Task Planning

Building on Robinson’s (2001, 2003) Cognition Hypothesis, Skehan’s (1998) Limited Attentional Capacity Model, and Kellog’s (1986) model of writing, this study examined the effect of task planning on the fluency, accuracy, and complexity of 60 Iranian EFL learners’ argumentative and narrative writings under different planning conditions. A quasi-experimental design with three levels of planning conditions (pre-task planning, within-task planning and no-planning) and different time constraints was used. Measures of fluency, accuracy, and complexity were used to evaluate the quality of the participants’ written productions. The results of a series of one way Multivariate Analyses of Variance (MANOVAs) indicated that increasing task complexity, through task planning conditions and also different tasks produced significant differences among the groups in fluency and accuracy; however, with regard to syntactic complexity, both tasks provided similar results among the groups. The findings add support to the view that selecting an appropriate task with appropriate task-based implementation conditions can induce language learners to increase, accuracy and fluency, but not syntactic complexity of their output. Pedagogical implications are discussed and suggestions for further studies are made.

This study was intended to compare collaborative and individual task planning effects on Iranian EFL learners’ writing performance. Therefore, a group of 90 upper intermediate EFL learners were placed in three groups of Collaborative Task planning, Individual Task planning, and Control. In the experimental groups, participants were asked to do task planning collaboratively and individually. The first writing assignment was the pretest and the eighth one was the posttest. A rating scale which includes five equally weighted criteria for rating; namely, Organization, Content, Grammar, Mechanics, and Style as well as the Total score was used. After making sure about the inter-rater consistency, data were analyzed using one-way ANOVAs to examine the effects of task planning on EFL writing performance. Results indicated that task planning produced better writing performances in the experimental groups, when considering Total scores. Furthermore, the treatment was effective in Organization and Style. Nevertheless, it had no significant effects on Content, Grammar, and Mechanics. Results are in line with previous research on collaborative writing and task planning. However, the study was different because it made a distinction between collaborative and individual task planning. This study has practical implications for classroom practices and language teachers, and theoretical implications for a better understanding of sociocultural theories of second language learning.