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.