Effects of Pre-task Task Planning, Online Planning, and Combined Pre-Ttask and Online Planning on Young Learners’ Oral Production

Exploring the effects of task planning as an implementational variable on second language (L۲) performance has witnessed a noticeable growth over the past years (Ellis, ۲۰۰۵a; Skehan, ۲۰۱۴b). Building on this bulk of research, this study set out to investigate the effects of three task planning conditions, i.e., pre-task planning (PTP), online planning (OLP), and the combination of pre-task and online planning (PTP+OLP), on young learners’ oral complexity, accuracy, and fluency. The participants were ۶۰ EFL learners aged between ۱۰ and ۱۲ who were randomly assigned to one of the four conditions in the study, including the no planning (NP) condition (n = ۱۵ in each group). The participants were asked to watch a short silent video and narrate its story. The results of the statistical analyses indicate that while PTP increases fluency, OLP and OLP+PTP improve both accuracy and syntactic complexity. The findings suggest that teachers of young L۲ learners should utilize the promising potentials of different task planning conditions to channel learners’ language production toward more fluent, accurate, and complex production.

Keywords:

task planning , narrative tasks , Complexity , Accuracy , fluency