The effects of simultaneous use of pre-planning along +/-Here-and-Now dimension on fluency, complexity, and accuracy of Iranian EFL learners’ written performance

Abstract

Nowadays, plethora of research on pre-task planning has attempted to find out the effect of planning time on oral production of L2 learners. By and large, it has been reported planning has had a positive impact on their task-performance. Nonetheless, there have been few bodies of research performed with regard to planning in writing contexts, and there has been no conclusive evidence to illustrate the fact that pre-task planning enhances L2 learners' written performance in the ways which lots of researchers have reported for the context of L2 oral performance. The study reported was primarily aimed at investigating the effects of simultaneous use of planning along +/-Here-and-Now on fluency, accuracy, and complexity of written performance. Particularly, the effects of +/-planning merged with +/-Here-and-Now (i.e. planned here-and-now, unplanned here-and now and planned there-and-then as well as unplanned there-and-then conditions) on Iranian EFL learners` writing accuracy, fluency, and complexity were investigated. Study participants were 30 male and female Iranian of lower-intermediate EFL learners whose mother tongue was Persian and whose age group ranged between 18 and 26. Participants were assigned to four experimental conditions mentioned above. Participants in all four conditions were engaged in a written narrative task in which four different wordless picture stories were chosen for data collection and control of the practice effects. The results obtained from one-way ANOVAs revealed the fact that regarding accuracy, planning in both +/-Here-and-Now factors is more enhanced than unplanned here-and-now and there-and-then. Finally, just as fluency, with respect to complexity, the participants' performances are statistically the same in the four different tasks.

Exploring the Interplay of Planning Time, Reasoning Demands, and Language Learning Aptitude in Iranian EFL Learners’ Written Production

“…The result of that study is in line with ours in terms of lexical complexity, but accuracy was not measured in their study. Similar to that study, Mohammadzadeh Mohammadabadi et al (2013) also did not find any interaction effect between planning time and here-and-now dimensions of task complexity. Additionally, Ong and Zhang (2013) investigated the effects of the same variables on the general text quality of the learners.…”

“…Moreover, Rahimpour and Safari (2011), studying the impact of pretask planning on EFL learners" descriptive texts, found the same results as ours with regard to accuracy; however, complexity was not significantly affected in their study. The findings of Mohammadzadeh Mohammadabadi et al (2013) are at odds with ours since the planning time provision was found to have positive impact on accuracy but not complexity. On the other hand, in contrast to our findings -and also to the predictions of task complexity models - Ong and Zhang (2010) detected that the writers performed the tasks more fluently and lexically-complex in the unplanned condition.…”

Assessing speaking ability in academic context: Focusing on a mixed methods approach

“…First and foremost, when language teachers are designing tasks for class activities, they should keep an eye to the variation in the level of difficulty so as to meet different needs of the students, and the task should also be interesting and realistic to students so that students could have free association for talking and strong motivation for interaction. Another problem in EFL context and more specifically in the Iranian EFL context, as noted by Mohammadzadeh, Dabaghi, and Tavakoli (2013), is that many teachers might avoid using a task-based approach on the account of the fact that it does not provide enough opportunity for language learners to focus on their speaking.…”

Task Complexity and the Complexity of Written Language Production: A Review of Literature

“…Using syntactic complexity (clauses per T-unit) and syntactic variety measures, they discovered that both pre-task and on-line planning do not influence the complexity of the written production. ISSN 1948-5425 2015 In the same vein, Mohammadzadeh et al (2013) conducted a study on thirty EFL learners (n=30) of lower-intermediate level. Task complexity was manipulated along resource-directing (+/-here-and-now) and resource-dispersing (+/-planning time) conditions.…”

“…A number of studies have found that planning condition may not affect the complexity of written production (e.g., Mehnert, 1998;Mohammadzadeh, Dabaghi & Tavakoli, 2013;Nariman-Jahan & Rahimpour, 2011;Piri, Barati & Ketabi, 2012;Rahimpour & Safarie, 2011). Rahimpour and Safarie (2011) conducted a study to explore the effects of pre-task planning (PTP) and on-line planning (OLP) on thirty seven (n=37) EFL learners.…”