Task preparedness and L2 written production: Investigating effects of planning modes on L2 learners’ focus of attention and output

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Abstract

The present study examined the effects of written planning (WP) and oral planning (OP) on the complexity, accuracy, lexis, and fluency of L2 written production. This study also addressed the question of how attentional resources are distributed across different aspects of writing during planning and writing. To do so, 60 ESL learners were asked to perform an argumentative writing task under three different planning conditions: (1) in the WP condition participants had 10 min to take notes and 25 min to write, (2) in the OP condition participants had 10 min to verbalize their plans and 25 min to write, whereas (3) in the no planning condition participants had 25 min to write without planning time. Our findings indicate that both WP and OP promoted fluency, but the former facilitated syntactic complexity and accuracy while the latter promoted overall syntactic complexity and lexical complexity. Moreover, stimulated recalls show that, although WP and OP directed participants’ attention to content, complexity, and organization during planning, and language, monitoring, and complexity during writing, they differed from each other regarding lexical and grammatical encodings. These findings provide new venues for TBLT research by drawing insights into the role of pre-task planning modes in L2 written production and for L2 writing pedagogy by offering pedagogical implications for teachers to effectively use pre-task planning modes in L2 writing classrooms.

Introduction

Over the past three decades, task planning, and its more recently developed form, task preparedness, has garnered considerable attention in the field of task-based language teaching (TBLT), which is a leading educational framework and pedagogical approach to language teaching with the main purpose of preparing learners to perform real-world tasks closely matching their needs (Norris, 2009). Within the TBLT framework, task planning, operationalized in various forms such as strategic planning and online planning, is considered a means of enhancing learners’ preparedness for task performance (Ellis, 2019). The role of task planning has been probed in conjunction with other mediating variables such as individual characteristics (e.g., working memory, proficiency, and motivation), language assessment, interlanguage variation, task characteristics, and discourse modes. Task planning has been primarily measured in relation to complexity, accuracy, lexis, and fluency (CALF) (Housen, Kuiken, & Vedder, 2012) and shown to foster the CALF of second language (L2) production. This growing interest to choose CALF for exploring the impact of planning time might stem from the fact that these constructs are multi-componential, multi-dimensional, and multi-layered in nature (Michel, 2017), characterize different aspects of language performance (Wolfe-Quintero, Inagaki, & Kim, 1998), and best capture principal components of L2 proficiency (Housen et al., 2012). Additionally, planning research has focused on CALF “to account for how and why language competencies develop for specific learners and target languages, in response to particular tasks, teaching, and other stimuli, and mapped against the details of developmental rate, route, and ultimate outcomes” (Norris & Ortega, 2009, p. 557).

Although task planning increases L2 learners’ preparedness to manage cognitive and communicative pressure (Bui & Teng, 2019), the role of its modes as task preparedness options has remained unexplored. In particular, it is still uncertain how different modes of pre-task planning – written versus oral pre-task planning – influence L2 learners’ focus of attention before and during writing. Whereas a few studies have examined L2 learners’ mental processes and their working memory capacity during pre-task planning time (Guará-Tavares, 2016; Johnson, Mercado, & Acevedo, 2012; Rostamian, Fazilatfar, & Jabbari, 2018), it is unclear how L2 learners using different planning modes distribute their attentional resources during planning and writing. Motivated by the above-mentioned gaps in the TBLT literature, this study, focusing on Bui’s (2014) task-preparedness framework, aims to explore the effects of pre-task planning modes as task preparedness options on the CALF of L2 written production and discover L2 learners’ allocation of attentional resources during planning and writing. Theoretically, the findings of this study may advance current understanding about the role of planning modes as a form of task-preparedness in overcoming limited attentional resources and nurturing different constructs of L2 written production. Pedagogically, the findings may help language teachers identify appropriate task-preparedness conditions to decrease the need for online processing during writing and facilitate the generation of more elaborate ideas, leading to improving one or more constructs of their CALF. Additionally, these results might inform teachers how L2 learners involved in oral and written modes of pre-task planning leverage their attentional resources and improve their writing.

Section snippets

A theoretical framework of task preparedness

Ellis (2005) divided planning into two main types: 1. pre-task planning and 2. within-task (online) planning. Pre-task planning consists of task repetition or rehearsal in which learners perform a task once as preparation for doing the same task later, while strategic planning in which learners plan the content and language they will need to produce and decide how to do so without rehearsing. Within-task planning, in contrast, occurs when a task is carried out under pressured and unpressured

Participants and context

This study included 72 Chinese ESL undergraduates who enrolled in four International Composition (II) classes in the English department at a major American university. These classes met for fifteen weeks, three hours per week. The International Composition (II) course was taught by two different instructors using a communicative-oriented syllabus and similar teaching materials. Descriptive statistics for participants’ demographic information are presented in Table 1, which shows that the

Effects of WP and OP on the syntactic complexity, accuracy, lexical complexity, and fluency of L2 written production

The first and second research questions asked how two pre-task planning modes ‒ WP and OP ‒ affected the CALF of L2 written production as compared to NP. As indicated in Table 4, descriptive statistics revealed that the WP and OP groups obtained higher means for syntactic complexity measures than the NP group. The results from MANOVA showed significant differences across the three groups regarding complexity measures (p < .05): (1) the number of words per T-unit (W/T) [F(1, 58) = 5.74, p < .001

Effects of WP on the CALF of L2 written production

The results suggest overwhelming support for WP for all constructs except lexical complexity. In particular, the beneficial effects of WP on L2 writing complexity corroborate the findings of prior studies (Abdi Tabari, 2016, 2020; Ellis & Yuan, 2004; Farahani & Meraji, 2011; Ghavamnia et al., 2013; Rostamian et al., 2018). This implies that WP could relieve pressure during planning processes, allowing learners to devote additional capacity to translating processes such as grammatical encoding

Conclusion

This study explored the effect of pre-task planning modes on L2 writing and revealed what L2 learners attend to during planning and writing. The main findings can be summarized as follows: First, the beneficial effects of pre-task planning modes on the CALF of L2 written production are partially confirmed by the findings of this study; both OP and WP improve fluency, but the latter fosters complexity and accuracy while the former promotes overall syntactic and lexical complexity. These findings

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Mark D. Johnson and Zsuzsanna Abrams and the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments and valuable help with this study. However, any shortcomings in the study remain my own.

Mahmoud Abdi Tabari is a lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Virginia. He has been teaching ESL and EAP courses to international and multilingual students in EFL/ESL contexts for more than 16 years. His research interests include second language acquisition, second language writing, and task-based language teaching.

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    Mahmoud Abdi Tabari is a lecturer in Applied Linguistics at the University of Virginia. He has been teaching ESL and EAP courses to international and multilingual students in EFL/ESL contexts for more than 16 years. His research interests include second language acquisition, second language writing, and task-based language teaching.

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