Effects of Task Repetition on Oral Performance of the Same Task and a New Task of the Same Type

Abstract

This study focused on how task repetition influences the oral performance of the same task and a new task of the same type. The influence of giving learners the opportunity to attend to forms after the 1st-time performance was also examined. The participants, university students, had five sessions in five weeks and performed the same narrative task twice in each session. In a session, while a control group (N = 13) repeated a task, an experimental group (N = 14) had time to attend to forms after the 1st-time performance. The 1st-time performance in Task 1 given in Session 1 was compared with the 2nd-time performance in Session 1 immediately after and the 3rd-time performance in Session 5 four weeks later, and with the performance of a new task of the same type in Session 5. Both groups performed the same tasks more fluently and accurately than they had the first task; however, the experimental group performed the same tasks and the new task of the same type more accurately than the control group. This study proposes the possible effectiveness of task repetition with the opportunity to attend to forms for language acquisition.