Collaborative Pre-task Planning, Task Complexity Manipulation, and Iranian EFL Learners’ Oral Performances

Today, learners’ interaction and collaborative task performance have attracted increasing attention from language teachers and researchers. The present study investigated how collaborative pre-planning, task complexity manipulation, and language proficiency level can play a role in the quality of learners’ oral performances. To this end, 128 EFL learners from two different language proficiency levels carried out three different tasks, whose complexity was manipulated based on Robinson’s task complexity framework. The learners’ interactions and their final task performances were closely examined. Analyzing learners’ oral performances, the researchers found that predictions of the Cognition Hypothesis were not confirmed. Although the participants’ oral productions were more qualified in complex compared to simple task, the differences were not statistically significant. Moreover, the results highlighted that cognitively demanding tasks provide more learning opportunities as learners confront more challenges during collaborative pre-task planning stage, compared to undemanding tasks. The findings of the study can be considered by applied linguists, language teachers and material designers in providing considerable learning opportunities for language learners.

Keywords:

collaborative pre-planning , cognition hypothesis , task complexity , oral performance