Similar prompts may not be similar in the performance they elicit: Examining fluency, complexity, accuracy, and lexis in narratives from five picture prompts

Abstract

Only a few characteristics of picture-based narrative prompts have been studied to determine what features affect task performance. Thus, it is not easy to identify equivalent narrative prompts or identify features that are impactful. Tavakoli and Foster (2008) and Tavakoli (2009) examined the impact of prompt on the language produced by English learners during a picture-based narrative task in respect to narrative structure and storyline complexity. This study investigates if prompts within these known categories elicit similar performance. Considering the findings based on different prompts in Tavakoli and Foster, as well as in Robinson's (2011) Triadic Componential Framework for pedagogical tasks, we added another feature, number of elements. All of the prompts in this study had a tight sequential structure (±causal reasoning), similar storyline complexity (±intentional reasoning), and similar main characters and props (±elements). Although the accuracy and complexity in the ESL narratives were similar across prompts, there were some unexpected differences in fluency and lexis. Potential explanations of the variation in these subareas of language performance are discussed. Overall, this study highlights the importance of piloting research and testing materials and of investigating features that constitute task complexity.

How does longitudinal interaction promote second language speech learning? Roles of learner experience and proficiency levels

“…4 Notably, it has been shown that L2 learners' speech (fluency in particular) is susceptible to change, when they repeat the same speaking task immediately (e.g., Lambert, Kormos, & Minn, 2018). Our pilot data showed that using different story telling tasks resulted in different speaking behaviours within the same speaker (especially in terms of pronunciation) (see also De Jong & Vercellotti, 2016). We call for future studies which will probe the complex relationship between different types of The length of the speech samples in the current study was substantially longer (M = 142 sec ranging from 95 to 301 sec) than our precursor research (Saito & Akiyama, 2017), which used relatively short speech samples elicited via picture descriptions (M = 30 seconds, 40 words), and thus the current study included a sufficient number of words for robust lexical analyses (M = 105.3 words ranging from 55 to 206 words).…”

The revision and transfer effects of direct and indirect comprehensive corrective feedback on ESL students’ writing

“…If the task-essential vocabulary was quite different in four writing tasks, this might indicate a task effect and could explain some of the differences in the effect of feedback on both revision and accuracy of new texts. In a recent study de Jong and Vercellotti (2016) found that speaking performance varied with prompts that were similar in narrative structure, storyline complexity, and number of elements. Since in the present study feedback targeted a broad range of linguistic features, it might also have caused cognitive overload for some learners and interrupted their feedback processing (Van Beuningen, 2011).…”

L2 Learners’ and Professionals’ Perceptions of Cognitive Task Complexity : Towards Developing an Index of Task Difficulty

“…The findings of this study were further employed as validation of the way TC was operationalised through two levels of IR demands and the way each task was selected and incorporated as a stimulus of speech production. The current study thus responded to the calls for researchers to validate their TC manipulation and prompts selection (De Jong & Vercellotti, 2016). Attempting to offer a more systematic operationalisation of TC variables, the present study proposed a two-level operationalisation of IR at the levels of task instructions and task content (for further detail, see Awwad et al, 2017, andTavakoli, 2019).…”

“…The silent nature of the episodes makes them appropriate tasks to operationalise IR in which the learners can reason the characters' intentions, read their thoughts, predict their actions, and justify their decisions. De Jong and Vercellotti's (2016) framework of prompts selection…”

“…2, Summer 2019, 468-484 was implemented wherein the structure, storyline complexity and number of elements were carefully considered to ensure the comparability of the content of the two clips. Hence, the two selected clips incorporated schematic chronological structure (Tavakoli, 2009a), comparable storyline complexity (Tavakoli & Foster, 2008), and equal number of characters (De Jong & Vercellotti, 2016). However, they varied in terms of the amount of IR demands each prompt required.…”