THE EFFECTS OF REPETITION OF TASKS ON THE ACQUISITION

OF L2 FORMS AMONG SCHOOL CHILDREN

Rasakumaran, A.
University of Jaffna
rasakumaran1957@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
There has been very little focus on the acquisition of form during the post-task
phase in the present task-based language teaching. Therefore, this experimental
study investigates after drawing the attention of learners to form in the during
task phase, the effects of task repetition on the acquisition of forms. The language
form, the simple present, was selected. The selection was due to the perceived
difficulty of learning this structure through the 35 year experience of English
Language Teaching of the researcher. The participants who are grade nine
students from a popular school were randomly assigned to two groups. The
experimental group repeatedly completed same tasks while the control group did
not. Two tests: pre and immediate post-tests were administered to check the
improvement in oral as well as written production. Results revealed that the
experimental group outperformed the control group both in writing and in
speech both in accuracy, and fluency. However, the difference in complexity was
not statistically significant.

Key Words: tasks, repetition, form, complexity, accuracy, fluency

Introduction task stage. In this study repetition of tasks,

It has been the speculation of researchers
(Ellis, 2003; Shehadeh& Coombe, 2012;
Skehan, 1998a; 2014; Van den Branden,
Bygate & Norris, 2009), to whom task-
based language teaching (TBLT) has
become a field of interest, if TBLT is able
to teach specific grammar forms to
learners of second a language (Sato,
2010). However, Ellis (2009a) is of the
opinion that TBLT may not have an
explicit grammar syllabus, but there is a
focus on form during meaningful
communication.
Several studies have made learners focus
on form (Skehan, 1996; Willis,
1996;Foster& Skehan, 1999; Kim, 2013)
during pre-task stage. Lyster, Saito &
Sato, (2013) studied the acquisition of
forms during-task stage by providing
corrective feedback and Foster& Skehan,
(2013) and Qian, (2014) studied the post-
which may be considered as post-task, and
its effects were investigated.
Almost all the studies repeated the same
task (Bygate, 2001). This study also
followed the same since studies by many
other scholars (Bygate, 2001; Gass et al.,
1999 &Ahmadian, 2012) reveal that task
repetition do not carry over the beneficial
effects to a new task. Therefore, the task
repetition is operationalized as repeating
the same task.
1.1 Theoretical underpinnings and
empirical background
When learners carry out a task for the first
time, they are more concerned with
completing the task than they focus on
linguistic accuracy. Their attention is
drawn to the content, Skehan (1998b).
Levelt (1989) propses that during while-
task phase a learner will concentrate on
selecting and ordering information and
thinking about what to say. Only at a later
phonetic plan (p. 12) stage will he think
of form. In a later work Bygate (2001)
points out that a learner will be Able to
concentrate on form during task repetition
as he will already be familiar with the
content.
According to Ellis (2005), repetition of a
task enables two different experiences of
the same task demands. The differences
between the two experiences are seen as
being due to different states of knowledge
on the part of the speaker, and capable of
enabling change. The first encounter with
a task is likely to be the more creative
encounter: the learner has to respond to a
new demand. This is likely to mean that
the learner has rather a lot of new work to
do: for instance deciding how to do the
task, what messages to produce, and how
to produce them. In comparison, on
repeating a task, the learner has valuable
experience to draw on: after all, he/she has
already internalised the information
content, organised it into communication
units, found relevant language to convey
the meanings, and pronounced it. Hence
on the second occasion the learner is likely
to be under less pressure than on the first
encounter, provided of course that the task
is performed under the same conditions
(with no additional time pressure, for
example). Because of this, it is likely that
at the first encounter the learner is more
likely to rely on the most automated
aspects of his/her language, than at the
second. In contrast, at the second
encounter, the learner is not only
cognitively prepared, but furthermore,
her/his vocabulary and grammar
(especially vocabulary) are primed, so
that there is a chance that on the second
occasion the learner will generate more
sophisticated output.
This might involve such things as
providing more backgrounding, and
selecting a wider range of ways of
formulating the message. In other words,
an initial encounter with a task can be seen
as creating a holistic representation of the
task, along with the experience of
handling it in real time. This
representation and the accompanying
experience can be stored, creating a kind
of plan which can be drawn on a second
occasion, enabling the learner to integrate
a broader range of their resources into
their performance - that is, to perform
more adequately their competence as it
were (Clark 1974).
In an early small scale laboratory study,
Bygate (1996) asked a participant to watch
a cartoon and to retell the story. After a
single repetition of the task, Bygate found
that there was improvement in the oral
output: grammatical variety and small
gains in accuracy. His later study, Bygate
(2001), revealed a significant increase in
fluency and complexity after task
repetition. However, he could not find any
increase in accuracy. Bygate argues that
during the initial task the learner is
concerned primarily with heuristic
planning of content, and is under pressure
of time when seeking the linguistic
resources to communicate it. On the
second attempt, the content of the task
being more familiar, he/she was more
concerned with giving attention to the
linguistic formulation is corroborated by
the results of his studies.
Gass et al. (1999) investigated whether
task repetition led to more sophisticated
language use and whether this would
transfer to a new context. One hundred
and three students of Spanish as a foreign
language were assigned to a control, same
content, or different content group. They
watched video fragments of Mr. Bean and
recorded their own version of what was
happening, at the same time. Gass et al.
Observed that task repetition led to greater
overall proficiency, greater accuracy in
morphosyntax, and lexical sophistication.
Gass et al. reasoned that freeing up
attention to meaning allows learners to
gain greater control over their linguistic
knowledge (p. 573).These results, though,
did not transfer to a new context.
Lynch and McLean (2001) asked 14
participants, learning English for specific
purposes, to repeat their presentation six
times in a poster presentation with an
interval of 3 minutes between
presentations. They named the
presentation as poster carousal. In this
task, participants were required to read an
academic article and prepare a poster
presentation based on it. Each participant
had six visitors, which means that each of
them repeated the same task of answering
to the same question posed by the visitors
six times. They found that the accuracy
and fluency of the participants increased
significantly.
Hawkes (2012) carried out a study where
participants after having concentrated to
form in during task phase repeated the
same task. The results showed an increase
in the number of form and pronunciation
focused corrections.
Larsen-Freeman (2006) studied 5 Chinese
L2 learners for six months and
performance variability between
individuals across time in written and oral
production as a result of task repetition.
However, the t-tests revealed there was no
significant difference.
Sheppard, (2006) studied the effects of
repeating the oral task accompanied by
feedback on accuracy and fluency were.
The researcher provided feedback in order
to draw participants attention to the
linguistic form between the first
performance and the second one.
Sheppards study indicated that repeating
the oral task provided by suitable feedback
clearly enhanced the fluency and accuracy
of language performance. Taguchi (2008)
studied the increment in language fluency
in spoken production among second
language learners who performed repeated
practice of grammatical features as
constituent units of discourse. The
participants of this study were twenty two
language learners enrolled in an
elementary Japanese course. They were
taught forty grammatical features through
the use of communicative drills and
memorization of dialogues containing
specific features. The performers
completed two conversation tasks in
Japanese with five week intervals between
them. Taguchi found no significant
enhancement in fluency of their oral
output. The researcher explained that as
the beginning-level participants learned a
great deal of linguistic expressions, it took
them some time to survey a range of these
expressions and choose the most
appropriate ones which might have lead to
slower overall speaking process.
Mojavezis (2014) study involved fifty
language learners of different levels of
proficiency, selected from two different
language centers, participated in this
study. They were asked to perform an oral
narrative task twice with a one-week
interval. Results revealed that, compared
to the participants with lower L2
proficiency, participants with higher levels
of L2 proficiency produced more complex,
accurate, and fluent speech on the second
encounter with the same task. (2014) did
a study with twenty eight Saudi female
students in the Preparatory Year at King
Saud university, who were randomly
selected to conduct an oral information
gap task. The participants were asked to
perform the task two times with two-week
interval between the two performances.
Gashans findings revealed that task
repetition resulted in significant
differences in the subjects oral discourse
in terms of fluency and accuracy.
However, the Limited Attentional
Capacity Model of Skehan, (2001), also
known as trade-off hypothesis, assumes
that attentional resources are limited and
that increasing the complexity of tasks
reduces a pool of general available
attentional capacity. Once their attentional
limits are reached, L2 learners will
prioritise processing for meaning over
processing language form. As a result,
when one concentrates on one aspect of
performance (complexity of language,
accuracy, and fluency) there is a
possibility that other dimensions suffer
and a prioritisation of one aspect will
sabotage the other areas. In sum, what the
trade-off hypothesis proposes is that an
increase in cognitive task complexity will
cause learners to pay attention first to the
content of the task. Consequently, the
complexity and accuracy of the linguistic
output will decrease.
What the above discussion reveals is that
many studies found that task repetition as
post task activity increased the overall
performance of second language learners
while Taguchi's (2008) study found that
there was no significant change in the oral
fluency. This may be due to the long
interval between repetitions. The current
study, as was done in most of the relevant
studies, was conducted with two weeks
interval. As far as the researchers
knowledge is concerned, no study has
been conducted in the Sri Lankan second
language (L2) context, especially among
the learners whose first language is Tamil.
1.2 The study
Based on Levelts (1991) Model of Speech
I designed an experimental study, which
investigated the effects of task repetition,
preceded by rule deduction and form-
focused feedback in during task phase,
on the accurate use of the simple present
tense English structure. Further, I
investigated if focus on accuracy as a
result of direction of attention on form in
during task was affected.
RQ1 Is task repetitions as a post-task
activity effective in promoting the
accurate use of grammar
structures?
RQ2 Does students focus on oral
accuracy have a negative impact on oral
fluency?
2. METHOD
2.1 Participants
18 participants learning English as a
Second Language (ESL) from a popular
girls school in Jaffna, Sri Lanka took part
in the study. They were randomly selected
from three different divisions of Grade 9.
Different teachers handled the three
divisions. All the participants were above
average in their level of proficiency and
were native speakers of Tamil. Apart from
ESL, participants also learnt Sinhala at
school as a third language. They were all
13+ years old and had been learning ESL
formally from Grade 3.Consent of the
participants and their parents, the principal
of the school and the teachers in charge
was obtained before they were engaged in
the study.
2.2 The Design
The study was conducted during school
hours. The participants were assigned to
two different groups on a random basis.
There was equal number (9) of
participants in each group. The
participants watched a silent video clip of
five minutes length. The clip was on the
activities of a boy and a girl, who are
school students. It was a comic one and
attractive and interesting to the
participants.
The study comprised a pre-test, the fist
intervention on the following day of the
pre-test and the repetition of the task after
two weeks.
The pre-test requested all the students of
the three divisions including the
participants to complete a written test to
check their structural knowledge in the
simple present tense. The test included
items that checked the positive, negative,
and interrogative structures. All the scripts
were marked but, only scores the scripts of
the participants were analysed.
The first intervention, i.e. the
administering of the task took place in all
the three divisions from which the
participants were selected for the study.
Like in the pre-test, all the students in the
three divisions including the selected
participants took part in the first
intervention. During the main task
preparation, all these students received
form-focused feedback on the particular
target structure. After watching the video
clip, the selected participants were asked
to describe orally what they watched. The
presentation was audio recorded. After
they completed the oral presentation, all
the students were asked to write a
description of what happens in the video.
Both these tasks together comprise the
first immediate post test (IPT).
Two weeks after the first IPT the
experimental group was shown the same
video clip whereas the control group was
not. These groups were separated from
each other this time to avoid confusion
among participants that might result from
thinking why the discriminative treatment
is. The experimental group completed the
same tasks: the oral presentation and
written production after watching the same
video clip. The control group was asked to
present what any two members in their
families do or do not do during weekends.
First, they presented orally and then wrote
the description.
The three dimensions of L2proficiency -
complexity, accuracy, and fluency - were
measured in this study to see if there was
difference. Complexity is used in this
study in the sense linguisitic
(grammatical) complexity. Different units
of analyses are used to analyse the
language production: T-units, C-units, and
AS-units. The term T-units derived from
the phrase minimal terminable unit. A C-
Unit refers to clause unit and an AS Unit
refers to Analysis of Speech Unit. Hunt
(1965) introduced the concept of T-Unit.
T-Unit is defined as a main clause
(independent clause) including all
subordinate clauses (dependent clause) or
other constructions that go with it
(extensions and expansions). Hunts
construct established a yardstick for
measuring syntactic development. This
study uses mean length of T-Unit (MLTU)
as a unit of analysis. MLTU is the average
number of words per T-Unit. In this study
complexity is measured as use of target
structure-simple present verbs- per T-Unit.
Housen & Kuiken, (2009) define accuracy
as the ability to produce error-free
speech. According to Ellis (2005)
accuracy is the ability of the speaker to
avoid errors in performance, possibly
reflecting higher levels of control in the
language as well as a conservative
orientation. In the current study,
following Yuan & Ellis, (2003) and Guar
-Tavares, (2008) accuracy was measured
by calculating the number of error-free
clauses. All errors in syntax, morphology,
and lexical choice were taken into
consideration. High means indicate less
number of errors and as a result better
performance.
Based on Mochizuki & Ortega, (2008)
fluency is measured as the average number
of words produced per minute.
Results and Discussion findings of several studies mentioned
above.
Table 1: Descriptive Statistics of Pre- Table 2: Group Statistics - Oral Complexity
Test (OC)

N Sig. 2-

Deviatio
Mean

Sig.(2-
Group

tailed)
Mean
Group SD tailed

Std.
N

n
(M)
(t-test)
Control 9 11.00 2.58

CON_IPT
Experi 9 .845
10.78 1.81

.258
mental 1 9 7.48 .38

_WC
Table 1 shows the results of the pre-test. 2 9 7.70 .64
This includes the results of the selected

EX_IPT_
participants only. According to Table 1 the

.396
1 9 7.98 .51
mean score of the control group is 11.00

WC
and the standard deviation is 2.58, whereas
they are1078 and 1.81 respectively for the 2 9 7.43 .38
experimental group. The independent
sample t-test performed on the data to see When the accuracy of oral production is
the equality of means shows that there is concerned, there is a significant difference
no significant difference (.845, p< .05) between the control group and the
between these two groups in their experimental group. The p value is less
achievement levels. than .05 when the results of the two
According to Table 2 given below which groups are compared after the repetition.
shows the descriptive statistics of the IPT See Table 3 below. Here, the difference is
1, the oral complexity did not improve highly significant (p=.001).
after the repetition of the same task (p
>.05) when compared to that of the control Table 3: Group Statistics-Oral Accuracy
group.
(OA)
Table 2: Group Statistics - Oral
Complexity (OC)
Sig.(2-
tailed)
Mean
group

SD

N
Sig.(2-
Group

tailed)
Mean

N
SD

PT_OA
CON_I

1 9 11.56 2.51 .922

CON_IPT

.358

1 9 6.46 .38 2 9 11.44 2.24

_OC

EX_IP
T_OA

2 9 6.70 .64 1 9 11.11 2.89

EX_IPT_

2 9 6.44 1.94 .001

1 9 6.58 .51
.596
OC

The accuracy of writing also improved

2 9 6.46
This was true to written complexity too.
These results do not correspond to the
.38
significantly after the repetition. The
experimental group outperformed the
experimental group, (p=.001). This is
statistically highly significant. Table 4
shows the group statistics and the results
(p-value) of the t-test. Discussion and Conclusion
Table 4: Group Statistics-Written Accuracy The statistics presented above clearly
(WA) indicate that there is a significant
difference between the two groups when

Deviation

Sig.(2-
tailed)
group

Mean
the dimensions of speech fluency and

Std.
N
accuracy are concerned. However, the
repetition of task and form focussed
CON_I

1 9 16.55 2.50 .922 feedback seem to have failed to impact on

PT_W

2 9 16.94 2.24 the complexity. Therefore, the first

A

research question if task repetitions as a

EX_IP
T_WA

1 9 16.91 2.89
post-task activity is effective in promoting
2 9 19.14 1.94 .001
the accurate use of grammar structures is
answered positively. Therefore, it is
When fluency is concerned, the oral
recommended that the teachers at schools
fluency, as well as the written fluency repeat the same task.
increased significantly after the repetition.
The p-values are .001 for both. This The second research question, if focus on
indicates that the difference is statistically
oral accuracy has a negative impact on
highly significant. Please see tables 5 and oral fluency, is negatively answered. The
6 below. statistics conspicuously show that there
Table 5: Group Statistics-Oral was no trading off between the two
Fluency (OF) dimensions of speaking skill: oral
accuracy and oral fluency.
Deviation

Sig.(2-
tailed)
group

Mean

Std.

Though this research partially confirms

N

the many studies discussed above which

reveal that task repetition will positively
CON_I
1 9 25.35 2.06 .630 impact on the acquisition of form, whereas
PT_O
it failed to show it in the complexity
F 2 9 24.61 4.01
dimension. It can be concluded that the
EX_IP 1 9 25.94 2.14 repetition of the same task with form
T_OF focused feedback during the 'during task
2 9 33.89 5.13 .001
phase', can be exploited to improve the
acquisition of form of L2. However, this
Table 6: Group Statistics-Written study is a limited one and further studies
Fluency (WF) are warranted in the Sri Lankan context to
generalise these findings.
Sig.(2-
tailed)
group

Mean

SD
N

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