Article published in:
Task-Based Language Teaching in Foreign Language Contexts: Research and implementationEdited by Ali Shehadeh and Christine A. Coombe
[Task-Based Language Teaching 4] 2012
► pp. 23–42
Chapter 2. Effects of task complexity and pre-task planning on Japanese EFL learners’ oral production
Shoko Sasayama | University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, USA
Shinichi Izumi | Sophia University, Japan
This study sought to test Skehan’s (1996, 1998) limited capacity hypothesis and Robinson’s (1995, 2003) cognition hypothesis by investigating the effects of task complexity and pre-task planning on EFL learners’ oral production (see also Genc, this volume). Twenty three Japanese-L1 high school students were given two sets of picture-based narrative tasks: a simple task with fewer characters and a complex task with more characters appearing in cartoon-based stories. Ten of these participants were given pre-task planning time, whereas thirteen were not. The results indicate that (a) the increased task complexity positively affects the specific measure of syntactic complexity, but negatively affects global accuracy and fluency; and (b) planning time positively affects global syntactic complexity, but negatively affects fluency. These findings partially support and partially disconfirm both Robinson’s and Skehan’s hypotheses, posing questions about making blanket predictions on the linguistic consequences of task manipulation. The findings also show the importance of employing task-discourse sensitive measures in investigating the effect of task complexity on learners’ language use. The main value of the findings of the study comes from its focus on Japanese EFL high school students who have limited oral L2 proficiency, a population underrepresented in previous studies, despite their obvious importance for both research and teaching.
Published online: 17 October 2012
https://doi.org/10.1075/tblt.4.05sas
https://doi.org/10.1075/tblt.4.05sas
Cited by
Cited by other publications
Lee, Jiyong
Li, Shaofeng & Mengxia Fu
O’Grady, Stefan
Skehan, Peter
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 23 january 2021. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.