While the role of task repetition has received much attention in task-based research, few studies have examined how exact task repetition affects the performance of child second language learners. Also, little is known about the impact of exact task repetition on trade-off effects between linguistic performance areas among child learners. To help fill this gap, we investigated the impact of task repetition on 40 Chinese EFL learners’ oral production. The children repeated the same story-telling task three times, and transcripts of their performance were coded for linguistic complexity, accuracy, and fluency. Complexity was expressed in terms of overall complexity and subordination and phrasal complexity. We assessed accuracy with weighted clause ratios and proportion of errors. Fluency was captured by repair and breakdown fluency measures. Wilcoxon signed rank tests revealed positive effects for task repetition on fluency and accuracy. Trade-off effects observed during participants’ first performance had decreased by their third retelling. These results support Skehan’s (1998) Limited Capacity model and suggest that task repetition is a useful pedagogical tool in instructed child L2 contexts.

Audio-assisted reading (reading-while-listening) was commonly used as a pedagogical method in English (L2) learning. Numerous studies had reported its efficacy in English (L2) reading. Its efficacy in reading comprehension has been inconclusive due to the lack of studies on the relationship among attention, cognitive load and L2 reading comprehension, with the possibility that the synchronous auditory input lessens attention to the visual input. We present a study of 41 Mandarin-speaking 8-year-old children reading English texts in three modes in a between-participants design. Data of cognitive load, comprehension scores and attention were fitted to a formal mathematical model, which confirmed that influences on L2 reading comprehension could be captured by interactions between attention and cognitive load. Based on the findings, three implications regarding how to appropriately apply auditory-assistant tools to L2 reading were generated.

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Computer-assisted textual enhancement (CATE) technology has been widely used to improve English as foreign language (EFL) learners’ syntactical and grammatical learning. Visual attention, repetition, and prior knowledge are known as the vital factors in CATE-assisted knowledge-acquisition; however, there still lacks a model which can describe those factors’ intrinsic cooperating-mechanism that works in the CATE-based knowledge-acquisition. Therefore, this paper built up a computational model (PESE) of using those factors as variables, by fitting and predicting the data collected from empirical experiments with an average accuracy of 78%, PESE testified and complemented the assumptions proposed by previous studies. PESE suggested that although the efficacy of CATE is majorly decided by learners’ prior-knowledge of the targets, the interactive effects of visual-attention, repetition, and inductive activity could partly compensate for the effect from prior-knowledge, and the efficacy ceiling of repetition also could be estimated according to the ‘easy-perceiving level’ coefficient. At the end of this paper, 3 pedagogical implications were proposed for English teachers who are willing to integrate CATE into their teaching activities.

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