What is it about?
Young students of English (age 11), working in pairs, repeat the same task type (a picture placemen task) three times over a three week period. We examine their oral interactions in order to see if they benefit from the repetitions in terms of accuracy, fluency or complexity and also in terms of interactional strategies. Unlike more dramatic results reported in previous studies we only found a decrease in interactional strategies and a timid improvement of accuracy in the third attempt on the task.
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Why is it important?
Repetition of tasks is common practice in school contexts and in language learning contexts in general. Understanding what benefits it offers will help teachers design tasks depending on their learning aims.
Perspectives
The fact that repetition brings about learning opportunities has been repeatedly confirmed but it is too broad a statement and the present study helps to see what happens when a specific task is repeated in a specific context. In our case, benefits seem to appear only on the third repetition and seem to only affect accuracy.
Amparo Lázaro
Universidad Publica de Navarra
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Procedural repetition in task-based interaction among young EFL learners, ITL - International Journal of Applied Linguistics, December 2017, John Benjamins,
DOI: 10.1075/itl.16024.laz.
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