Planning and Focus-on-form in Task-Based Language Learning

1. Planning and Focus-on-form in Task-Based Language Learning Ryo Nitta University of Warwick TBLT Conference Leuven, 2005

2. Introduction • Two research traditions in SLA: planning and focus-on-form • The study: analysis of task performance and verbal protocols • Findings of task performance analysis • Implications • Issues for the second stage

3. Types of Planning (Ellis, 2005) Rehearsal (task repetition) Pre-task planning Strategic planning Planning Pressured Within-task planning Unpressured (on-line planning)

4. Strategic vs. On-line Planning • Strategic planning • Information-processing model • Skill-learning model • On-line planning • L2 Monitoring (Morrison & Law, 1983) • Careful within-task planning (Yuan & Ellis, 2003)

5. Summary of the Previous Research

6. Focus-on-Form Instruction • The noticing issue: Do learners have the cognitive resources to notice the gap between their IL utterances and the TL utterances around them? • The interruption issue: Is a pedagogical intervention that does not interrupt the learner’s own processing for language learning even possible? • The timing issue: If so, then precisely ‘when’, in cognitive terms, should the pedagogical intervention occur? (Doughty, 2001)

7. Identifying a Link between Planning and Focus-on-Form • Theoretical issue: Strategic planning facilitates a learner-driven focus-on-form (Ortega, 1999, 2005) • Methodological issue: A process-product approach to planning. How do L2 learners plan during strategic planning time? (Ortega, 1999, 2005; Sangarun, 2005)

8. Research Questions • Do different planning conditions differently influence the oral performance? • How do L2 speakers plan their speech on-line when their performance is underway? Do they focus on form in on-line planning more frequently than strategic and no-planning conditions?

9. Research Hypotheses for Task Performance Analysis (1) • Hypothesis One: Strategic planning (SP) will give more positive influence on fluency, complexity and accuracy than no-planning (NP). • Hypothesis Two: On-line planning (OP) will give more positive influence on complexity and accuracy, but more negative influence on fluency than NP. • Hypothesis Three: OP will give more positive influence on complexity and accuracy, but more negative influence on fluency than SP.

10. Research Hypotheses for Task Performance Analysis (2) • Hypothesis Four: The effects of SP will interact with the different proficiency levels. • Hypothesis Five: The effects of OP will interact with the different proficiency levels.

11. Research Design

12. Task • Story-telling tasks x 3: 6 picture cartoons taken from a popular story-telling resource book for EFL learners (Heaton, 1975). • Different, but clearly structured tasks (cf. Tavakoli & Skehan, 2005) • The first obligatory sentence was given to encourage the use of past tense forms in each task, following Ellis (1987).

13. Task Implementation

14. Participants • 27 Japanese speakers of English (male = 11, female = 16) • Length of residence: mean = 11.86 (months), SD = 13.74, Range = 0.25 (i.e., 1 week) - 41.00 (i.e., 3 years and 5 months) • High vs. Low Proficiency: 6-point global ratings by three raters to judge the NP speech. The average scores were used to categorize high and low proficient groups.

15. Fluency • Pruned speech rates • Mean length of run • Total length of pauses per minute • Number of end-clause pauses per 100 words • Number of mid-clause pauses per 100 words • Number of filled pauses • Number of dysfluencies (i.e., false-starts, reformulation, repetition and self-correction)

16. Complexity • Syntactic complexity: the number of clauses per AS-unit (Foster, Tonkyn and Wigglesworth, 2000) • Discoursal complexity: the number of discourse organization devices (Ejzenberg, 2000) • Chaining integration devices • Grammatical integration devices

17. Accuracy • Global measures: percentage of error-free clauses (e.g., Foster & Skehan, 1996) • Specific measures: • Percentage of target-like verb forms (Yuan & Ellis, 2003) • Percentage of target-like article (Crookes, 1989)

18. Factor Analysis • On the whole, the results of three factor analyses represent three independent dimensions, fluency, complexity and accuracy. • Mean length of run was selected for MANOVA analysis as a fluency component. • The number of grammatical integration devices was selected as a complexity component. • The percentage of error-free clauses was selected as an accuracy component.

19. Repeated measures MANOVA

20. Univariate test of within-participant effect

21. ANOVAs in Two Proficiency Groups

22. Specific Accuracy Measures

23. Implications • Trading-off between fluency and form • Fluency and accuracy • Fluency and complexity • Interaction between fluency and proficiency • Monologic story-telling task type? • Dual mode? • Interaction between accuracy and proficiency • Form-focused effects of on-line planning

24. Next Stage • To identify the mental operations in the three planning conditions. • To identify different mental operations between high and low proficient speakers. • Strategic planning  High proficient speakers • On-line planning  Low proficient speakers