSN 1753-2167 online
� 2011 Association for Language Learning
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2010.545239
http://www.tandfonline.com
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potential transfer of benefits of ‘massed repetitions’ of the same task to performanceof a new task. It should be pointed out that this issue is complex and thus needs to befurther explored through methodologically rigorous research studies; the presentstudy stands as a preliminary study which aims to open up this avenue of research.
Review of the literature
Task repetition
Ellis (2005b) distinguishes two principal kinds of task-based planning, namely pre-task planning and within-task planning. He further divides pre-task planning intorehearsal (or repetition) and strategic planning. Rehearsal or repetition, he states,involves performing a task ‘before the main performance . . . with the firstperformance of the task viewed as preparation for the subsequent performance’(Ellis 2005b: 3). For the purpose of this study, I define ‘massed repetitions’ of a taskas repeating the same task for a number of times (e.g., 11 times) over an extendedperiod of time (e.g., six months).
The positive effects of task repetition on oral task performance have plausibleexplanations in the psycholinguistics of speech processing. Most of the planningstudies have adopted Levelt’s (1989) speech production model as the theoreticalanchor and a psycholinguistic framework for their investigation. Levelt considersspeakers as complex information processors who are capable of translatingintentions, thoughts and feelings into articulated speech. According to this model,speech production is an incremental process which proceeds in three overlappingstages: (a) conceptualization, during which intentions and relevant information to beconveyed are selected and prepared in the form of preverbal message; (b) formulation,during which conceptual representation translates into linguistic structures; and (c)articulation, during which the linguistic structures are transformed into actualspeech.
Performing a task, which is by its very nature meaning-focused and outcome-oriented, induces task performers to deal with what they want to say (i.e.,conceptualization) first (Skehan 1998, 2007, 2009). As Bygate (1996) has argued,during the initial task performance the task participant is primarily concerned withprocessing the preverbal message, and therefore, little attentional capacity is left forlexico-grammatical search which normally takes place during the formulation stage.However, when one is repeating a task, a considerable part of the conceptualization,formulation and articulation has already been conducted in the initial taskperformance (Bygate and Samuda 2005), and therefore attentional resources arefreed up to be allocated to different dimensions of oral production. This arguablyleads to the greater syntacticization of the same meanings conveyed in the initialperformance of the task.
By and large, empirical evidence lends support to the effectiveness of taskrepetition to improve language performance. Bygate’s (1996) study could beconsidered as one of the earliest documented attempts to investigate task repetition.Bygate asked one language learner to perform a task twice with a three-day interval,without being told on the first occasion that the task would be repeated three dayslater. The task consisted of watching a Tom and Jerry video cartoon and thenretelling it. Bygate found that this form of repetition resulted in some strikingimprovement in both fluency and accuracy (for a summary of the results, see also
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Bygate 1999). Concerning accuracy, improvements were observed and documentedin terms of vocabulary, idiomaticity, grammatical markers and structure.
Gass et al. (1999) focused on the effects of task repetition on the linguistic outputof L2 learners of Spanish. They attempted to see whether repeating (both same andslightly altered) tasks yields more sophisticated language use and whether or notmore accurate and/or sophisticated language use carries over to a new context. Intheir study, which made use of narrative tasks, participants in the experimentalgroups were required to watch the video and retell it four times, with the first threeoccasions being two to three days apart and the fourth performance taking place oneweek after the third performance. The participants in the control group performedthe task only twice with the two occasions being approximately two weeks apart.Gass et al. (1999) found that task repetition had an effect on the overall proficiency,partial accuracy in the use of estar and lexical complexity.
Another interesting study on task repetition was conducted by Lynch andMcLean (2000, 2001) in an English for special purposes context. They designed aparticular task called ‘poster carousel’ in which students were required to read anacademic article and prepare a poster presentation based on it. Each student (posterpresenter) had six visitors, which means that each of them repeated the same task ofanswering the same question. Lynch and McLean found that this recycling hadpositive effects on both accuracy and fluency in language production.
Building on insights provided by his previous study (Bygate 1996), Bygate (2001)compared the performances of 48 learners on two sets of tasks: a narrative set and aninterview set. After 10 weeks, Bygate investigated three issues: (a) the secondperformance of the same tasks that they had performed 10 weeks earlier; (b)performance of a new version of the type of task that participants had practised overthe 10 weeks and one they had not practised; and (c) participants’ overallperformance across the two task types. Bygate found that task repetition had asignificant effect on fluency and complexity of learners’ performances. However,there was no transfer of practice effect and thus he concluded that task repetition didnot assist acquisition.
Following this line of research, Sheppard (2006, cited in Ellis 2009a) investigatedthe effects of task repetition accompanied by input or feedback on complexity,accuracy and fluency (henceforth CAF). The input and feedback were designed todraw subjects’ attention to linguistic form between the first and second perform-ances. Overall, Sheppard’s results indicate that task repetition accompanied by eitherinput or feedback positively affects the CAF triad (to variable degrees). However, ofparticular relevance to the present study is the finding that when language learnersreceived either feedback or input between the two performances, the positive benefitsof task repetition transferred to performance of a new task.
In a more recent attempt, Ahmadian and Tavakoli (2011) investigated the effectsof the simultaneous use of task repetition and careful online planning (operationa-lized as the provision of ample time for task performance) on the CAF of EFLlearners. They asked intermediate EFL learners to repeat an oral narrative task aftera one-week interval. Results revealed that task repetition positively impacts oncomplexity and fluency. Moreover, it had the potential to compensate for thedysfluency which resulted from engaging in careful online planning. Overall, thefindings of Ahmadian and Tavakoli’s research confirmed Bygate and Samuda’s(2005) claim that task repetition could complement both strategic and careful onlineplanning.
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Although these studies have used different measures to assess complexity,accuracy and fluency, which may undermine their comparability, considering thetheoretical issues discussed and the overall findings, it seems logical to claim thattask repetition has positive effects on the complexity and fluency of learners’ oralproduction. However, as mentioned earlier, there is no (conclusive) empiricalevidence suggesting that the benefits of repeating the same task extend to a new taskand thus, as Ellis (2009a: 477) suggests, ‘there is no clear evidence that task rehearsalassists acquisition’. Notwithstanding, this remains an open question in that one mayvery well argue, following Larsen-Freeman (2009: 584) that ‘while there may be noimmediate evidence that task rehearsal assists learning, this does not mean that itdoes not’ since ‘the benefits of repeating a task may not show up immediately’.
Regarding the effects of task repetition on acquisition, there are, at least, twopossibilities that need to be (re)examined: (a) in order for task repetition to havebeneficial effects on acquisition, learners need to receive feedback on their initialperformance of the task (Sheppard 2006, cited in Ellis 2009a); and (b) as Bygate (2001)hypothesizes, it may be that massed repetition practice is required for acquisition totake place. To shedmore light on the nature of task repetition this latter possibility wasexamined in the present study. In the next section I will discuss complexity, accuracyand fluency which function as the dependent variables of this study.
Complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF)
Many SLA researchers now agree that L2 proficiency and L2 performance as multi-componential constructs are best measured in terms of complexity, accuracy andfluency (Ellis and Barkhuizen 2005; Housen and Kuiken 2009; Larsen-Freeman2009; Norris and Ortega 2009; Skehan 1996, 1998, 2009a, 2009b). Complexity ischaracterized as ‘the extent to which the language produced in performing a task iselaborate and varied’ (Ellis 2003: 340) and pertains to learners’ tendency to take risksto use the cutting edge of their linguistic knowledge which may ultimately lead to theprocess of restructuring (Ellis 2008; Ellis and Barkhuizen 2005). However, accuracyis defined as ‘the ability to produce error-free speech’ (Housen and Kuiken 2009:461) and relates to learners’ attempts to control existing knowledge and to avoidproducing erroneous forms (Ellis 2008). Fluency has been defined as ‘the extent towhich the language produced in performing a task manifests pausing, hesitation, orreformulations’ (Ellis 2003: 42). This construct may be linked with ‘speaking . . . atan appropriate rate, speaking without undue hesitation or pauses . . . and the abilityto perform under a range of social and physical circumstances’ (Segalowitz 2007:181). In the SLA literature, whereas accuracy is related to controlled processing aswell as capitalizing on the rule-based system (which is essentially a repertoire of rulesused for formulating novel sentences), fluency is commonly associated withautomatic processing (Schmidt 1992; Segalowitz 2007) as well as the utilization offormulaic language extracted from exemplar-based system (Skehan 1998). Theseconceptualizations of L2 performance and the CAF triad underlie the present study.
The study
Introduction
The aim of this studywas to seewhether or not the effects of repeating the same task on 11occasionsovera six-monthperiod carryover toperformanceof anewtask. Inotherwords,
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the study attempted to investigate the contribution of task repetition not only to languageperformance, but also, andmore importantly, to language development. SLA researchersare nowconvinced that if the benefits of repeating the same task extend to theperformanceof a new task, we can argue that task repetition does indeed lead to the development ofinterlanguage (Ellis 2009a). To this end the following research questionwas investigated inthe present study: do the effects of massed repetitions of the same task extend to theperformance of a new task as measured in terms of complexity, accuracy and fluency?
The effects of task repetition on complexity, accuracy and fluency were measuredby means of a pre-test–treatment–post-test design. The study was conducted in alaboratory. Two groups of intermediate EFL learners participated in the study:participants in the experimental group engaged in a dialogic narrative task onOccasions 1 to 11 and an interview task on Occasion 12, each occasion being twoweeks apart; participants in the control group, however, were only required toperform the oral narrative task at Time 1 and engage in the interview task at Time 12.
Participants
This study was conducted in a language center in Iran. Thirty intermediate EFLlearners from two intact classes participated in the study. All participants signed theinformed consent forms. Participants (aged 18–21) were all female. In the languagecenter, participants had eight hours of English per week – five hours for speaking andlistening and three hours forwriting and reading. Theywere told that the tasks and testswere for purposes of research and that the results of the study would not affect theirgrades. To make sure of the homogeneity of the two classes in terms of level ofproficiency, all participants took the grammar part of the Oxford Placement Test 2(Allan 1992). Participants’ responses were scored on a scale of 100 points. Resultsrevealed that participants in both groups had a range of scores between 42 and 49.
Tasks and the procedure
In the present study, two tasks were used: an oral dialogic1 narrative task and aninterview task. Both tasks, thus, were similar in terms of discourse mode – both weredialogic. In the oral narrative task, participants were required to watch 10 minutes ofa classical silent film and to retell it straight away. They were asked to start narratingthe task to the researcher right after watching the video to preclude them fromengaging in strategic planning. In the interview task, questions centered aroundparticipants’ personal experiences concerning language learning and the merits ofknowing a second language.
Participants in the control group only did the Time 1 (the oral narrative task) andTime 12 (the interview task) tasks, which were about six months apart. Participantsin the experimental group, however, performed the oral narrative task on 11occasions, each two weeks apart, and then like those in the control group, did theinterview task at the end of six-month period.
Measurement of the dependent variables
Skehan (1998, 2009a) claims that there is trade-off among the three dimensions ofperformance, to the effect that ‘if performance in each of these areas, complexity,accuracy and fluency (CAF), requires attention and working memory involvement,
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then committing attentional resources to one may have a negative impact on others’(Skehan 2009a: 511). This claim finds support in most of the planning studiesconducted so far (see Ellis 2005, 2008, 2009a for informative reviews). Based on a seriesof articles onCAF (Applied Linguistics special issue 2009, 30 no. 4), Ahmadian (in pressa; in press b) has summarized some recent developments relating to the way these threeconstructs are investigated and understood. I mention here three points which have abearing on the present study and have informed the choice of measures used to assessthe CAF triad: (a) complexity, accuracy and fluency are themselves multidimensionalandmultifaceted constructs and each represent an arrayof sub-constructs (Housen andKuiken 2009); (b) even if measures used to assess CAF sub-constructs do not alwaysreveal differences among groups of subjects, they still may be scientifically valid andinformative (Pallotti 2009); (c) some measures used to assess the sub-constructs of theCAF triad may tap the same facet of a construct and thus may cause what Norris andOrtega (2009) refer to as redundancy inmeasurement; therefore, it is imperative to utilizecomplementary but distinct measures for assessing each principal construct. It is alsoadvisable to use the same measures as used in previous studies (Ellis and Barkhuizen2005). In this study, I used exactly the same measures2 as used in Ahmadian andTavakoli (2011) to enhance the comparability of these two studies.
Complexity
. Syntactic complexity (amount of subordination): the ratio of clauses to AS-units in the participants’ production. AS-unit is defined as ‘a single speaker’sutterance consisting of an independent clause or sub-clausal unit, together withany subordinate clause(s) associated with it’ (Foster, Tonkyn and Wiggles-worth 2000: 365). The rationale behind choosing the AS-unit is that this unit isessentially a syntactic one and syntactic units are genuine units of planning(Foster, Tonkyn and Wigglesworth 2000) which would make them good unitsfor analyzing spoken language in this study.
. Syntactic variety: the total number of different grammatical verb forms used inparticipants’ performances. Tense (e.g., simple present, simple past, pastcontinuous, etc) and modality (e.g., should, must, etc) were taken as grammaticalverb forms used for the analysis.
. Overall complexity: the mean length of AS-units in the participants’ oralperformances asmeasuredby calculating themeannumber ofwords perAS-unit.
Accuracy
. Error-free clauses: the percentage of the clauses which were not erroneous.Error was defined as deviance from standard norms with respect to syntax,morphology, and/or lexicon.
. Correct verb forms: the percentage of all verbs which were used correctly interms of tense, aspect, modality and subject–verb agreement.
Fluency
. Rate A (number of syllables produced per minute of speech): the number ofsyllables within each narrative, divided by the number of seconds used tocomplete the task and multiplied by 60.
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. Rate B (number of meaningful syllables per minute of speech): Rate A’sprocedure was followed again, but all syllables, words and phrases that wererepeated, reformulated, or replaced were excluded.
Analysis
All narrations and interviews produced (at Time 1 and 12) were audio-recorded andthen transcribed by the researcher and two expert research colleagues. Thetranscribed narrations and interviews were then segmented, coded and scored basedon the measures chosen for assessing complexity, accuracy and fluency (see above).Intercoder reliability calculations (for 10% of the data) with one of the expertresearch colleagues pointed to a mean of 96% agreement on the identification,segmenting and scoring clauses and a mean of 93% for AS-units. To answer theresearch question, first descriptive statistics were calculated, and then twoindependent-sample t-tests were performed; to show the similarity of theexperimental and control groups prior to the treatment, the mean scores for allmeasures obtained on the pre-test (Time 1, i.e., the oral narrative task) werecompared across the two groups. Then, the post-test (Time 12, i.e., the interviewtask) mean scores of both groups and for all measures were compared. The results ofthese statistical procedures are presented in the following section.
Results
Table 1 below shows the descriptive statistics for the scores obtained from subjects’performances on the oral narrative task at Time 1. The mean scores and standarddeviations are displayed for all measures. As is shown in the table, the experimentaland control groups were fairly similar in terms of their oral task performances atTime 1 (i.e., prior to the treatment). Results of the independent-sample t-test shownin Table 2 confirm that there were no statistically significant differences between thetwo groups.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics for experimental and control groups on pre-test.
Variables Group n Mean SD
Syntactic complexity Experimental 15 .7633 .04624Control 15 .7480 .04887
Syntactic variety Experimental 15 4.3333 .48795Control 15 4.2000 .56061
Overall complexity Experimental 15 6.1900 .27982Control 15 6.2693 .44557
Percentage of correct verb form Experimental 15 37.4107 1.77086Control 15 37.3407 1.84591
Percentage of error free clauses Experimental 15 38.0233 2.16380Control 15 39.0593 1.39760
Number of syllables produced per minute of speech Experimental 15 32.2507 .34991Control 15 32.5860 .98506
Number of meaningful syllables per minute of speech Experimental 15 26.6987 .47815Control 15 26.8331 .35807
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In order to see whether the positive effects of massed repetitions of an oralnarrative task transferred to the performance of an interview task, the mean scoreson all measures (shown in Table 3) were compared across the two groups after the sixmonths period. Results of the inferential statistics displayed in Table 4 point to thestatistically significant differences between the experimental and control groups interms of all measures that were used to assess complexity and fluency. Thedifferences between the two groups in terms of accuracy measures, however, were notstatistically significant. Therefore, as the results of the statistical analyses suggest, asfar as complexity and fluency are concerned, the benefits of massed repetitions of thesame task carried over to the performance of a new task.
Discussion
The study reported in this article aimed to find out whether or not the effects ofmassed repetitions of the same task carry over to performance of a new task. Resultsrevealed that massed task repetitions over an extended period of time resulted inbetter performance of a new task in terms of complexity and fluency. Accuracy,however, did not seem to be amenable to this implementation variable. I will now
Table 2. t-test for analysis for pre-test scores.
Variables t dfSignificance(2-tailed)
Meandifference
Syntactic complexity .883 28 .385 .01533Syntactic variety .695 28 .493 .13333Overall complexity 7.584 28 .564 7.07933Percentage of correct verb form .106 28 .917 .07000Percentage of error-free clauses 71.558 28 .131 71.03600Number of syllables produced per minute of speech 71.242 28 .224 7.33533Number of meaningful syllables per minute of speech 7.872 28 .391 7.13447
Note. The level of significance was set to .05.
Table 3. Descriptive statistics for experimental and control groups on post-test (Time 12).
Variables Group n Mean SD
Syntactic complexity Experimental 15 .7913 .05097Control 15 .7547 .04121
Syntactic variety Experimental 15 5.0667 .88372Control 15 4.2667 .59362
Overall complexity Experimental 15 7.0680 .30857Control 15 6.6600 .34836
Percentage of correct verb form Experimental 15 38.1587 .98510Control 15 37.9900 1.08750
Percentage of error free clauses Experimental 15 39.2600 1.13518Control 15 39.6620 .83757
Number of syllables produced per minute of speech Experimental 15 35.3493 1.04213Control 15 33.3620 1.11594
Number of meaningful syllables per minute of speech Experimental 15 29.8067 1.29504Control 15 28.6953 1.51748
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discuss the findings of this study in relation to the CAF triad and implications forboth theory and practice.
These findings overall provide further empirical evidence for Skehan’s (1998,2009a, 2009b) trade-off hypothesis. Results suggested that in essence the trade-offhere involved accuracy and fluency; to the effect that attending to complexity andfluency would restrict the capacity for processing accurate language. From thisperspective, the findings of this study are compatible with the results of previousstudies on task repetition (Ahmadian and Tavakoli 2011; Bygate 2001; Bygate andSamuda 2005). The fact that massed task repetition has positively impacted onparticipants’ complexity of language on a different task speaks to the contribution ofmassed task repetition to interlanguage development, precisely because thecomplexity of language is conceived of as ‘the scope of expanding or restructuredsecond language knowledge’ (Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki and Kim 1998: 4) andrestructuring occurs once the procedures involved in language acquisition ‘becomeautomatized, consolidated, and function efficiently’ (McLaughlin 1987: 138).
This is in fact in accord with Bygate’s (2001) prediction mentioned above, buthow can we account for this? Bygate (1999) argues that what language learners learnin particular situations may be lost if one new situation is followed by another. Hefurther claims that ‘for learning to take place, contexts should not be continuallychanged, but rather held constant’ (Bygate 1999: 36). In light of this argumentation,one plausible explanation is that as a result of massed repetitions (11 times) inconstant contexts, task performers became more and more familiar with the contentof the task and thus they brought in more linguistic options by which tocommunicate the same meaning (Bygate 2006). Furthermore, the repeatedencounters with similar processing demands made it possible for the task performersto ‘integrate’ more complexity and fluency in meaningful communication. Therefore,this finding not only lends support to the utility of massed task repetitions as animplementation variable which assists interlanguage development, but it alsoprovides support for the claim that task repetition could be viewed as ‘integrativeplanning’ (Bygate 1999; Bygate and Samuda 2005).
This finding has an important implication for language pedagogy and counters acommon criticism leveled against task-based language teaching and learning, namelythat as long as the learners can produce language which helps them achieve theircommunicative goals, they may not do additional work to extend their activelinguistic repertoire (Bygate and Samuda 2005). Further, critics argue, they may fallback on their communicative strategies (Skehan 1998) and produce impoverished
Table 4. t-test for analysis for post-test scores.
Variables t dfSignificance(2-tailed)
MeanDifference
Syntactic complexity 2.167 28 .039 .03667Syntactic variety 2.910 28 .007 .80000Overall complexity 3.395 28 .002 .40800Percentage of correct verb form .445 28 .660 .16867Percentage of error free clauses 71.104 28 .279 7.40200Number of syllables produced per minute of speech 5.041 28 .000 1.98733Number of meaningful syllables per minute of speech 2.158 28 .040 1.11133
Note: The level of significance was set to .05.
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stretches of language which are typical of pidgins and creoles (Seedhouse 1999). Infact, massed task repetition, by virtue of its peculiar features as a kind of planning,seems to help learners to go beyond simply ‘getting the job done’ and to makeattempts at extending their active knowledge for real-time communication as well asproducing language which is both more complex and fluent. Thus, the results of thisstudy may provide impetus for teachers to use (massed) task repetition(s) more oftenin the classroom. As Bygate (2006) suggests, sometimes due to a superficialresemblance of task repetition to the audiolingual drills inherited from behaviorism,teachers may simply downgrade the utility of this practice. However, this kind ofrepetition does not at all refer to ‘verbatim’ repetitions; rather it involves therepetition of familiar form and content.
These positive findings, however, warrant a word of caution with respect to thenature of the study. The study was conducted over a six-month period during whichparticipants were exposed to input3 and instruction from various sources (note thatparticipants had eight hours of English per week – five hours for speaking andlistening and three hours for writing and reading). This being the case, one mayquestion the internal validity of the study; but, given the existence of a control group,which was ‘identical’ to the experimental group in many ways – same instructor,same materials covered, etc – this criticism may be in part overcome. Nevertheless, aswas pointed out at the start of this article, there is a need for future extended andmethodologically rigorous investigations to further explore and (re)examine thedimensions of this complex phenomenon from different perspectives.
Conclusions
The results of this study have two important contributions, one to SLApsycholinguistic theory and one to language pedagogy. The construct of massedtask repetitions was successfully mapped onto, and clarified with reference to,Levelt’s speech production model and the predictions made at the outset of the studywere in part based on this model. Therefore, from a psycholinguistic perspective, thefindings of this study not only confirm the limited nature of attentional capacity butthey also support the viability of Levelt’s (1989) speech production model (which heproposed for L1 speech production) for L2 speech production research. From apedagogical perspective, results of this study afford further empirical evidence insupport of the flexibility of task-based approaches to language teaching andlearning. In particular, the findings empirically confirm what Ellis (2009b) has notedas one of the advantages of task-based language teaching (TBLT) approaches,namely that while TBLT prioritizes meaning over form, it can nevertheless cater forlearning form, and it has the potential to cater for the enhancement ofcommunicative fluency while not neglecting accuracy of language.
The study reported in this article has a number of limitations which need to beaddressed in future task repetition studies. The sample size was rather small mainlybecause the study was conducted over a six-month period, which meant thatarrangements with a larger group of language learners would have been very difficultif not impossible. A further problem, which is common to all studies conductedunder laboratory conditions, concerns the ecological validity of the study. Despitethe important advantages (e.g., controlling for confounding variables) thatlaboratory research offers over research in other settings (Hulstijn 1997), we shouldnever forget that what happens in a laboratory is different from what actually
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happens in a classroom. Thus, given the small sample of the study and itsquestionable ecological validity, its results should not be generalized to othercontexts without caution. Finally, as Ellis (2009a) has pointed out there are variousfactors that are involved in researching the effects of planning on L2 languageperformance. He enumerates four such factors: (a) task variables, which concern thecomplexity of task variables; (b) individual differences variables, which have to dowith such variables as L2 proficiency and learner attitudes; (c) planning variables;and (d) L2 production variables. To move toward theorizing the role that planningplays in L2 oral performance, we need to take into account all these variables.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the anonymous reviewers of The Language Learning Journal fortheir insightful comments. I also thank Parisa Abdolrezapour who read andcommented on an earlier draft of this article.
Notes
1. Ellis (2009) maintains that narrative tasks can be performed in both a monologic and adialogic mode, i.e., the task performer can be required to tell a story to another individualor can be asked to tell it into an audio-recording device.
2. For detailed discussions on CAF measures, interested readers can refer to Ellis andBarkhuizen (2005) which provides a comprehensive theoretical and empirical account forthe CAF triad as well as an inventory of measures used to assess these constructs; Ellis(2009a) which reviews the previous research on planning which have used CAF asdependent variables; and Norris and Ortega (2009), which focuses on complexity oflanguage and its corresponding measures.
3. It is important to point out that although EFL learners in Iran rarely have contact withnative-speakers of English, the use of satellite programs and English-speaking newsnetworks is quite widespread.
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