The effects of different task repetition schedules on oral narratives of L2 learners with high and low working memory capacity

Abstract

The present study investigated the effects of different task repetition (TR) schedules on oral complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) of L2 learners with high and low working memory capacity (WMC). To this end, 36 intermediate Iranian learners were assigned to two groups by means of a speaking span task: task repetition of high WMC learners (TRHWM) and task repetition of low WMC leaners (TRLWM). The learners in both groups were required to watch a silent animation, retell the story, and then repeat it immediately. They were also asked to repeat the same task after three days and a week without having a chance to watch the animation. The learners' oral task performances were recorded, coded, and analyzed in terms of the CAF measures. Results revealed that different TR schedules assisted low-WMC L2 learners with improving their complexity measure in terms of lexical diversity such that there was a statistically significant difference between the two groups from the first to the last oral performance. In addition, the findings bear pedagogical significance in that they add support to the positive effect of using different task repetition schedules on the oral performances of both high- and low-WMC L2 learners.