Abstract
This study departs from the assumption that speaking an L2 is a complex cognitive ability (FORTKAMP, 2000) whose execution seems to involve tradeoff effects among the different goals of speech production, mainly among fluency, accuracy and complexity (BYGATE, 1998, 1999, 2001b; FOSTER e SKEHAN, 1996; SKEHAN e FOSTER, 1995, 2001; SKEHAN, 1998). Bygate (2001b) studied the effects of task familiarity on L2 speech performance. He found that in repeating a narrative task there were gains in terms of complexity of speech and these gains were achieved at the cost of a loss especially in accuracy. The present study investigated whether the results reported in Bygate (2001b) would be similar in the case of a repetition of a picture description task. According to Robinson (2001), a description is less complex than a narrative task. Four measures of speech performance were calculated following Fortkamp (2000): fluency, accuracy, complexity and lexical density. Results indicate gains in complexity and these gains seem to have been paid, especially by gains in accuracy, thus corroborating Bygate´s (2001b) findings for this task condition.
Highlights
Among the many activities in which human beings engage in daily, perhaps speaking is one of the most universal and important (LEVELT, 1989). Levelt (1989) views speaking as a complex cognitive activity, which involves a series of interlocking stages
The main goal of this study was to analyze the effects of a picture description task with repetition on learners L2 oral performance
It was suggested that the tradeoffs found in this study represent evidence that the complexity and accuracy dimensions of L2 speech production draw on the same system whereas fluency would be based on attention to meaning, as proposed by Skehan (1998)
Summary
Among the many activities in which human beings engage in daily, perhaps speaking is one of the most universal and important (LEVELT, 1989). Levelt (1989) views speaking as a complex cognitive activity, which involves a series of interlocking stages. Levelt (1989) views speaking as a complex cognitive activity, which involves a series of interlocking stages. In his model of L1 speech production there are three main stages of speech production which are hierarchically organized. Formulation, which for L1 speakers is an automatic process, the speaker produces a phonetic plan which involves selecting appropriate grammatical and phonological features, forming the preverbal message. During the articulation phase, the phonetic plan is converted into speech and all these stages proceed in an incremental fashion, with the processes involved in conceptualizing, formulating and articulating running in parallel (LEVELT, 1989)
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