81009377

open access

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The Effects of Pre-Task Planning and Proficiency Level on Fluency, Accuracy, and Complexity of EFL Learners' Oral Narrative Task Performance

神戸大学国際コミュニケーションセンター論集

12

11-29

神戸大学国際コミュニケーションセンター

2015

2016-04-04

The study is designed to explore the effect of pre-task planning on oral narrative task performance by EFL learners in the aspects of fluency, accuracy, and complexity. Pre-task planning time and proficiency level were the two variables being manipulated each at two levels. The interaction between pre-task planning time and proficiency level was also investigated to clarify whether the effect of pre-task planning would work the same for both low- and high- proficiency learners. Rationale behind the research is learners can not attend simultaneously to fluency, accuracy, and complexity due to the limited capacity of working memory. It is assumed that a trade-off effect or competition exists either between fluency and accuracy or between accuracy and complexity. Findings of the study suggest that pre-task planning may either enhance or impede fluency depending on proficiency level and task difficulty. Low proficiency learners seem to benefit from pre-task planning on easier tasks. As for high-proficiency learners, pre-task planning is only beneficial for more difficult tasks. Pre-task planning has no effect on accuracy particularly for tasks that need to be performed in a limited amount of time, for the reason that processing load becomes heavy in monitoring speech production to make it as accurate as possible. The more attention needs to be spared to monitoring the accuracy, the more likely it comes to a breakdown. Or, put differently, when the time gets longer to perform the task, the less possible it is for learners to maintain the accuracy level. A more in-depth study of comparing speech production under pre-task planning and on-line planning may generate a greater understanding of the effect of planning on accuracy. Complexity seems to be less prone to be affected by pre-task planning. Findings of the study indicate an intrinsic relation between task material and language complexity.

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