Planning Time, Strategy Use, and Written Task Production in a Pedagogic vs. a Testing Context

Abstract

As there has been little attempt to delve into performance differentials occasioned as a function of planning time in pedagogic versus testing contexts, the present study, taking up a mixed methods approach, addressed the effects of pre-task planning on the written output of intermediate EFL learners under four conditions: 1) no planning in a pedagogic context, 2) pre-task planning in a pedagogic context, 3) no planning in a testing context, and 4) pre-task planning in a testing context. Results showed that provision of pre-task planning time fostered accuracy, syntactic complexity, and fluency in the pedagogic context. In the testing context, also, more accurate, syntactically complex, and fluent output was generated by planners compared to no-planners. Finally, the data gleaned through the interviews showed that metacognitive and cognitive strategies were the most used strategies and that no significant difference existed between planners in the two contexts in terms of strategy use.