chapter two review of literature -...

Chapter Two

Review of Literature

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

2.1 Task-based Language Teaching

The field of second or foreign language teaching has experienced many shifts and undergone

various trends over the last few decades. For many years, the grammar-translation method was

predominant in language instruction and was extensively used to teach modern foreign languages

(Richards & Rogers, 2001). Changes in psychology and linguistics created a scientific revolution in

language teaching from which different methods attending to different language skills emerged

(Malmir et al., 2011).

Today, almost every language teacher apperceives the importance and the relevance of the

''student-centered, hands-on, practical, and flexible approach" (Shank & Clearly, 1994), and the

worldwide demand for CLT which helps understand the language in context and to use it effectively

in situations outside the classroom (Lochana & Deb, 2006).

The value of interaction has been apostrophized and emphasized by many theorists in both

general education and language education such as Dewey (1966), Long (1990), Piaget (1926), and

Vygotsky (1978).

Two overlapping areas of inquiry –task-based language teaching (TBLT) and co-operative

learning– provide insights into the benefits of interaction and group activities (Holt, 1993; Olsen &

Kagan, 1992). As Nunan (1989) says, task-based language teaching is teaching a language by using

it to carry out open ended tasks.

With the advent of the communicative language teaching approach in the early 1980s and

much emphasis on learner's communicative abilities over the last two decades, the term task-based

language teaching (TBLT) came into prevalent use in the field of second language acquisition in

terms of developing process-oriented syllabi and designing communicative tasks to promote learner's

actual language use. Within the varying interpretations of TBLT related to classroom practice, recent

studies exhibit three recurrent features: a) TBLT is compatible with a learner- centered educational

philosophy (Ellis 2003; Nunan 2005; Richards & Rogers, 2001); b) it consists of components such as

goal, procedure, and specific outcome (Murphy, 2003; Nunan, 2004; Skehan, 1998); c) it advocates

content-oriented meaningful activities rather than linguistic forms (Beglar & Hunt, 2002; Carless,

2002; Littlewood, 2004).

It is a tribute to the efficacy of task-based instruction that this method has become one of the

choices in the best government programs. Since the 1980s, nearly all government institutions have

used task-based instruction (TBI) in their foreign language programs (Leaver and Willis, 2004).

According to Foster (1999), language is a developmental process which follows its own

agenda. Formal instruction has no effect on developmental sequences but it clearly improves their

rate of learning (Long and Crookes, 1992). Richards and Rogers (2001) opine that "tasks are

believed to foster processes of negotiation, modification, rephrasing, and experimentation that are at

the heart of second language learning” (p. 228).

This view of language learning culminated in the development of various tasks-based

approaches in the eighties (Breen, 1987; Candlin & Murphy, 1987; Nunan, 1989; Prabhu, 1987).

During the nineties, TBLT has developed into a detailed practical framework for the communicative

classroom in which learners perform task-based activities through cycles of pre-task preparation, task

performance, and post-task feedback through language focus (Skehan, 1996; Willis, 1996). Ellis

(2003) indicates that TBLT has been reexamined in recent years from different perspectives

including oral performance, written performance, and performance assessment (Jeon & Hahn, 2006).

The most unique characteristic of a task is its communicative purpose in which the focus is

on meaning rather than on form. However, some researchers (Estaire & Zanon, 1994) distinguish

between two main categories of tasks, "communication task", in which the "learner's attention is

focused on meaning rather than on form", and "enabling tasks", in which "the main focus is on

linguistic aspects (grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, function, and discourse)" (Littlewood,

2004).

Littlewood (2007) referring the ever-increasing movement towards various versions of CLT

and TBLT elucidates the practical and conceptual concerns that have affected the implementation of

TBLT in East Asia. He also states that even in countries where official syllabuses are not task-based,

the concept of “learning through tasks” is an intrinsic part of the professional discourse and new

local innovations in this realm are sometimes introduced (Vilches, 2003 in the Philippines;

Mukminatien, 2004 in Indonesia; Kiernan, 2005 in Japan; Watson Todd, 2006 in Thailand).

Tasks also create a sense of the need for using the language. Jacobs and Navas (2000) claim

that task-based language teaching helps promote language acquisition in different ways. Murphy

(2003) emphasizes the fact that tasks may be chosen and implemented so that particular pedagogic

outcomes are achieved. To meet this goal, it may be a good way to clarify and control the tasks

through general guidelines which may decrease the learners' factors to some extent.

2.2. English Language Teaching in Iran

In the pre-technology education context in Iran, modernism is the dominant movement and

there is no vestige of postmodernism in all levels of education. The country is governed by a

conservative, centralized educational system. A one-size-fits-all policy is predominant and the

system of education is reminiscent of Freire's "banking" concept of education. Students are "empty

accounts" which are filled by teachers (Freire, 1970). Teachers are the mere conveyers of authorities

and students are the receivers of the information. The educational system nurtures teachers to get the

best method for teaching English. National high-stakes tests influence their methodology in teaching.

As Brown (2002, p. 17) states, the best method is "a mad scramble" in both schools and English

language institutes. Teachers are preoccupied with challenging for the high-stakes test which is in a

multiple-choice format in English test focusing mainly on grammar, vocabulary, cloze, and reading.

Listening, speaking, and writing are not observed and catered to in both teaching and testing (Fahim

& Pishghadam, 2009). Developing students' aural and oral skills are given less emphasis in

prescribed Iranian EFL textbooks (Jahangard, 2007). Similarly, as Namaghi (2006) bruits,

sociopolitical forces determine teachers' work in Iran. English is taught as a foreign language within

a context-restricted environment shaped by classroom practices comprising the use of textbooks and

the teachers' control and management of class work without principal support from social contexts

out of the class.

English teaching was formally introduced from the second grade in guidance schools (junior

high schools) after the Islamic Revolution in 1979. At present, English is taught from the first grade

in guidance schools and textbooks are compiled, developed, and published by the Ministry of

Education. Before the 1990s, the Iranian curriculum focused on reading and aimed at promoting

learner's grammatical knowledge in reading and translating (Ghorbani, 2009). According to

Dahmardeh (2006), in countries like Iran teachers have to prepare their students to pass language

exams as fast as possible to meet the achievement standards in school. This causes language teachers

to narrow the curriculum and just teach to the test which results in failing to assess real

communicative language content. In the last decade, high school English textbooks were revised to

put more emphasis on communicative competence which is still far from being called

'communicative'. The grammar translation method is still used by teachers. Textbooks lack activities

in developing listening and speaking skills (Hosseini, 2007). There is a growing private sector of

education which is introducing English at primary school and pre-school levels. Unlike government

schools in which English is taught three to four hours per week, in private schools it receives a

striking attention with extra hours of practice. Private language institutes have attracted a great

number of eager students to fulfill their communicative needs (Dahmardeh, 2009).

With such a background on Iran's pedagogic context, educational changes locally, regionally

or at national level can be brought to take the advantages of the new programs, pedagogical

approaches, and syllabi within the classroom and blended learning environments. Chief among them,

TBLT can be a new choice to encourage the development of communicative language teaching and

create a better atmosphere in SLA domain.

2.3 Task-Based Language Teaching in Iran

There has been a long debate among researchers and scholars on how to teach language

effectively using less energy and time but achieving better results. The aim of current foreign/second

language teaching is to give learners communicative competence and enable them to use language

appropriately.

In the recent years, a great number of researchers, syllabus designers, and educational

innovators have called for a move in language teaching toward TBLT approaches to instruction (e.g.,

Prabhu, 1987; Nunan, 1989; Long & Crooks, 1992; Ellis, 2003; Seifollahi & Hadidi Tamjid, 2012).

Task-based language teaching has obtained a valuable place in the light of the shift of focus in

research from laboratory conditions to authentic classroom contexts (e.g., Ellis, 2009; Van den

Branden, 2006; Ahangari & Abdi, 2011; Shehadeh & Coombe, 2012). This shift highlighted a lot of

questions including whether TBLT is useful in the classroom environments, how TBLT can be used

in a class with various ranges of cultural backgrounds and different levels of proficiency, and how it

helps language teachers in preparing their lessons (Van den Branden, 2006 b).

TBLT has become 'the most fashionable style' among foreign language teachers during the

past years (Cook, 2008, p. 257). The use of this approach has received an increase in interest from

EFL countries particularly after attempts to implement communicative language teaching in the

educational contexts which resulted in resistance and varying degrees of success (Li, 1998; Bax,

2003; Ellis, 1996; Littlewood, 2007). One of the challenges in the area is to provide empirical

knowledge of TBLT issues in different and naturalistic foreign language pedagogical settings. In

spite of the potential value of TBLT, traditional and teacher-centered instruction still persists in EFL

contexts like Iran. A number of factors challenge the adaptation of TBLT in various EFL settings,

including cultural pressures and expectation, administrative constraints, exam and time pressures,

and available teaching materials (Adams & Newton, 2009; Iwashita & Li cited in Shehadeh &

Coombe, 2012).

In countries like Iran where teacher-fronted classes are the norm and learners have little

exposure to the target language outside the classroom, both teachers and students need some time to

adjust to the interactive approach of TBLT as this approach can be a helpful and an effective means

of motivating the language learners in achieving the objectives of learning. Unfortunately, task-based

instruction is not a widely used educational approach in Iran and its educational culture is something

completely new to the Iranian EFL learners and teachers (Tabatabaei & Hadi, 2011). The grammar

instruction and target language forms are of the predominant importance and the tasks used in the

textbooks are mainly language practice activities focusing on form rather than meaning. As Ho and

Wong (cited in Littlewood, 2007, p. 246) reported, approaches like TBLT which originate from the

West, may be incompatible with public assessment demands and conflict with educational values and

needs, and traditions in non-Western countries (Tabatabaei & Hadi, 2011).

Despite the problems in implementing TBLT in EFL contexts, the various studies recognize

the benefits of this approach and acknowledge the importance of TBLT in developing learners’

autonomy and transferable skills (McDonough & Chaikitmongkol, 2007) and providing

opportunities for students to practice using English (Ho & Wong cited in Littlewood, 2007, p. 246).

As Dahmardeh (2009, p. 7) states "while the newly designed curriculum document is to a great

extent compatible with principles of communicative language teaching, the materials being used by

teachers, as well as the current ELT (English language teaching) program, are mainly structurally

based and cannot be considered as communicative". Since learners do not have direct contact with

English native speakers in Iranian EFL context, mostly language teachers and instructors in private

schools, and institutions emphasize a more active group learning classroom contrary to the traditional

passive lecture-centered classes for the learners to become more acquainted with the target language

in use.

The recent popularity of task-based pedagogy among Iranian researchers, methodologists,

and teachers caused the existence of various studies in the field. The bulk of research in this domain

includes the overall role of TBLT in language learning (Hadi, 2012; Shams Hoseini, 2012), the

effects of different variables such as task structure, task considerations, gender, task complexity, time

planning conditions on the learners' oral performance (Keyvanfar & Modarresi, 2009; Rahimpour,

2010; Alavi & Chow Voon Foo, 2012), the impact of various variables such as task familiarity, task

type, task complexity, time planning conditions, etc. on the learners' written output (Birjandi &

Malmir, 2009; Rezazadeh, Tavakoli, & Eslami Rasekh, 2011; Marzban & Norouzi, 2012), the

learners' reading comprehension via TBLT (Hayati & Jalilifar, 2010; Malmir, Najafi Sarem, &

Ghasemi, 2011), the learners' listening comprehension via CALL-based (computer-assisted language

learning) tasks (Ghalami Nobar & Ahangari, 2012), and the teaching of vocabulary within the

paradigm of TBLT (Sarani & Sahebi, 2012).

2.4 Task Definition

The concept of "task" is not as simple as it might seem. Many definitions and perspectives

exist in this regard. Bygate, Skehan, and Swain (2001) believe that "definitions of task will need to

differ according to the purposes for which the tasks are used" (p. 11). They say that "a task is an

activity which requires learners to use language, with emphasis on meaning, to attain an objective"

(p.11).

According to Prabhu (1987) a task is "an activity which requires learners to arrive at an

outcome from given information through some process of thought, and which allows teachers to

control and regulate that process" (p. 24). Bygate (2003, p. 176) distinguishes between tasks and

exercises to clarify the concept of task-based instruction. He defines exercise as “activities which

practice parts of a skill, a new sub-skill or a new piece of knowledge” and task as “activities which

practice the whole integrated skill in some way”. Candlin (in Bygate et al., 2001) defines

“exercises” as “serving as sequenceable preliminaries to, or supporters of tasks”, whereas “tasks” are

more inclusive activities, engaging students in a variety of interlocking processes and encouraging

them to “practice the integrated use of language, acquire language development strategies, and use

language meaningfully and creatively” (Nunn, 2006, p. 75). Breen (1987) and Prabhu (1987)

consider a language task as an activity to attain a range of possible outcomes for those who

undertake it.

Drawing on Vygotsky's Activity Theory, Coughlin and Duff (1994) distinguished between

the second language task and activity. They consider “task” as the “behavioral blueprint provided to

students in order to elicit data” for research or assessment, and “activity” as “the behavior that is

actually produced when an individual (or group) performs a task” (p. 175).

Long (1985, p. 89) defined a task as "a piece of work undertaken for oneself or for others,

freely or for some reward. By task it is meant the hundred and one things people do in everyday life,

at work, at play, and in between". Skehan (1996a, p. 20) views classroom and L2 research tasks as

"activities which have meaning as their primary focus. Success in the task is evaluated in terms of

achievement of an outcome, and tasks generally bear some resemblance to real-life language use". In

his article “The empirical evaluation of language teaching materials”, Ellis (1996) describes a task in

terms of its objective; the input it provides for the students to work on; the conditions under which

the task is to be performed; the procedures the learners need to carry out to complete the task; and

outcomes.

Ellis (2003) includes the concept of task as a "workplan for learner activity", which "requires

learners to employ cognitive processes" and "can involve any of the four language skills". He

identifies some critical features for a task. These features are: 1) a task is a work plan, 2) a task

involves primary focus on meaning, 3) a task involves real-world processes of language use, 4) a task

can involve any of the four language skills, 5) a task engages a cognitive process, and 6) a task has a

clearly defined communicative outcome (Lingley, 2006)

According to Willis (1996), a task is a goal oriented activity with a clear purpose. Tasks can

be used as the main component of a three-part framework: “pre-task”, “task cycle” and “language

focus”. These components are going to provide an atmosphere for optimum conditions for language

acquisition, and thus create rich learning opportunities to be suitable for different types of language

learners (Lochana & Deb, 2006). As Richards (2005, p. 33) terms it, the notion of task is “a

somewhat fuzzy one”. Nunan (2004) has also moved from the two-category distinction of "real-

world tasks or target tasks" and "pedagogical tasks" (in Nunan, 1999) to a three-category framework

of “tasks”, “communicative activities”, and “exercise”. Littlewood (2007) adopts the five category

framework for the task ranging along a continuum from activities which focus on discrete forms with

no attention to meaning, through activities which focus on form but meaning and communication are

also important, to activities focusing clearly on the communication of meanings.

Richards and Rodgers (2001) claim that a task focuses on an outcome that the L2 learner is

expected to produce or attain. In this perspective, a task is an outcome-oriented segment of work in a

curriculum or lesson plan. Long and Crookes' (1992) definition of a task and task type focuses on

something that is done not something that is said. Crookes (1986) also defines a task as "a piece of

work or an activity, usually with a specified objective, undertaken as part of an educational course at

work, or used to elicit data for research" (p. 1). Breen (1989) considers a task as "a structured plan

for the provision of opportunities for the refinement of knowledge and capabilities entailed in a new

language and its use during communication" (p. 23). Richards, Platt and Weber (1985, p. 289) define

a task as "an activity or action which is carried out as the result of processing or understanding

language, i.e. as a response. Tasks may or may not involve the production of language". Lee (2000,

p. 32) also says that a task is "(1) a classroom activity or exercise that has: (a) an objective obtainable

only by the interaction among participants, (b) a mechanism for structuring and sequencing

interaction, and (c) a focus on meaning exchange; (2) a language learning endeavor that requires

learners to comprehend, manipulate, and / or produce the target language as they perform some set of

workplans". And finally Nunan (1989, 2004) defines a pedagogical task as "a piece of classroom

work that involves the learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing or interacting in the

target language while their attention is focused on mobilizing their grammatical knowledge in order

to express meaning, and in which the attention is to convey meaning rather than to manipulate form"

(2004, p. 4).

Referring to the different concepts of tasks and their value in motivating language learners to

gain the most benefit of tasks in educational settings, the following section deals with the advantages

of using tasks in the ELT contexts.

2.4.1 Significance and Merits of Tasks in ELT

The introduction of TBLT into the realm of language education has been a ‘top-down’

process (Van den Branden, 2006) and a reaction to empirical accounts of teacher dominated, form-

oriented second language classroom practice (Long & Norris, 2009). In SLA research, tasks provide

a framework for communicative performance (Crabbe, 2007) and are used as vehicles to elicit

language production, interaction, negotiation of meaning, processing of input, and focus on form

(Van den Branden, 2006) all of which are designed to engage learners in real communication to lead

to implicit learning (Crabbe, 2007).

The presence of tasks in language teaching was as a result of a greater perception of why and

how language learners go about learning a second or foreign language. In other words, acquisition

requires a sufficient amount of positive evidence which learners can then analyze and formulate rules

based on it (Long & Robinson, 1998). According to Widdowson (2003), in a traditional approach,

competence is primary and performance will emerge as a byproduct but in TBI it is reverse. Task-

based learning offers a holistic language experience and traces back to Hymes (1977) notion of

communicative competence; the ability to use the language appropriately in a given social encounter

and not knowing a set of grammatical, lexical, and phonological rules (Attar & Chopra, 2010).

Crabbe (2007) rationalizes that task is as an important tool for providing communicative

opportunities. He mentions that underlying each task is a set of learning opportunities which provide

the basis for the full learning potential of a task and for learning outside the classroom. Skehan

(2003) states that tasks are of main interest domain of three groups: researchers, testers, and teachers.

Researchers consider the tasks as convenient or necessary means to explore theoretically motivated

questions. They consider tasks important for their empirical study and its validity. Language testers

are also interested in self-contained individual tasks and are motivated to obtain data arising from

actual communication as they are standardized and can be assessed. In contrast, the teacher’s domain

for tasks is pedagogic and classroom based.

Cullen (1998) dissents from the assumption that by replicating the kind of communicative

behavior outside the classroom in the context of the classroom, the interaction is communicative in

that the entire sequence manifests a focus on message content, the teachers’ questions are structured,

the feedback is clear, and the use of echoing helps to ensure that the students’ attention is not lost

(Ellis, 2006). Lowe (2005) argues against dogma in task-based instruction and says that a teacher

must on no account teach a language form before performing a task. That is, the language should

evolve naturally out of the task. He believes that context and not dogma should determine whether

the task comes first and the language second or vice versa.

Based on the theories of “whole language” (Altwerger, Edelsky & Flores, 1987) which

emphasizes the importance of “guidance” from the teacher and “participation” in the learning

process, Vygotsky’s (1962) concept of ‘zone of proximal development’ and ‘cognitive psychology’

which endorses the idea of language learning and teaching as a whole (Bergin & Lafave, 1998), tasks

are tools to guide the students along the entire teaching and learning process and aim at the

development of all four skills (Lochana & Deb, 2006).

Within the different interpretations of TBLT related to classroom practice, Jeon (2006)

mentions three recurrent features: TBLT is compatible with a learner-centered educational

philosophy (Ellis, 2003; Nunan, 2005; Richards & Rodgers, 2001); it includes particular components

such as goal, procedure, and specific outcome (Murphy, 2003; Nunan, 2004; Skehan, 1998); and it

advocates content-oriented meaningful activities rather than linguistic forms (Carless, 2002;

Littlewood, 2004). Nunan (1989) argues that in task-based teaching the focus shifts from “the

outcomes of instruction” towards “the process of learning”. Thus, the ‘what’ and the ‘how’ of

teaching are merged. Similarly, Kumaravadivelu (1993) states that “methodology becomes the

central tenet of task-based pedagogy” (p.73) since the goal is to let learners to navigate their own

paths to learning (Ellis, 2006).

Nowadays TBLT is a common method in many of the language classes and has produced a

significant amount of research (Dembovskaya, 2009) in classroom language acquisition (Bygate,

Skehan, & Swain, 2001; Eckerth & Siekman, 2008; Ellis, 2003,2005; Van den Branden, 2006, Van

den Branden, Grop, & Verhelst, 2007), task-based language courses and programs (Leaver & Willis,

2004), and task-based methodological guides (Nunan, 2004; Willis & Willis 2007). Dembovskaya

(2009) believes that the task-based framework has been a prominently fruitful area in SLA research

as “it provides distinct units with clear boundaries for comparison in various contexts and under

various conditions” (Dornyei, 2003, p. 4). Tasks persuade the learner to act primarily as a language

user, and not as a language learner (Van den Branden, 2006). Based on TBLT approach, “people not

only learn language in order to make functional use of it, but also by making functional use of it”

(Van Avermaez & Van den Branden, 1996).

2.4.2 Task Goals

Based on Krashen’s Input Hypothesis (1981), second language learning depends on

comprehensible input and linguistic forms instruction is not necessary in CLT. Instead, learners

would gain intuitive “correctness” (Krashen & Terrel, 1983) of their language through this

comprehensible input. Careful study of meaning-focused CLT showed that complete focus on

meaning doesn’t help language learners in acquiring high levels of grammatical and sociolinguistic

competence (Doughty & Williams, 1998). Grammatical competence is an essential part of language

learning and cannot be obtained just through exposure to comprehensible input (Brown, 2006). In

SLA, interaction and output play important roles (Huang, 2010).

Van den Branden (2006) and Long and Robinson (1998) believe that the meaningful use of

language implies to manipulate and pay some conscious or unconscious attention to form. Hence,

task designers should manipulate tasks for the language learners to pay attention to particular aspects

of the language code in the context of a meaningful activity, because it strongly promotes second

language acquisition (Doughty & Williams, 1998; Ellis, 2003; Long, 1998; Long & Norris, 2000;

Skehan, 1998). Then, the mere emphasis on the focus-on-meaning instruction led to Long’s (1991)

conceptualization of focus on form which combines the two approaches. Ellis (2001) and Ellis,

Basturkmen, and Loewen (2002) classified focus on form into planned versus incidental in which the

first is equivalent to Doughty and William’s proactive focus on form and the latter is eliciting general

samples of learner language than specific forms (Park 2006).

The Theoretical rationale for focus on form as a pedagogical approach in SLA stems from

Schmidt’s (1990, 1995, 2001) Noticing Hypothesis, Van Patten’s (1990, 1999) Input Processing

Hypothesis, Swain’s (1985, 1995, 1998) Output Hypothesis, and Long’s (1996) Interaction

Hypothesis. Based on Schmidt’s claim, learners’ conscious noticing of a form or a gap between a

non-targetlike and a targetlike form in comprehended input is essential for second language

acquisition processes to occur. Van Patten’s (1990, 1999) Input Processing Hypothesis then

supported this claim regarding that learners have a limited working memory which makes them

prioritize meaning over form while processing the L2 input in a communicative context. Focus on

form may be in relation to L2 output concerning Swain’s (1985, 1995) Comprehensible Output

Hypothesis, which is basically against Krashen’s (1981) Comprehensible Input. Swain (1985)

proposed that there are some roles in SLA like noticing, hypothesis testing, and conscious reflection

that comprehensible output may play. Ergo, focus on form may increase L2 acquisition by shifting

learners' processing of L2 from semantic to syntactic which occurs when learners produce L2 output

(Park 2006).

Swan (2005) considers holistic focus on form valuable for language learners to integrate the

language elements they know into realistic communicative exchanges. Unlike Willis' (1996) and

Ellis' (2002) claims of unnecessary teaching of grammar for beginners, Swan (2005) takes the

opposite view. Wesche and Skehan (2002) referring Spada (1997a) conclude that form-based and

meaning-based approaches operate synergistically.

Nunan (2006) emphasizes students thinking of the form of the message rather than the focus

on the message itself. He suggests teacher-led performances by small groups in front of the class in

addition to independent student-led group work to encourage the students to reflect on the form of

the message during the interactive task phases. Feeney (2006), referring Nunan (2004), believes that

Nunan’s model is not too far from the PPP (presentation, practice, and production) format except that

his controlled practice occurs within a communicative context. Considering this concept, Oxford

(2006) mentions that Nunan’s focus on form occurs before freer practice and the task, while Willis’

(1996) model emphasizes a focus on form after the task.

In his model, Long (1985, 1991, 2000, 2005) presents a focus on form including meaning,

structure, and the context of communication. Then, it follows the sequence of task development,

implementation, and assessment.

Based on the findings of Lochana and Deb (2006), focus on form is useful in two phases. The

planning stage between the private task and the public report increases and helps close attention to

language form. As learners strive for more accuracy, they try to sort their reports clearly and check

words and patterns they are not sure of. Nunan (2001 in Boston 2008) believes that tasks can include

‘reproductive’ language use where language learners reproduce language models provided by the

different sources.

Providing language models prior to tasks may cause learners to concentrate and focus more

on remembering and replicating the formulae than on communicating meaning (Willis, 1990).

Boston (2008) mentioning the deliberately embedding pre-selected language formulae into natural

sounding instructions emphasizes not only on the use of some language input during the pre-task and

task stage but also the necessity of learner mining of written language input.

Oxford (2006) accentuates three main groups for potential task goals: focus on meaning,

focus on form, and focus on formS (Long, 2000, Salaberry 2001). In focus on meaning, learners

receive chunks of ongoing, communicative L2 use, presented in lively lessons with no presentation

of structures or rules and no encouragement for learners to discover rules for themselves. The second

potential goal requires focus on form within a communicative meaningful context by confronting

learners with communicative language problems (breakdowns) and causing them to take action to

solve the problems. In the focus on formS, learners are provided with specific, preplanned forms one

at a time in the hope that they will master them before they need to use them to negotiate meaning.

Oxford (2006) also mentions other goals for tasks which include learning how to learn, that

is, learning to select and use particularly relevant learning strategies and understanding one's own

learning style (Honeyfield, 1993; Nunan, 1989; Oxford, 1990, 1996, 2001b). Learners can learn how

to learn while doing a task that involves both language and content, as demonstrated by the

Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (Chamot & O'Malley, 1994). Sometimes goals

may focus on content knowledge, as in learning mathematics or social studies through the L2

(Honeyfield, 1993; Oxford, Lee, Snow & Scarcella, 1994) or may relate to cultural awareness and

sociocultural competence (Nunan, 1989; Scarcella & Oxford, 1992). There may also be a single,

common task goal (convergence) or multiple task goals (divergence) (Richards & Rodgers 2001).

Researchers investigated the various task goals to show how language learners can obtain the

most output in their classroom education. This involves using different task types including spoken

and written tasks at different levels to create motivation in learners in the process of task-based

instruction. The following section sheds light on this concept.

2.4.3 Task Types

Distinguishing different task types is important, as it allows researchers to investigate which

types most effectively promote language learning. According to Brown (1991), task types differ in

objective and demand. Many types of tasks exist, particularly in the realm of communicative

instruction. Ellis (2003) mentions four approaches to classify tasks: (1) pedagogic; (2) rhetorical; (3)

cognitive; and (4) psycholinguistic. Then, he proposes a general framework for the task

classification. Nunan (1989a) suggests two broad categories for tasks: 'real-world tasks' such as using

the telephone and 'pedagogic tasks' such as information gap activities. Others might classify tasks by

topic, by the language skills required for completion, or by whether the outcome is closed or open

sometimes called divergent and convergent tasks (Long, 1990). As their starting point, Pica, Kanagy,

and Falodum (1993) take the type of interaction that occurs during task completion, e.g. one-way or

two-way information flow, resulting in five types: jigsaw tasks, information gaps, problem-solving,

decision-making, and opinion exchange. However, here is a list of some key task types found in the

literature according to Oxford (2006):

Problem-solving (Nunan, 1989; Pica et al., 1993; Willis, 1996a)

Decision-making (Foster & Skehan, 1996; Nunan, 1989; Pica et al., 1993)

Opinion gap or opinion exchange (Nunan, 1989; Pica et al., 1993)

Information-gap (Doughty & Pica, 1986; Nunan, 1989; Oxford, 1990; Pica et al., 1993)

Comprehension-based (Ikeda & Takeuchi, 2000; Scarcella & Oxford, 1992; Tierney et al., 1995)

Sharing personal experiences, attitudes, and feelings (Foster & Skehan, 1996; Oxford, 1990;

Willis, 1996a, 1996b)

Basic cognitive processes such as comparing or matching (Nunan, 1989; Willis, 1998)

Listing (Willis, 1998)

Ordering /sorting (Willis, 1998)

Language analysis (Willis, 1996a, 1996b, 1998)

Narrative (Foster and Skehan, 1996)

Reasoning-gap (Nunan, 1989)

Question-and-answer (Nunan, 1989)

Structured and semi-structured dialogues (Nunan, 1989)

Role-plays and simulations (Crookall & Oxford, 1990; Richards & Rodgers, 2001).

In addition, task types include picture stories (Nunan, 1989); puzzles and games (Nunan,

1989); interviews, discussions, and debates (Nunan, 1989; Oxford, 1990; Richards & Rodgers,

2001); and everyday functions such as telephone conversations and service encounters (Richards and

Rodgers, 2001). Task types also encompass practice with communication/conversation strategies,

learning strategies, and text-handling strategies (Cohen, 1999, Honeyfield, 1993; Nunan, 1989; O'

Malley & Chamot, 1990; Oxford, 1990). Additional task types can lead to communicative video

making (Talbott & Oxford, 1989, 1991). There are several other types of tasks in Bygate et al. (2001)

and Yule (1997).

According to Oxford (2006), among many examinations of which types of tasks promote L2

learning, a review by Pica et al. (1993) reported that negotiation of meaning is most likely to occur

when learners are involved in an interaction with the following four features:

1) Each of the students holds a different portion of information that must be exchanged and

manipulated in order to reach the task outcome.

2) Both students are required to request and supply this information to each other.

3) Students have the same goal.

4) Only one outcome is possible from their attempts to meet the goal.

As Nunan (2004) pointed out, qualitative differences in the nature of the negotiation of

meaning result from different tasks and different types of interaction.

2.4.4 Task Conditions

Task condition, which refers to the conditions under which a task is done, has been under

researched by many scholars. Doughty and Long (2000) believe that task type and conditions

influence some of the second language speakers' output. They postulate that factors like time,

pressure, the nature of the task, planning, and time planning may influence learners' performance.

Newton and Kennedy (1996) investigated task conditions under shared versus split information and

found that shared tasks involving decision-making are effective in pushing learners' production.

Robinson (2001) suggests that production is influenced by whether learners are asked to carry out a

single task demand or whether a secondary task demand is added. His other category is related to

task conditions based on factors like the direction of the information flow (one-way vs. two-way) and

the communicative goals (one of many solutions). He further remarks that they relate to the design of

tasks and are best seen as a subcategory of task complexity.

Skehan and Foster's (1999) study is in terms of task demands based on four conditions: (1)

watch-and-tell simultaneously; (2) storyline given and then watch-and-tell simultaneously; (3) watch

first and then watch-and-tell simultaneously; and (4) watch-then-tell. Through this study, they found

that watch-then-tell condition resulted in more complex but not more fluent or accurate language.

Jacobs and Navas (2000) represent five classifications with regard to task conditions: (1) open vs.

closed (Crookes and Rulon, 1985); (2) convergent vs. divergent (Duff, 1986); (3) two-way required

information exchange vs. one-way (Doughty & Pica, 1986); (4) planned vs. unplanned (Ellis, 1987;

Crookes, 1988; Foster & Skehan, 1996; Ortega, 1999); (5) here and now vs. there and then

(Robinson et al., 1995).

However, Long and Crookes (1992) underline a more general classification: (1) planned vs.

unplanned; (2) open vs. closed; (3) required vs. unrequired information exchange. Robinson (1995 ,

2002) proposes a special taxonomy in relation to task condition to sequence pedagogical tasks in the

second language syllabus as follows : task complexity (demands of the task itself), task difficulty

(learner's factors such as aptitude and motivation), and task conditions (interactive demands like

convergent / divergent, power and solidarity ). In comparison to Skehan (1998) and Skehan and

Foster (1999, 2001), Robinson's (1995, 2002) views are different. There are two distinguishing

approaches considering the effect of cognitive task complexity. According to Skehan (1998), Skehan

and Foster (1999, 2001), and Yuan and Ellis (2003), attentional resources are limited and considering

one aspect of performance means neglecting other aspects. According to Van Patten (1990),

cognitively demanding tasks cause learners to avoid more attention-demanding forms and structures

in favor of simpler language for which they have already developed automatic processing, and more

complex tasks cause learners to pay insufficient attention to language forms for which still require

controlled processing. Thus, accuracy may decline. Tasks of appropriate difficulty are likely to be

more motivating for learners as they feel that they are being required to respond to reasonable

challenges (Willis, 1996; Williams & Burden, 1997) which are achievable if there is an effort on

their part. As a result, task-based approaches need to focus on task difficulty as a precondition for

any task work. What is mentioned here is that Robinson (1995, 2002), in addition to describing the

dimensions of task complexity, refers to planning time, single task, and prior knowledge as its

underlying dimensions. A similar research was conducted by Wigglesworth (1997) considering

cognitive difficulty of the task, the interlocutor being a native or non-native speaker, if the planning

time was made available, task familiarity, and task structure. It can be concluded that Robinson's

(1995,2002) view on the role of complexity is not against the role of planning time, though he argues

in favor of multiple attentional resources in contrast to what Skehan and Foster (1996) call limited

information processing capacity. The issue of brain processing capacity and memory limitation in

performing the various types of tasks in different conditions moves us toward an important concept

in TBLT studies in the next section.

2.5 Planning

"Any single task can be performed in a number of different ways, depending on how the

speakers orient to it and the prior knowledge and skill they can bring to bear" (Ellis, 2003, p.129).

"Task features" as Skehan (1998) remarked are the other factors which may influence L2 learners'

output. They may contain factors such as the number of elements in a task, topic of a task, the

inherent structure of the task, planning, and time for planning. The amount of planning as a

metacognitive learning strategy (Oxford, 1990) is a major factor in how well the learner

accomplishes the task (Honeyfield, 1993; Skehan, 1996a).

All spoken and written language use involve planning, even those which seem automatic and

effortless. This requires language learners to decide on what and how to say and write in. "Planning

is essentially a problem solving activity; it involves deciding what linguistic devices need to be

selected in order to affect the audience in the desired way" (Ellis, 2005, p. 3). In the first language

(L1), learners are equipped with ready-made plans. As a result, the process of planning is automatic

and subconscious. These ready-made plans can be modified and integrated into larger constructed

plans which can be stored in the learners' declarative knowledge. Second language speakers,

particularly the beginners, do not have any access to ready-made plans and their activation needs a

high degree of cognitive control. Therefore, they have to construct their own plans. It has been

recommended that advance planning is an appropriate and effective way for L2 learners to reduce

cognitive or processing load.

Planning vs. no planning has been mostly developed by Crookes (1988), Foster and Skehan

(1998), and Ortega (1999). In activities with planning, participants are given time to decide what to

say before performing the task. In activities without planning, learners start task completion

immediately without time to plan what to say or what language to use to say it. Planning whether

pre- or online grants the learners the opportunity to plan before performing the task which helps them

to allocate their attentional resources in a better way, particularly with low proficiency learners

(Anderson, 2000; Skehan, 1996).

Lee (2000) also strongly recommends that teachers set strict time limits to influence the

nature of the language students produce. Howarth (2001) postulates that planning time can provide

opportunities to experiment with developmental language and aid real time processing in the long

run. As Long (1990) suggests providing opportunities to plan can increase the quantity and quality of

what the language learners generate. Planning prior to performance, the potential to prepare what is

going to be said, has tremendous effects on a variety of aspects of language output.

As Skehan (1998) stipulates, the simplest effect of allowing learners planning time is to free

up online processing resources.

2.6 Types of Planning

Research into planning in SLA has been a line of enquiry with every considerable promise

and the focus of attention over the past fifteen years (Bastone, 2002). As Ellis (2005) remarks,

planning has a great pedagogical implication for language teachers and is of the theoretical interest to

SLA researchers. It is also a principal concept in TBLT and a task procedure through which learners

are provided with time to prepare for the task or to monitor their output. Ellis (1984) states that

unplanned discourse lacks preparation while planned discourse requires some arrangement before its

expression.

Planning occurs at different levels resulting in discourse, sentence and constituent plans all of

which have a special role in the execution of a language act (Clark & Clark, 1977). Planning is

typically subdivided into pre-task, strategic or off-line planning, and on-line or within-task planning.

They are individualized regarding to the time of planning occurrence, either before or during the task

performance. In the former, learners are given time ahead of a coming task to think about and

consider its content and structure while the latter requires giving time to learners during a task

completion to regard the structure and content of their production. Planning can be guided or

unguided. In guided or detailed planning, learners are told how and what to plan through some

instructions and advice whereas in unguided or undetailed planning, learners are simply asked to

2.6.1 Rehearsal

Rehearsal or task repetition is providing learners with an opportunity to do the task before the

main performance. In other words, it means "repetitions of the same or slightly different tasks

whether whole task, or parts of a task" (Bygate & Samuda, 2005, p.43). In rehearsal, the first part of

the task provides a particular condition to ease the main performance. "Prior performance can be

taken to mean that the speaker has already carried out a lot of relevant conceptualization,

formulation, and articulation work" (Ibid, p. 44). When the learner first carries out the task, s/he

would be more concerned with planning the content of the message. Then, the learner would be more

concerned with the formulation aspect of the task through the selection of words and correct

grammatical forms as s/he has already done the conceptual work (Bygate, 1996). Therefore,

rehearsal has a significant impact on both the conceptualization and formulation aspects but the

learners' first encounter or prior performance of the task is unlikely to affect the articulation process.

The learners' second encounter of the task brings back the whole message content to the working

memory and finds the accurate and appropriate lexical and grammatical forms more rapidly. As a

result, the initial performance would be a form of planning of processing and of content.

2.6.2 Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is the process in which learners plan what they are going to write or say

before commencing and communicating a task. Pre-task planning can attend to propositional content,

to the organization of the information and to the choice of language (Ellis, 2003). It involves

preparatory attention (Schmidt, 2001 cited in Ellis, 2003) and motivates individuals to perform

actions with greater accuracy and speed. Thus, when learners with limited processing capacity have

the chance to plan the linguistic and the propositional content of the task in advance, they can

compensate for these processing limitations, and as a result the quality of their linguistic output is

improved.

Strategic planning typically comprises focused and unfocused instructions to plan the

performance. As Bygate and Samuda (2005, p.39) state "strategic planning reduces the processing

load of subsequent online performance." Learners organize the content of the message and work on

how to formulate it. This preparation is done in memory and enables to generate more complex,

fluent, and accurate messages both in content and form. Providing language learners' time to plan

enables them to have access to their declarative knowledge for L2 Production. L2 learners might

ignore such knowledge without the opportunity for planning time. Declarative knowledge refers to

the "factual knowledge such as knowing that certain verbs in English take 'd' or 'ed' in past tense"

(Rouhi & Marefat, 2006). In contrast, procedural knowledge is defined as the way to do things

without thinking about the underlying rules. For example, the person possessing the procedural

knowledge of past tense can add 'ed' or 'd' to verbs without thinking about the way the rule functions.

Although strategic planning eases accessing general declarative knowledge prior to performance,

some part of the knowledge during planning time may be forgotten when the learners are engaged in

producing the speech or writing because of memory limitation (Bygate & Samuda, 2005). That is,

the amount of pre-planned discourse is limited. The writer or speaker may plan the content and some

expressions for the first two or three minutes of speech or writing but is unable to remember all the

words and language forms which are pre-planned in advance as a result of memory constraints. This

leads to reduced accuracy. That is, prior to perform a task, learners plan the content during the macro

and micro planning stages of conceptualization and after that during the formulation stage, they

attend to the language. "Useful language is harder to predict and keep in mind than a content plan"

(Bygate & Samuda, 2005, p. 40). It does not mean that learners do not make use of language planned

during strategic planning time. Yet, the scope for remembering it in the appropriate utterance and

suitable time is limited.

Strategic planning can be divided into sub-categories. Language learners may be left to their

own devices while planning a task (unguided planning) or they can be given specific advice about

how and what to plan (guided planning) (Skehan, 2005). They can be guided to attend to meaning, to

linguistic form, or to form and meaning (Sangarun, 2005). Another option relevant to strategic

planning concerns learners working individually, collaboratively in small groups, or with the teacher

(Foster & Skehan, 1999).

2.6.3 Within-task Planning (Online Planning)

Online planning is the process in which learners attend to form while planning speech or

written acts or in order to monitor their output (Ellis, 2003). Online planning happens during task

performance and is categorized into pressured and unpressured. In a pressured performance, learners

engage in rapid planning or as Ochs (1979, cited in Ellis, 2005) calls unplanned language use which

involves greater improvisation (Yuan & Ellis, 2003). In the other type, unpressured performance,

learners participate in careful online planning resulting in what Ochs calls planned language use. In

this type of language use, the speaker or the writer can plan and replan both the conceptual context

and formulation of the message. Unlike strategic planning, the careful online planning is likely to tax

working memory less, as it happens during the planning and production of specific utterances. It

mainly includes the processes of message conceptualization, lexico-grammatical searches, and

monitoring. In this case, monitoring takes place both before and after the actual production.

Yuan and Ellis (2003, p. 6) state that "online planning is the process by which speakers attend

carefully to the formulation stage during speech planning and engage in pre-production and post-

production monitoring of their speech acts". Thus, it is expected that carefully planned and

monitored messages will display greater linguistic complexity and grammatical accuracy while

providing learners with plenty of time may have a detrimental effect on fluency (Yuan and Ellis,

2003; Ellis & Yuan, 2005).

2.7 Strategic Planning vs. Online Planning

There are some distinctions between strategic and online planning. One is that the former is

directed mainly at the first stage of Levelet's model, that is, conceptualization while the latter allows

time to attend more closely to formulation. Another difference refers to the fact that learners in

strategic planning plan propositional content and isolated chunks of language. Even, learners' more

and deep engagement in formulation may less cause them to remember the pre-planned forms in the

actual performance. Therefore, strategic planners recall what they want to say or write rather than

how to say or write it. This kind of planning does not greatly assist the formulation particularly of

grammatical morphology. As Ellis (2005, p. 41) remarks "Strategic planning is likely to bias towards

macro-planning and away from grammatical work". Ellis (2005) also asserts that strategic planning

affects on fluency because of learners' motivation in speaking or writing faster to avoid loss of

planned material from working memory while online planning gives learners the opportunity to

search their long-term memory from grammatical forms. Online planners must also engage in

conceptual planning which results in both enhanced accuracy and complexity.

While both pre-task and online planning constitute distinctive types of planning, they are not

mutually exclusive and can be integrated in various conditions. In condition 1, learners have no

chance either for pre-task planning or for online planning. As low proficiency learners access a

limited processing capacity and have difficulty in accessing their linguistic knowledge, it is seen as

the most demanding condition. Condition 2 refers to the learners who have the opportunity to pre-

plan their performance either through task rehearsal or by strategic planning but are not allowed to

plan their utterances carefully online. In condition 3, learners are required to plan and perform the

task in a short limit of time. Both these conditions can ease the processing burden of the learners. In

condition 4, learners have a chance for pre-task planning and online planning which helps them

maximize their competence in performance.

Table 2.1

Planning Conditions

Planning conditions Pre-task planning Online planning

2.8 Theoretical Literature on Planning

The study of task planning mainly comprises the following three theoretical frameworks:

1. Tarone's view of stylistic variation

2. Skehan's cognitive model of language learning

3. Models of spoken and written production

The theoretical frameworks of task planning heavily draw on two constructs, Limited

Working Memory and Focus on Form on the one hand and Attention and Noticing on the other.

Working memory includes three components: the central executive, the phonological loop, and the

visuospatial sketchpad (Baddeley & Hitch, 1974). Of the three parts, the central executive and

phonological loop are related to task planning. Cowan (1993) asserts the importance of working

memory and states that the central executive is limited in capacity and controls the relationship

between the working and long-term memory. As a result, giving learners the opportunity for pre-task

and on-line planning can ease the burden on working memory. Planning also plays a significant role

in the phonological loop which lets learners maintain one set of materials while drawing on another

set to improve and refine it. In order to have competent second language learners, SLA researchers

suggest that learners should also pay attention to language forms. Such a perspective is moreover

justified on the grounds that interlanguage development can only happen when learners attend to

language forms in a meaning-dominated context (Ellis, 2005). Thus, dedicating learners time to plan

constitutes a means of achieving a focus-on-form pedagogically in TBLT classes.

Regarding the second construct, attention and noticing, Schmidt (1990) considers conscious

attention (noticing) essential to language learning and believes that learning without attention to the

content of what is going to be learned is impossible. While Schmidt's hypothesis cited the role of

attention in input processing, Swain (1995) considers the role of noticing in output processing. He

asserts that task performance requires attention to form and learners' involvement in syntactic

processing which is a bottom-up process. Learners unearth limitations in their language production

which results in their improvement in performance. Therefore, providing language learners with the

opportunity for planning makes them notice and attend more to language forms in a meaning

dominated context during task performance. Task-based language teaching provides this context.

Having illustrated the two important constructs of task planning, the theoretical bases of the task

planning need to be studied.

2.8.1 Tarone's Theory of Stylistic Variation

Tarone's (1998) theory draws on Labov's account of Stylistic Variation. According to the

theory, individuals show variation in their language use as a result of different styles and there are no

single style speakers. The theory states that second language learners possess a "capability

continuum" knowledge which includes "careful" and "vernacular" styles. In careful style, attention

through monitoring is the most in speech while in the latter it is the least. The model requires the

individuals to use different styles in different situations based on the context of their language

production. Tarone stressing the usefulness of the vernacular style because of no attention to form

remarks that interlanguage structure also improves through the development of the careful style. The

theory helps language learners access their monitoring style when they are provided with time to

2.8.2 Models of Speech Production and Writing

Levelet's (1989) model of speech production is regarded as the crucial theory in task

planning. The model is composed of three processing stages: conceptualization, formulation, and

articulation. The model asserts that the three stages function in a parallel fashion and are regulated by

a self-monitoring process. In the conceptualization stage, the speaker resolves about the

communicative goal and recognizes a speech act. In the formulation stage, language forms of the

pre-verbal messages are established. The stage includes selecting the grammatical and phonological

features by the speaker. The last stage comprises retrieving chunks of internal speech and then

speech production.

Levelet argues that the three stages function in a parallel fashion and are regulated by a self-

monitoring process. The formulation and articulation components of speech production processes

operate under controlled processing while the conceptualization stage operates automatically. As

learners face with difficulty during the formulation and monitoring stages because of demanding on

cognitive resources, a rationale for task planning is raised. Thus, the provision of planning time in

task performance helps language learners handle the formulation and articulation stages with less

difficulty.

Models of written language propose a very similar set of processes involved in the written

production. Amongst such models, Kellogg's (1996) model determines three systems for writing;

Formulation, Execution, and Monitoring. The formulation stage requires writers planning to establish

goals for writing and to think up ideas related to goals. It also involves translating through which the

writer selects the lexical units and syntactic frames necessary to encode ideas. In the execution stage

which involves programming, the output from the translation is converted into production schema.

This stage also comprises executing through which production of sentences occurs. In the monitoring

stage, the writer reads and edits the text which can occur before and after the execution of a sentence.

The editing phase composes refining micro aspects of the text such as linguistic errors and macro

aspects like reconsideration of paragraphs and coherence as well. Kellogg remarks that the central

executive component of the working memory is entailed in all the components of the model with the

exception of the execution stage which is accomplished without the need for controlled processing.

Language learners, at first, need to prepare specific messages and find some way of formulating

them prior to the articulation. Therefore, there will be a broad planning process which requires

learners to identify appropriate message content and link it to the formulation and articulation of

these processes (Bygate & Samuda, 2005). There is some difference between considering the role of

planning in relation to these two processes. Since the amount of knowledge needed for articulation is

automatic, it seems that it cannot be the focus of explicit planning. Formulation is a bit different.

Formulation is accessing grammatical and lexical forms which are appropriate to the message

formed in conceptualization. The process comprises a degree of automation. Bygate and Samuda

(2005, p. 44) state that "lexico-grammatical selection is accessed very rapidly in response to prior

conceptualization". The limitation of automation in formulation stage is for three reasons. First, some

words implicate longer search to access or may be completely new to the learners. Second, some

grammatical forms entail more processing. Third, there is some monitoring in the formulation stage

to ensure the appropriacy of the first formulation. This means that there is also some planning in the

conceptualization stage. Learners plan the message content both at the macro level (the overall

content of the discourse) and at the micro level (the conceptual content of each utterance).

As a result, when writers have no time to prepare for the task, they prioritize the formulation

stage and designate no sufficient attention to the execution and monitoring stages (Ellis, 2005).

Accordingly, planning can be beneficial to the monitoring and formulation stages through offering

learners time for the controlled processing.

2.8.3 Skehan's Cognitive Model of Language Learning

Language learners are equipped with an exemplar-based and rule-based knowledge system

simultaneously (Skehan, 1998). He believes that these two systems form learners' dual representation

of linguistic forms and neither of them is useful in isolation. The rule-based knowledge system

results in the development of a system which allows for innovations to occur. This system helps

learners produce novel sentences based on the grammatical rules. It is also cognitively demanding

because it requires processing and analysis of language. Skehan (1998) asserts that this system is

drawn upon by learners when they feel the need to creatively construct utterances to express meaning

precisely. Drawing solely upon this system makes learners not to be able to keep up with the speed

of everyday conversations and brings about dysfluency. The exemplar-based knowledge system is

lexical in nature and includes lexical items and formulaic chunks of language. The stored knowledge

in this system is easily and quickly accessed as such fixed pieces of language are not cognitively

demanding and require no controlled processing because of little amount of computation involved.

Due to this system, learners can gain fluency in real-time situations as it requires learners only to

retrieve the fixed pieces of a language. The impediment of this system is that it does not allow

learners to be creative in their language production. As Skehan (1998) claims, the two systems

operate harmoniously together. Primarily, the initial stages of language acquisition are lexical in

nature. Then, the rule-based knowledge system comes into play when there is the desire for

syntactization among learners. After this stage, what was synctacticized is then re-lexicalized.

Skehan's model indicates that when learners are obliged to produce language immediately, they draw

on their exemplar-based knowledge system. The model led Skehan to suggest that it may be possible

to identify task procedures and conditions which lead language learners to place a balanced emphasis

on different aspects of performance i.e. fluency, accuracy, and complexity. Moreover, Skehan

distinguishes three aspects of production; complexity which refers to the use of elaborated

interlanguage structures; accuracy which points to the learners' ability to produce grammatically

correct sentences; and fluency which is the learners' capability to communicate in real-time situations

without undue hesitation. Skehan (1996) and Foster and Skehan (1996) demonstrated that the three

aspects of performance tab on various aspects of learners' mind and are distinct from each other.

Skehan's model reveals that giving learners time to plan to do a task can motivate and help them by

preventing learners from relying extensively on their lexical/formulaic chunks of language which

leads to fluency and encouraging them to draw on and use of their rule-based knowledge system, too.

Making use of this knowledge system without relying on the other can lead to possessing competent

learners because complexity and accuracy aspects are related to language forms which are

themselves necessary for interlanguage development. As a result, the provision of planning can

encourage language learners towards a kind of language production that is accurate, complex, and

fluent.

Having demonstrated the theoretical bases for task planning, the next part of the research

deals with the empirical literature of planning. The section refers to the different studies investigating

the role of pre-task and online planning on learners' performance.

2.9 Empirical Literature on Planning

The last two decades have experienced a number of studies investigating planning time on

second and foreign language production. These studies vary in the way they measure different

aspects of L2 production and their original motivation to conduct tasks. They mostly analyze

language learners' speech production and writing in terms of accuracy, fluency, and complexity.

They also operationalize conditions including what happens while learners repeat a task (rehearsal),

what occurs before conducting a task (strategic planning), and what happens during task performance

(online planning).

2.9.1 Research on Rehearsal

Task repetition is principally a kind of planning (Ellis, 2005, 2008) which refers to 'repetition

of the same or slightly altered task –whether the whole tasks, or parts of a task' (Bygate & Samuda,

2005, P. 43). Rehearsal is particularly useful to increase learners' fluency and complexity (Bygate,

2001; Ahmadian & Tavakoli, 2011). Studies on rehearsal represent a positive effect on learners'

subsequent performance of the same task. The underlying principle in task repetition is that it enables

two different experiences of the same task demands. The first encounter refers to its creativity, that

is, learners have a lot of new work to manage and do.

Therefore, the second time the learner tries to perform a task; he/she is under less pressure

and is cognitively well prepared to generate more complicated output.

Bygate (1996) attempted to confirm the impact of repetition of the same task on language

skills. He found that language learners produced fewer errors in their second performance. The

findings were consistent with Ellis (1987) and Crookes' (1988) studies in which learners used more

regular past tense forms than irregular ones. Rehearsal enhanced their grammatical complexity, made

their choice of vocabulary more native-like, and showed less inappropriate lexical collocations.

Gass et al. (1999) compared the learners' use of L2 Spanish in tasks with the same and

different contents. The study revealed the effectiveness of task repetition on ratings of overall

proficiency, accuracy in the use of 'estar' and lexical complexity. In another study, Bygate (2001)

investigated the effects of practicing specific types of tasks on both a second performance of the

same task and on the performance of a new task of the same type. The results showed greater fluency

and complexity and a strong effect of task repetition. The results also did not support performance of

new task of the same type. Bygate and Samuda (2005) studied the oral discourse produced on two

performances of the same task at an interval of 10 weeks. They aimed to explore the quality of the

language produced in the students' use of framing in their narratives. They concluded that changes in

the amount of framing use are not related to changes in lexico-grammatical performance.

Following these studies, Nemeth and Kormos (2001) found that repeating an argumentative

task influenced the number of supports the learners provided for their claims but showed no impact

on the frequency of the use. Ellis (2009) reviewed nineteen studies investigating the effects of three

types of planning (rehearsal, strategic, and within-task planning) on the complexity, fluency, and

accuracy of second language performance. He mentioned that all the types of planning have

beneficial effects on fluency but more mix results about accuracy and complexity. In another

research by Ahmadian and Tavakoli (2011), simultaneous use of careful online planning and task

repetition on Iranian learners' performance were investigated. They concluded that the two types of

planning enhance fluency, accuracy, and complexity simultaneously. Matsumura et al. (2008)

investigated changes in the productive skills of a learner through a repetitive use of a narration task

in a classroom environment. The learner improved in accuracy and certain aspects of fluency not

only in the task but also in his impromptu speech. Moreover, the study showed no complexity

enhancement. Repetition of another task (decision-making) by the other learner revealed several

contrasts which assert that there are aspects of learner language that are upgraded through the

repetition of specific types of tasks.

Birjandi and Ahangari (2008) investigated the effects of task repetition and task type on

fluency, complexity, and accuracy of Iranian learners. The analysis of data approved the significant

differences in learners' oral discourse in terms of their performance regarding to task type, task

repetition and the interaction between different variables. Skehan et al. (2012) compared three

planning conditions, task repetition, and the role of familiarity on the second language learners'

performance. They also studied the effects on task performance of different types of post-task

transcription. The results suggested that repetition can be stronger in its effect than strategic and on-

line planning. In another research, Ahmadian (2011) studied the benefits of repeating the same task

to the performance of a new task in a period of six months. He tried to examine whether or not the

effects of massed repetitions of the same task carry over to the performance of a new task. Results

revealed that the benefits of massed repetitions of the same task transfer all domains of performance.

Although the repetition of the task leads to more successful speech and writing, learning a

language requires more than a simple practice. Recycling activities in classrooms under different

conditions play an important role in proceduralization of the second language – the process in which

access to and use of L2 knowledge becomes automatic (Seied Yousefi Malekshah, 2008).

2.9.2 Research on Strategic Planning

There is substantial evidence that giving learners the chance to plan strategically has

beneficial effects on all three dimensions of task production and helps learners produce more

accurate, more fluent, and more complex language. As accuracy is more dependent on the

opportunity for online planning, it is not clear whether strategic planning promotes greater accuracy

and in what conditions (Ellis, 2009). Wendel (1997) reported that planning time makes learners focus

on sequencing the narrative events in the chronological order. Ortega (1999) used retrospective

interviews to see learners’ approach in planning. She found that learners work on the main ideas and

organization first and then on the details. They usually attend to both content and linguistic form, and

make a conscious effort to plan at the utterance level.

Crooks (1989) conducted a research on Japanese learners of English who performed two

monologic production tasks under two planning conditions. In the control group, learners had no

strategic time while in the experimental group they were given ten minutes of pre-task planning time.

In contrast to the previous findings, there was no significant difference between planners and non-

planners in terms of accuracy. However, regarding complexity, the sentences produced by planners

were more complex and rich in lexical variety. It seemed that planners in this study used planning

time to achieve complexity not accuracy. Crookes (1988) also proposes that the findings of Ellis'

(1987) study differ from his study due to the fact that Ellis confounded modality with planning in

that task 1and 2 were written, but task 3 was oral. Therefore, it is not clear whether a change in

accuracy is due to modality or to planning time.

Mehnert (1998) investigated the effect of different amount of planning time on the oral

performance of L2 learners. In her study, she used two tasks: an instruction task as structured and an

exposition task as unstructured. The four groups of the study performed the two tasks with different

amount of planning time. The control group had no planning time available; the three experimental

groups had 1, 5 and 10 minutes of planning time, respectively, before performing the task. The

results revealed that fluency and lexical density of speech increased as a function of planning time.

She indicates the tradeoff effect between complexity and accuracy. But here, she found the length of

time as a crucial factor.

Underwood (1990) extended the Ellis' (1987) study on a longitudinal basis. He employed the

same design as Ellis but gathered data at two different times: at the beginning and at the end of a

two-hour course of intensive instruction on past tense. The results showed improvements on the

irregular past tense in all three tasks. The regular past tense improved in accuracy on task 1, but it

decreased on task 2 and 3. In other words, students' performance was lowered as a result of

instruction. The finding of the research was in line with U-shaped growth (Skehan, 1998).

Ortega (1999) also reported that pre-task planning results in better performance of Spanish

learners. The results of her study indicated that giving learners opportunity to plan before performing

a task: (a) enhances learners' attention to form, (b) increases the rate of speech of learners on a story-

telling task, (c) increases the mean number of words per utterance (a complexity measure), (d) results

in greater fluency, and (e) lessens the cognitive load of a given task. Regarding accuracy, she found

that planning resulted in greater accuracy in the case of Spanish noun-modifier agreement but not in

the case of articles.

Foster (1996) investigated the effects of time to plan on syntactic variety, fluency, accuracy,

and syntactic complexity of L2 learners. She used three tasks in the research and reported that in all

tasks the non-planners were less fluent than the planners. The results also showed that the planners

appeared to take risks to use more complex structures which supported the impressive role of

planning time in encouraging learners to use syntactically more variant language. Planning group

revealed the greater syntactic complexity and increasingly accurate language for all tasks.

Foster and Skehan (1996) attempted to find the effect of three different tasks (personal

information exchange, narrative, and decision-making) and three different implementation conditions

(unplanned, planned but without detail, and detailed planning) for each task on the variables of

fluency, complexity, and accuracy. All three tasks were done by three different groups of

participants. The planning condition was operationalized as detailed and undetailed; that is, half of

the experimental group received guidance and the other half received no guidance and was simply

told to plan. The study reports strong effects of planning on fluency and complexity, with a linear

relationship between degree of planning and degree of complexity. However, most accurate

performance produced by the less detailed planners.

Skehan and Foster (1999) also reported the clear effect of pre-planning on learners’ output.

They examined the effects of contextual support on learners’ production by giving them time to plan

based on four conditions. The results showed that watch-then-tell condition led to more complex

language use but there was no significant difference with regard to fluency and accuracy. The

findings of the study were also interpreted in terms of an interaction between planning and task

structure. Results of the two tasks indicated 40% accuracy in the unstructured task but 64% in the

structured task for learners. Also, the structured task resulted in greater fluency. However, task

structure did not have any impact on complexity.

Wigglesworth (2001) carried out a study in a testing context and found that pre-planning had

different effects at proficiency levels. The high proficiency learners benefited from planning time for

their improvement in the fluency, produced syntactically more complex language, and also more

accurate usage of verb morphology and articles. The findings indicated increases of accuracy on

some measures for the high proficiency candidates where the cognitive load is high but not for the

low proficient learners. Building on Ellis’ study (1987), Yuan and Ellis (2003) carried out another

study to compare the effects of pre-task and online planning on learners' performance of a narrative

task in a more systematic way. In the pre-task planning condition, the subjects were given 10 minutes

to plan and then perform a task under time pressure. The results showed that pre-task planning

enhances grammatical complexity and produces more fluent and lexically varied language while

online planning positively influences accuracy and grammatical complexity.

Kawauchi (2005) examined the impact of strategic planning on low and high EFL learners as

well as advanced ESL learners. In the study, learners completed both the unplanned and planned

tasks, filled out a questionnaire and finally performed the same task again. The findings of the study

indicated that the high EFL group benefited most from the opportunity to plan regarding to fluency

and complexity where the low EFL learners had this result in accuracy. Her findings are in contrast

to the findings in Wigglesworth (2001) in which participants with high proficiency produced more

accurate speech and Ortega (1999) who found planning has the greatest impact on advanced level

learners.

In another study, Tavakoli and Skehan (2005) tried to explore the effect of different variables

(planning condition, proficiency level, and task structure) on oral performance of learners. Four

narrative tasks with respect to different degree of structure were used. The participants were drawn

from two levels of language proficiency, i.e. elementary and intermediate. Also, two planning

conditions (planned and unplanned) were selected for the purpose of the study. The findings on

planning showed that pre-task planning led to a significant increase in fluency and accuracy. In

addition, significant result in the interaction effect between task and proficiency level was found in

complexity. Hence, the effect of proficiency level on accuracy and also complexity was greater than

the effect of pre-task planning.

A number of studies examined the impact of focus of pre-planning –whether on meaning or

form– on learners' performance. In some studies (Foster & Skehan, 1999; Sangarun, 2005), the

learners were guided to pre-plan form or meaning, while in the others (Crookes, 1988; Mehnert,

1998; Foster, 1996), they were guided to pre-plan both form and meaning.

Foster and Skehan (1999) focused on the role of strategic planning using source of planning

(teacher-led, group-based, solitary, no planning) and focus of planning (language vs. content) with

reference to six conditions. The results indicated more accurate language in the teacher-fronted

condition, while the solitary planning condition showed more complex and fluent language. Group

planning did not differ from no planning group. There was also little impact on performance as a

result of language versus content planning condition.

Sangarun (2005) devised planning activities that required participants to focus on meaning,

form or a combination of form and meaning on the quality of language speech. The study included

two task types: instruction and argumentative tasks under four conditions. The analysis of the data

showed the learners' preference to focus on meaning in the strategic planning. Moreover, strategic

planning under the combined meaning-form condition appeared to be more effective than planning

separately under meaning or form condition.

Philp et al. (2006) studied the merits of pre-task planning time for children under three

conditions. They investigated the learners' language production in terms of feedback modified

output, fluency, complexity, and accuracy. The results showed that children's provision of feedback

to each other was greater in terms of interaction under no-planning or a short amount of planning

time. Planning had limited benefit on accuracy and regarding to no planning time it did not impact on

fluency.

In contrast, Taguchi's (2007) research did not support the previous studies which showed that

planning time positively impacts the quality of the learners' output. The tasks were based on two

situation types with three social variables: interlocutors power difference (P), social distance (D), and

the degree of imposition (R). The findings did not show more appropriate speech act production and

more fluent articulation of production. The participants in PDR-high situation type did not have

better production comparing to PDR-low situation type.

Rahmanian (2004) carried out a research on the impact of planning condition on learners’

performance which differed from the above studies in terms of the modality of a task used (written

task instead of spoken). In his study, three groups of participants performed a task under different

planning conditions (pre-task planning, online planning, and no planning condition). He utilized a

narrative task in the study with eight picture series. Participants were asked to write at least two

sentences about each picture in a time limit. The results showed that there was no significant change

in pre-task planning group in comparison to no planners in terms of fluency. Moreover, regarding

lexical variety no planners outperformed pre-task planners. Pre-task planners also generated

somewhat less accurate and less complex language than online planners.

Mehrang and Rahimpour (2011) investigated the impact of pre-task and without pre-task

planning conditions on the oral performance of EFL learners through structured versus unstructured

tasks. They used cartoon scripts for data collection and indicated that planning time had no effect on

the fluency and accuracy of the learners' performance but revealed a more complex performance in

the unstructured task. Moreover, task structure promoted the fluency but not the accuracy and

complexity under the planning condition.

Johnson (2011) also determined the effects of three sub-processes of pre-task planning on L2

writers' texts. The participants were asked to complete one of five pre-task activities to focus their

attention on different sub-processes of strategic planning. The findings under the pre-task planning

conditions indicated limited impact of pre-task planning on the participants' texts. Organization and

idea generation strategic planning had a minimal impact on grammatical complexity. Organization

pre-task planning influenced writing fluency. Unlike the other studies among L1 writers, no impact

of pre-task planning was noted on holistic writing quality. Strategic planning was also found to have

no impact on measures of lexical sophistication.

In another research, Nariman-Jahan and Rahimpour (2011) studied the effects of planning

and proficiency on language production of writing task performance. They employed strategic and

online planning conditions and concluded that low-proficiency learners benefited more from time for

planning with respect to concept load and fluency. Meraji (2011) also attempted to delve into

performance differentials occasioned as a function of planning time in pedagogic versus testing

contexts. He addressed the impact of pre-task planning on the written output of intermediate EFL

learners and concluded that strategic planning fostered syntactic complexity, fluency and accuracy in

the pedagogic context. The results showed positive effects in the testing context regarding the three

aspects of performance by planners compared to no planners. In terms of strategy use, there was no

significant difference between planners in the two contexts.

Genc (cited in Shehadeh & Coombe, 2012) examined the impact of strategic planning on the

accuracy of Turkish EFL learners' performance on oral and written narrative tasks. Data collected

from 60 learners in a Turkish educational setting showed that pre-planning did not significantly

affect accuracy in the oral task but had a diverse effect on the written task.

Khorasani et al. (2012) surveyed the influence of strategic planning on the Iranian EFL

learners' performance in writing narrative task under three conditions: no-planning, unguided pre-

task planning, and content and language-focused strategic planning. The results showed greater

benefits of planned conditions compared to unplanned one. However, significant distinction was for

fluency. Moreover, the findings supported the idea of limited attentional capacity, particularly in the

low to intermediate level learners.

Piri et al. (2012) attempted to study the effect of pre-task, online and both pre-task and online

planning on written performance of EFL learners. The results of one-way ANOVA (analysis of

variance) showed that the three planning conditions had no effect on the accuracy, fluency, and

complexity of learners' written narratives; however, pre-task planning had a significant effect on one

variable of fluency that is syllables per minute. In another research by Wigglesworth and Elder

(2011) three variables of planning, proficiency, and task were studied to see their interaction with

each other. The analysis of the scores revealed no main difference in performance based on the

amount of planning time. The results remarked the importance of 8 minute pre-task planning

condition in the test development process.

Skehan et al. (2012) examined the second language performance in which the first study

compared online and strategic planning as well as task repetition. The second study referred to the

role of familiarity on task performance and compared it with conventional pre-planning. The results

indicated that strategic planning had less effect than task repetition. But planning was more potent in

its effects than familiarity with the material.

Salimi et al. (2012) tried to operationalize the effects of strategic planning and task

complexity on L2 written performance in terms of accuracy. A valid task with simple and complex

versions was given to 50 learners to compare the accuracy means. The results of the research

indicated enhancement in the participants' accuracy.

In a recent study, Haghverdi et al. (2013) investigated whether planning under three

conditions of no-planning, strategic planning and online planning in writing tasks affect the accuracy

of Iranian EFL learners or not. The analysis of data showed that strategic planning group

outperformed the other two groups.

Most of the research on the role of strategic planning goes back to the learners' performance

in their oral production of language and less in written performance. Yet, the bulk of studies show

better performance of EFL and ESL learners in the area.

2.9.3 Research on Online Planning

Online planning mainly consists of the process of conceptualization monitoring, and lecixo-

grammatical searches all at the micro-level rather than the macro-level (Bygate & Samuda, 2005).

Online planning can be sub-divided based on the extent to which the task performance is pressured

or unpressured. This process is achieved through managing the time available to the learners for their

planning of what to say or write in a task performance. Within-task planning can be 'careful' in which

learners engage in an unpressed performance and have ample opportunity to plan their productions

and make use of this chance to attend to the content and expression of their performance.

Alternatively, on-line planning may be 'pressured' in which performers are required to produce text

rapidly and have limited time to attend precisely to content and expression of the task performance

(Ellis & Yuan, 2005).

Whereas there are various studies investigating the effects of strategic planning more on oral

and less on written task performance, there has been surprisingly little attention to within-task

planning.

Ellis (1987) in his study tried to examine the effects of online planning on the accuracy of

three forms of past tense –the regular, the irregular, and the copula. He used two tasks under three

different conditions; writing careful online planning, strategic planning, and speaking pressured

online planning. Learners' use of the regular past tense forms indicated the most accurate language in

condition 1, the least accurate language in condition 3, and condition 2 was the intermediate.

However, Crookes (1988) remarked that the reason for different accuracy scores is related to the

medium rather than the type of planning.

Yuan and Ellis (2003) set out a research to investigate the impact of pre-task and within-task

planning on the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of L2 learners' performance. They remarked that

online planning has a significant effect on grammatical complexity and accuracy. Pre-planners were

more fluent than online planners. The results asserted that online planning has the potential to enable

L2 speakers to gain access to knowledge and produce more accurate language. In addition, L2

speakers engaged in cognitive activities resulting in more complex language production in all three

conditions. In 2004, Ellis and Yuan replicated the previous study on Chinese learners' written

narrative. Online planning did not lead to greater fluency but had some effect on complexity and a

significant impact on accuracy. The findings also revealed that pre-task planners were more fluent

that the online planners. Ellis and Yuan (2005) constituted an attempt to disentangle the effects of

modality and online planning based on a narrative task. Two groups performed the task under

pressured condition and two others in their own time. The results revealed that careful online

planning improved syntactical complexity and accuracy both in speech and writing but did not

promote fluency and lexical varieties. In terms of modality, the learners' oral performance was more

fluent but less accurate and less complex. Wang (2008) mentioning different understanding of the

concept of task studied Chinese learners' language performance under strategic and online planning

conditions. The results revealed the unclear influence of strategic planning on accuracy but with

reference to unpressured within-task planning condition it showed positive effects on learners'

accuracy performance.

As planning factor influences task performance of foreign and second language learners,

Rahimpour and Safarie (2011) employed two groups of EFL learners under online and pre-task

planning conditions. The participants in PTP group were given 10 minutes to plan while the OLP

group had to begin writing under unpressured within-task condition. In the case of fluency, the

strategic planning group outperformed online planning group and in terms of accuracy the

performances of the two groups did not present any significant difference. The oral performance of

Japanese learners under four planning conditions including planning, online planning, no planning,

and both pre and online planning was the subject of a research by Nakakubo (2011). Participants

were asked to retell a story in Japanese. Nakakubo concluded that the pressured online planning

group spoke faster than the unpressured group. She noticed no significant differences in learners' oral

production except in the area of lexical complexity. Another trade-off effect was in the lexical

complexity and fluency under online planning condition. In another survey, Ahmadian et al. (2012)

investigated the combined effects of online planning and task structure on L2 speech production.

Participants were required to do two tasks with two different structures including structured and

unstructured under pressured and careful online planning conditions. Analysis of the narrations

revealed that the structured task under the careful online planning condition produced more complex,

fluent, and accurate language. However, the unstructured task under the pressured online planning

condition obtained the lowest results in the three areas of oral performance.

Regarding the previous studies, it is obvious that most of the researchers under different

planning conditions have focused on the oral production of language learners and neglected the

writing mode as well as the concept of task structure in task planning. This leads us to include the

importance of the task structure in task-based language teaching studies.

2.10 Task Structure

During the recent years, task structure has been one of the task design features which has

attracted the language practitioners and researchers' attention. The notion of task structure first

emerged from the post-hoc interpretations of the findings of a number of studies (Foster & Skehan,

1996; Skehan & Foster, 1999) that primarily aimed to explore the degree to which familiar and

unfamiliar task content would influence second language oral output. (Ahmadian et al., 2012).

Task structure is a task-inherent factor and refers to the degree to which “the sequence of the

actions [in a task] is predictable and follows a fairly necessary path” (Skehan and Foster, 1999, p.

104). It is also defined and operationalised in the literature by emphasizing characteristics such as a

clear time line, a script, a story with a beginning, middle and end, an appeal to what is organized and

familiar in the speaker’s mind, and finally, the presence of a problem solution structure (Tavakoli &

Skehan, 2005). Task structure is also defined in terms of a problem-solution structure and a

schematic sequential organization (Rahimpour, 2010).

Studies investigating the effect of task structure on language learners' performance mostly

cover oral output including Skehan and Foster (1999), Tavakoli and Skehan (2005), Tavakoli and

Foster (2008), Tavakoli (2009), Rahimpour (2010) and less on learners' written output including

Tavakoli (2012). In general, findings of these studies revealed that task structure resulted in more

accurate and fluent performance while leaving complexity unaffected.

Skehan and Foster (1999) found that more structured tasks led to more fluent but not a more

complex or more accurate speech that the unstructured task. In another interesting research by

Tavakoli and Foster (2008), they concluded that performing a lightly structured task improve all

aspects of linguistic performance. The light task structure showed higher mean scores for accuracy,

complexity, and fluency than those who performed loose task structure.

Tavakoli and Skehan (2005) utilized four narrative tasks with different task structure. Task

structure, which was operationalized through four different picture series, had four levels

representing a scale in the degree of structure of a task. Learners' performance was measured in

terms of fluency, accuracy, and complexity. In their study, more structured tasks led to somewhat

higher performance in fluency than do the less structured tasks for length of run, speaking time, and

speech rate. Results for accuracy showed that the two least structured tasks contrast with the two

more structured tasks which provide support for the claim that task structure influences accuracy.

There were also complications in the results in terms of complexity. The prediction was that there

would be no effect for complexity but the picnic task (the structured task) had generated greater

complexity than the other three tasks and none of the other tasks differ from one another in this

regard.

School tasks interact with learners’ motivation, cognition, and instruction to impact on

learners and achievement. To achieve this goal Lodewyk et al. (2009) observed 90 tenth-grades

science students motivation, learning strategies, Calibration, and task perception via a well-structured

(WST) and an ill-structured task (IST). Students got higher grades in the WST while they used

critical thinking and peer learning strategies more on the IST. They further state that task structure

many provide prompts which illicit unique self-regulated learning responses in students. In another

study, Chiang et al. (2009) tried to examine the effect of task structure on test takers oral accuracy.

They used two structured and unstructured tasks in the research and found that learners’ oral

proficiency interacted with the degree of task structure and both factors influenced their fluency and

accuracy performance. Moreover, the structured task elicited more accurate speech than the less-

structured task from the native speakers and the higher proficiency language learners. They also

resulted that the low proficiency learners display more accurate utterances in the less-structured task

than the structured task.

Alwi and Aloesnita bt. (2010) investigated the influence of two task features, the level of task

structure and the use of language support, on learners' language production. They found that task

structure influenced learners’ complexity, accuracy and quality of output. The finding revealed that

learners in LREs and their output were more accurate when task performance was lightly structured.

Moreover, task structure did not have any particular effect on the structural and lexical complexity of

the output nor on the amount of produced language and participation quality.

In a recent study, Ahmadian et al. (2012) used of intermediate EFL learners to investigate the

effects of careful online planning and the storyline structure of a task on their performance.

Participants performed two different structured and unstructured tasks under two conditions. The

result revealed that the participants who performed the structured task under the careful online

planning condition produced more complex, accurate, and fluent language. They further found that

unstructured task under the pressured online planning condition revealed the lowest performance in

all areas of oral production.

Studies examining the effects of task structure mostly include the three kinds of structured

task, loosely or less-structured task, and unstructured task. The following subcategories try to

represent a clear concept of the task structure which indeed helps the readers obtain a better

understanding of the research.

2.10.1 Structured Task

Structured task is "a task that lends itself to the participants utilizing a ready-made schema for

performing it" (Ellis, 2003). A structured task is less complex than a less- or unstructured task, where

in the latter the participants need to actively construct a mental framework for performing it. Here,

the learners use mental structures or schemata for organizing different aspects of the world.

Schemata include content schemata for organizing information about the world and formal schemata

for organizing how information can be rhetorically structured.

Based on the criterion proposed in previous studies, a structured task would provide

participants with more direct cues or predictable storyline in visual stimuli such as pictures, and

would supply more constraints for them to complete the task than the less structured one. With direct

cues, a predictable storyline and more constraints, learners' flexibility on completing a task would be

reduced (Chiang et al., 2009). Structured tasks are the ones which have a problem-solution and a

schematic sequential structure in which the events cannot be reordered without compromising the

story.

In the light of the foregoing theoretical and empirical studies, it may be concluded that

structured tasks have a clear timeline and macrostructure and accordingly impose a relatively lower

cognitive load on the task performers which results in the production of language which is relatively

more complex, accurate and fluent in the online planning conditions (Ahmadian et al., 2012).

2.10.2 Unstructured Task

Unstructured task is the one in which the participants do not employ a ready-made schema, is

complex and the language learners need to actively create a mental framework in doing a task.

Unstructured task is the one without a problem-solution structure and its events can be easily

rearranged without losing coherence. Unstructured tasks are identified according to the lack of

sequential structure in which events could easily be reordered without the story being compromised.

Given the fact that unstructured tasks are more cognitively demanding and therefore difficult

to carry out, performing an unstructured task under pressured online planning conditions leads to the

production of language which is relatively less accurate, complex, and fluent.

2.10.3 Less-structured Task

When tasks comprise an arbitrary sequence of events, they are less-structured or loosely

structured (Foster, 2008; Tavakoli, 2012). Thus, an inherently loose structured task can have its

episodes reordered without loss of coherence and allows the performer to follow episodes from one

to the next (Tavakoli & Foster, 2011). The learner does not access to a clear ready-made schema and

an elaborate mental framework to do the task.

In contrast to a structured task, this kind of task would supply less direct and less predictable

cues in their visual stimuli for the participants to complete the task. Thus, task performers would

obtain more flexibility in completing the less structured task. In other words, they would have to

make decisions on choosing appropriate lexical items or sentence structures or even have to employ

their imagination to make a meaningful connection among a set of pictures (Chiang et al., 2009).

The role of task structure, a neglected and less investigated area in TBLT, moves the

researcher toward the reflection of this importance in planning condition –task performance– which

is of the main importance in task-based studies and a scale for the measurement of learners' output.

2.11 Task Performance

Research into TBLT is mainly conducted to find a solution for the problem of determining

the relevant grading and sequencing criteria for designing and classifying tasks for task-based syllabi

(Long & Crookes, 1992; Robinson, 2003, 2006) and has mostly concentrated on investigating the

effects of task characteristics and task design on task performance (Foster & Skehan, 1996; Skehan

& Foster, 1997, 1999; Tavakoli & Foster, 2008; Tavakoli & Skehan, 2005). Performance a task in

front of the class increases the communicative stress (Candlin, 1987) on the learner. It may lead to a

reduction in fluency and complexity from one hand, is likely to encourage the use of a more formal

style and may cause learners to use the grammaticalized resources associated with this style (Givon,

1979) from the other hand.

Regarding the role of task in SLA and language instruction, Long and Crookes (1992)

propose the importance of instruction in enabling acquisitional processes to operate, particularly by

allowing meaning to be negotiated as well as maintaining a focus on form, that is, the use of

pedagogic tasks to draw students' attention to aspects of the target language code, as opposed to

focusing on form, that is, to use some kind of synthetic syllabus or linguistically teaching method.

Skehan (1998) remarks two justifications for the use of tasks based on the processing

perspective of language acquisition. The processing based analysis pertains to information-

processing load and focuses on task difficulty. He assumes that human beings operate with a limited

capacity attentional system in which paying attention to one area of performance reduces the

attention to the other area. The selective channeling relates the desirable aspects of language

performance (complexity, accuracy, fluency) to task characteristics. Based on the second rationale, a

set of task characteristics have predictable influences upon performance.

Robinson (2001) takes a different approach to how tasks influence performance. He does not

believe in the limited capacity of attentional resources as Skehan and Foster (1997) argue. Instead, he

considers attention as an expandable resource, especially in relation to memory in different, non-

competing modality areas.

Robinson (1999) has a different view in which task is driving performance. In his view, the

more difficult tasks will push learners to engage more complex language and push them to achieve

accuracy in a way that communication is more effective. He also distinguishes between resource

directing factors which push learners to produce more difficult language and resource depleting

factors which influence the overall difficulty of a task.

Other researchers have looked at the other characterizations of tasks. Brown's (1991) study

showed that how task types may influence the kind of interaction in small group work. He employed

three types of tasks with different objective and demand: (a) tight/loose task, (b) closed/open task,

and (c) procedural/interpretive task. He measured task performance in terms of rephrasing, repairs,

prompts, repetitions, hypothesizing, and instructional input. The findings of the study indicated no

significant differences in the level of modification happening in the three task types but revealed

significant differences in the levels of hypothesizing and of instructional input between the

interpretive tasks and the tasks requiring decisions about procedures.

Robinson (1995) tried to examine the differences in the oral narrative discourse production of

second language learners of English. He used the events in the here-and-now versus the there-and-

then discourse, found disparities in the study, and concluded that these disparities are a consequence

of differences in cognitive load imposed by the tasks. Thus, the greater the attentional, memory, and

reasoning demands of tasks, the greater the cognitive load they impose on learners (p.130). These

results support the claim that complex tasks produce less fluent, but more accurate and complex

language than do simpler tasks.

Foster and Skehan (1996) explored the impact of different variables on the nature of language

performance. They used three kinds of tasks which opposed familiar with unfamiliar propositions,

and clear structure for the information required with progressively less predictable structure and

interaction. The results showed different effects on learners' language performance. The personal and

decision task resulted in significantly higher accuracy than narrative ones, while the personal task led

to lower complexity than the other two tasks.

Skehan and Foster (1997, 2001) argue for the existence of tradeoffs in performance and

believe that greater fluency may be accompanied by greater accuracy or greater complexity but not

both, while Robinson (2001) states that fluency contrasts with complexity and accuracy. Almost all

studies (Foster & Skehan, 1996, 1999; Mehnert, 1998; Ortega, 1999; Skehan & Foster, 1997, 1999)

support the influence of planning on complexity and fluency but the situation with accuracy is not so

clear (Skehan, 2003). While some studies (Foster & Skehan, 1996; Skehan & Foster, 1997; Mehnert,

1998) claim the increase of accuracy when there is planning, others (crooks, 1989; Ortega, 1999;

Wigglesworth, 1997, 2001) do not support this claim. Skehan & Foster (1997, 2002) have shown that

by giving learners a post-task activity through interactive tasks, significantly greater accuracy

happens.

Skehan following the information processing perspective viewed pre-task planning as one

way of circumventing learners’ limited attentional capacity (Skehan, 1998; Skehan & Foster, 2001)

and proposed that pre-task planning frees up learners’ attentional resources and helps them improve

their subsequent task performance. Van Patten (1990) regarding his input processing perspective

supports Skehan’s stance and states that learners end up prioritizing and processing the meaningful

elements of language over the non-meaningful, formal aspect of language (Park 2006). Researches

on planning have mainly been on the effect of planning on learners’ linguistic performance and show

the improvement of fluency and complexity but not accuracy as much. For accuracy to improve, it

seems that the IL (interlanguage) development requires a long-term internal restructuring

(Kellerman, 1985; McLaughlin, 1987, 1990; Lightbown, 1983, 1985).

Tajima (2003) in a study on Korean learners of Japanese measured learners' performance and

also their subjective feelings towards planning time. The results indicated significant improvement in

fluency while accuracy and complexity showed partial improvement measures. This effect for

planning on fluency was supported by Ortega (1999) studies, too. While Tajima (2003) and Ortega’s

(1999) studies resulted in improvement in fluency, Crookes (1988) and Mehnert (1998) did the same

kind of research but showed improved complexity. Crookes (1988) explained this little improvement

in accuracy by referring to human beings limited attentional resource and argued that generating

greater complexity than the learners’ IL capacity results in accuracy falling off.

In another study, Wendel (1997) provided learners with specific instructions prior to planning

and ask them to think about lexicon and retell the sequence of events in two films. The results

confirmed fluency and complexity improvement like previous planning studies (Crookes, 1988;

Mehnert, 1998; Yuan & Ellis, 2003) but not accuracy improvement.

Ellis (2006) “In the methodology of Task-based teaching” considers three task performance

options in task-based studies: 1) performing the task under time pressure. 2) students' access to the

input data while performing a task, and 3) introducing some surprise elements into the task. Lee

(2000) strongly recommends strictly time limits and believes it can influence the nature of the

language students produce. Yuan and Ellis (2002) also found that giving students unlimited time to

do a narrative task results in a more complex and more accurate language than to do it under time

pressure.

Referring to the students’ access to the input data while performing a task, Joe (1998) reports

a study comparing learner’s acquisition of a set of target words in a narrative recall task under two

conditions -with or without access to the text. She found that learners’ access to the text increases the

use of the target words especially verbatim use and not the generated use of the word more

frequently. Ellis (2006) states that performing a task in front of the class increases the

communicative stress (Candlin, 1987) and results in a reduction in fluency and complexity. Nunn

(2006) also clarifies that the tasks effectiveness is boostered and enhanced by task repetition (Bygate,

2001), allowing learners to focus more on form-meaning relationship and develop fluency. Richards

(2005) summarizes his main interest in TBL (task-based learning), stating “Learners’ grammar needs

are determined on the basis of task performance rather than through a predetermined grammar

syllabus”.

Muller (2006) also studied the danger of supplying students with sample language before

performing a task. Referring Ellis (2003), he mentions the need for introducing such language in

adapting TBL theory to institutional requirements. The results showed that the low proficiency

learners in classes tended to be influenced by sample grammatical forms but used unique vocabulary

in completing the task. In his view, this pre language introduction can be as a tool in making learners

confident to complete the task successfully when their interlanguage framework fails them.

2.11.1 Fluency

Payne and Whitney (2002) believe that fluency is a direct function of automatic language

processing ability. They further state that as controlled processing entails working memory

limitations, it necessarily has an impact on second language performance, and consequently on

acquisition. Speakers and writers of a language probably conjugate a great amount of their

attentional resources on retrieving proper words, determining syntax, etc. Skehan (1996) states that

fluency is the capacity to mobilize the interlanguage system to communicate meaning in real time.

The studies measuring the rate of fluency mostly include spoken fluency. Hence, there are some

other researches which measure written fluency among the language learners.

Koponen and Riggenbath (2000) believed that analysis of fluency requires separate measures

of (a) silence (breakdown fluency), b) reformulation, replacement, false starts, and repetition (repair

fluency), c) speech rate (e.g. words/syllabus per minute), and d) automatisation through measures of

length of run.

Fluency may also be considered as the native-like lexical and grammatical selection

utterances (Pawley & Syder, 1983). Some studies (Richards & Schmidt, 1983; Lennon, 1990;

Riazantseva, 2001) have clarified that fluency entails a set of patterns including speech rate, sentence

selection, pausing, and hesitation. Other studies propose two different concepts of fluency. In a broad

sense, fluency is the topmost point on a scale which measures spoken command of a foreign

language (Lennon, 1990). In a narrower sense, fluency refers to the isolatable components such as

correctness, idiomaticness, relevance, appropriateness, pronunciation, lexical range, etc.

Foster and Skehan (1996) measured fluency in terms of the number of seconds of silence per

subject every five minutes. The results indicated that the greater planning leads to the greater

fluency. Bell (2003) investigated fluency with respect to the speech rate in monologic and dialogic

activities. The data analysis was based on computing the number of words produced by the number

of seconds. Following Batista (2001), he asserted that it is better and wiser to use words per seconds

rather than counting the syllables because of pronunciation mistakes. Mehnert (1998) tried to explore

the influences of length of planning on L2 proficiency using other measures as well as speech rate. In

his study, he employed numbers of pauses, total pausing time, and mean length of run. The study

showed that non-planners predicted less fluent speech than planners.

Fangyuan and Ellis (2003) used only speech rate measure in terms of two different rates. In

the first one, they included number of syllables per minute while in the second rate they computed

only the number of meaningful syllables and excluded the repeated, reformulated or replaced

syllables, words, and phrases.

Following the studies on measures of writing development, Quinterio et al. (1998) defined

fluency as the rapid production admitting the speech rate measurement. Rahimpour (1997) used the

number of words per pause to measure the written fluency. Most researchers employed the number

of words per T-units to measure the learners’ written fluency. In some other studies, the average

number of words, T-units, and clauses per text was used as the measurement scale for fluency

(Wigglesworth & Storch, 2009; Rezazadeh et al., 2011).

2.11.2 Accuracy

Skehan (1992, 1996) states that accuracy is the ability to avoid error in performance, possibly

reflecting higher levels of control in the language, as well as a conservative orientation, that is,

avoidance of challenging structures that might provoke error.

Mehnert (1998) suggests a general measure of accuracy. He believes that determining the

overall accuracy is more effective than specific measures. He quotes some studies that utilized a

specific measure such as Ellis' (1987) use of past tense morpheme, and Crookes' (1988) use of plural

's'. Consequently, utilizing a specific feature may not necessarily mean that other features will act in

the same manner and thus using a more general measure is of great value and more effective.

Most researchers use a percentage of error free clauses or errors per 100 words to measure

accuracy (Foster & Skehan, 1996; Skehan & Foster, 1997; Ellis & Yuan, 2004; Skehan, 2003;

Mehnert, 1998). Foster and Skehan (1996) proposed proportion of error-free clauses as a more

appropriate indicator of speech accuracy. Mehnert (1998) declares that when the researcher uses the

number of error-free clauses as a measure of accuracy, no distinction is made between those clauses

containing one or more errors. In line with Mehnert's study, Bardovi, Harlig, and Bofman (1998)

suggested another measure of overall accuracy. They proposed utilizing the number of errors per 100

words or the number of errors per clause to account for different clause length.

In his study on different length of planning, Mehnert (1998) used the same overall accuracy

measure. Li (2000) made use of two ratios for measuring grammatical accuracy:

1. Number of grammatical errors to total number of sentences.

2. Number of types of errors to total number of errors.

His study indicated that grammatical accuracy suffered in contrast to the complexity and

lexical density regardless of the type of e-mail writing task.

Fangyuan and Ellis (2003), Wigglesworth and Storch (2009), Arent, (2003), and Storch,

(2009) used number of error-free clauses divided by the total number of clauses produced by

participants. They also counted the number of correct verb forms i.e. percentage of correctly used

verbs regarding tense, aspect, modality, and subject-verb agreement.

2.11.3 Complexity

According to Shaw and Liu (1998), complexity is defined as increased use of nominalization,

reduction of clauses to prepositional or participial phrases and either increased subordination or

changes in patterns of subordination. Following Holliday (1994), they remarked that complexity

refers to a kind of lexical density derived from reducing clauses to phrases and nominalization.

Quinterio et al. (1998) assumed complexity as the use of varied and sophisticated structure and

vocabulary. They reviewed 16 studies which mostly employed the following ways of measurement;

some of these studies considered the length of production at either clause or phrase level. Other

studies measured complexity with regard to the mean length of T-units or clauses. A number of

researches also emphasized on subordination or coordination. They concluded that the mean length

of the clause, clauses per T-unit, and dependent clauses per clause are the most satisfactory measures

since they considered reliability and concurrent validity.

Regarding complexity, Foster, Tonkyn, and Wigglesworth (2000) argue strongly for the use

of AS–unit (assessment of speech) which is appropriate for a spoken language context and provides a

more appropriate measure than T-units (Hunt, 1965) or C-units (Brock, 1986); the first of which is

more suitable for written language and the second one is not clearly defined (Skehan, 2003). As

noted by Dahl (2004), linguistic complexity is an objective property of a system and the result of

historical processes of grammaticalization and involves mature linguistic phenomena. Gibson (1998)

indicated that linguistic complexity is a function of the “integration cost” and the “memory cost”

associating with keeping track of obligatory syntactic requirements, such as center-embedded

dependent structures, placement of large phrases earlier, and ambiguity effects (Oxford, 2006).

In another study by Mehnert (1998), complexity was measured in terms of counting words

per C-unit, number of subordinate clauses, and number of S-nodes. Mousavi (1999) defined

complexity in terms of syntactic density as the number of various syntactic structures of which a

language is composed. He identified 10 factors comprising the number of subordinate clauses per T-

unit, number of words per T-unit, number of words per main or subordinate clause, and calculating

the number of some parts of speech such as modals, etc. Referring to the value dedicated to each

measure, he further stated that there was a high positive correlation between these measures and

positive teacher judgments. In another research, Foster, Tonkyn, and Wigglesworth (2000) argue for

merits of using T-units instead of C-units. Fangyuan and Ellis (2003) used three measures for

complexity as follows:

1. Syntactic complexity using ratio of clauses to T-units.

2. Syntactic variety i.e. total number of different grammatical verb forms used.

3. Mean segmental type/token ratio.

Li (2000) employed three different email tasks and measured complexity both in terms of

average sentence length and the ratio of subordinate clauses in a text. In another study, Rahimpour

(1997, 1999, 2008) measured complexity by dividing the number of lexical words by the total

number of words multiplied by 100.

2.11.4 Modality: Written vs. Oral Task Performance

No evidence has been recorded regarding the contribution of writing to writing competence.

As Krashen (1984, 1994) states, writing more does not lead to better writing. As writing is a

representation of our cognitive structures, improving these cognitive structures can result in real

learning. There is also evidence that writing makes the writer smarter. Boice (1994) believes that

inspiration is the result of writing. Elbow (1975) declared that meaning is not what the writer

commences within writing but rather what s/he ends up with. Krashen (2003) supports this assertion

in that writing can aid in thinking and problem-solving. In addition, it can help in positive

correlations between eminence and the amount written among professional thinkers and writers

(Simonton, 1984).

The mode of performance, whether a task is written or spoken, is a key factor in task-based

language learning. Most of the studies in the field have focused on oral monologic or dialogic tasks.

Speaking tasks have been the focus of attention and written mode has been rarely examined related

to planning particularly with regard to online planning.

Yet, exploring writing mode presumes to be almost as significant as spoken mode in that each

one has its requirements and conditions. Ellis (1987) explored the relationship between planning and

focus on form to test Tarone’s (1983, 1985) IL Variability Hypothesis in terms of planning amount

and modality. Tarone believes that an L2 learner’s accuracy depends on the extent of attention to

form in a task. The results revealed that the most accurate utterance was the result of the writing task

and the least accurate utterances were in terms of the oral task without rehearsal opportunity.

Kellogg's (1996) model of written production indicates that the processes involved in oral and

written production share a lot in common (Ellis & Yuan, 2004). Levelet's (1989) conceptualization

stage corresponds to the "planning" component of Kellogg's model and the "translation" component

of Kellogg's model is similar to Levelet's formulation stage. In line with the debate, both models

recognize the role of monitoring. Hence, writing differs from speaking in a number of ways.

Speaking occurs in real-time situations whereas writing is accomplished in planned situations. Thus,

writing is generally more plannable than conversation (Ellis, 1987). He further believes that planned

vs. unplanned are echoed in the distinction between modeled and communicative data. The former is

the case of common language classrooms while the latter is restricted to the real life exchange.

Written pedagogical tasks mirror real world tasks as they require some sort of planning. In other

words, the distinction between communicative and modeled data is not true for writing mode. Brown

(2001) believes that writing is more complex and utilizes a greater variety of lexical items, while

speaking involves a great amount of redundancy. Written language also covers longer clauses and

more subordination. With regard to lexical variety, he also postulates that writing allows more

processing time and as a result, more low-frequency words probably will appear in writing. Since a

great number of classroom activities are administrated in the written mode, written language is of

particular importance.

As Zimmerman (2000) illustrated, second language writers sometimes make use of their first

language during the "translation" stage of their production. In line with the argument, De Larios et al.

(2001) concluded that planning time plays a dominant role in the formulation of written text.

Li (2000) tackled the issue due to the fact that learners in tasks permitting self-selecting

topics tended to use more complex sentences and richer and more diverse vocabulary. He also found

that while learners produced linguistically more complex text, they did not pay much attention to

accuracy. This fact proposed the highly complex structure of writing in a second language. He

further concluded such a trade-off effect is the result of information processing constraints. When

learners allocate their attention to a particular aspect, it naturally leads to the expense of other

aspects.

Wong (2001) performed a research to investigate the effect of modality of task (written and

spoken) on how learners attend to the meaning and form in the input. He used six types of tasks

which showed different results for the aural than the writing mode. Furthermore, the results

displayed that listening was more demanding than reading, suggesting that modality is a variable that

has an impact on how learners process input.

In a longitudinal study, Weisburg (2000) found that adult second language learners tended to

introduce new syntactic forms in writing than in speaking. Krashen (1981) mentioning the difference

between written and oral tasks refers to timing condition as one of the constraints on the use of

monitoring. He assumes that in speaking learners have less time to think and apply grammatical

rules. On the other hand, writing provides the opportunity for monitoring. But the point is that to

what degree monitoring is used.

Till now, only a few numbers of studies have dwelled on time planning conditions and

aspects of written performance. Yet, they have rarely considered all dimensions of planning together

with aspects of performance as well as task structure. Fangyuan and Ellis (2003) called for further

research in writing tasks in order to account for modality differences. Referring to the difference

between the written and spoken mode, the importance of task condition, task structure, modality of

task, and the paucity of research in FL written production, much can be obtained by drawing on

insights from writing mode in this study.

Hence, the present study set out to investigate the newly proposed distinction in planning

conditions and task structure on different aspects of written performance. It is surmised that the use

of planning time and task structure can draw learners' attention more to the accurate use of second

and foreign language in language classes. Peripheral findings may be achieved with respect to task

type and its interaction with planning conditions which in turn provides more evidence for related

discussions and possibly some implications for language pedagogy.

As the present study targeted the written performance of the language learners, it seems

necessary to have a glance at the writing skills, its importance in language learning, and the issues in

FL writing.

2.12 Writing Skills

While oral skills have gained the most attention in English language education in FL settings,

there is also a perceived need for written communication skills. Writing in a FL context is a difficult

demanding task which calls upon several language abilities. The ability to write is an essential means

of developing overall L2 capabilities (Reichelt, 2005). In addition, writing abilities seem to be

increasingly necessary as learners progress to higher education. To envisage a writing model in terms

of its 'subskills' is difficult because of the complexity of the process of writing (Abbott & Berninger,

1993; Grabe & Kaplan, 1996). In an L2 writing context, most existing writing models focus on the

writing process (Chenoweth & Hayes, 2001; Flower & Hayes, 1980; Flower & Hayes, 1983; Hayes,

1996; Kellogg, 1996) or on the development of writing proficiency (Bereiter & Scardamalia, 1994)

more than on the features of the linguistic and cognitive resources needed for writing. Therefore,

finding ways to effectively promote Iranian learners' writing performance and abilities is an urgent

issue for FL writing researchers to deal with emphasizing the importance of communication.

2.12.1 Importance of Writing

The ability to write properly and effectively in English which lead to better performance of

language learners is increasingly becoming prominent in the global community (Weigle, 2002). With

the advances in different aspects of life, communication across languages is more necessary.

Therefore, the ability to speak and write a foreign or second language is an essential skill for

education.

An integral part of the development of writing skill is the ability to brainstorm ideas, and edit

one's written language for grammatical errors, stylistic variations, and organizational features.

Learning to write in a different language is not a matter of developing more fluent linguistic skills. It

is not a matter of thinking in one language and translating them into the words of another language

(Galbraith, 2009). Writing is thinking and is the effects of a second or foreign language on the

writers' thoughts. Writing in one's native language is a demanding task which calls upon different

language abilities and more general cognitive and metacognitive abilities. Writing in a foreign

language is even more demanding as most of these constituent abilities have been less developed

than in one's first language (Shoonen et al., 2003). Learning to write is viewed as becoming skilled in

"identifying, internalizing, and executing" (Silva, 1990, p. 14). As Silva (1990) states, writing

includes arranging or fitting sentences and paragraphs into prescribed patterns. Then, learning to

write equals becoming skilled in "identifying, internalizing, and executing" (Silva, p.14) these

prescribed patterns. Due to the focus on the final product, Iranian language learners have achieved a

lower level of FL writing proficiency as a result of the existing form-focused, product-oriented

educational practices.

While oral skills have received the most attention in English language education in Iran, there

is a perceived need for written communicative skills. The significance of FL writing is of the dual

directions of the instructors' and the learners' communities. Learners' interests in writing proficiency

are assured based on the variety of their objectives. Meanwhile, language instructors have an

emphasis on the importance of writing with the contention that schools are not suitable places in

training learners in L2 or FL writing (e.g., Reinchelt, 2001; Silva, 1990; Silva, Leki & Carson, 1997).

The greater attention toward FL writing leads language teachers to seek for effective teaching

methods to accommodate the needs of learners in FL writing. Meanwhile, a pedagogical shift from a

traditional, product-oriented approach to a process-oriented approach is happening. For several

decades, this traditional form-focused instruction has been the main and dominant method of

teaching writing in an EFL context. As a result, writing instruction in Iran has concentrated on

elementary surface-level errors and gaining correctness in the final product with an emphasis on

fluency. Writing instruction actually tries to guide learners rather than control them and to assist

them determine forms to fit into their ideas, content, and a need to communicate rather than only

confronting their writing to the pattern of a text (Paltridge, 2004).

Therefore, finding effective ways to develop Iranian FL learners' writing abilities is a crucial

issue for FL writing researches to address the importance of communication. The present study

attempts to show a balance between the language learners' writing process and their writing products

in the context of TBLT by emphasizing on time planning conditions and task structure, and its effect

on the language performance and development of Iranian English learners.

2.12.2 Issues in FL Writing

Writing is an integral activity in which all learners have to engage if they are to function in

the literature community. It is also an emotional and cognitive activity since we think and feel while

we are writing (Cheng, 2002). Most people write when they are forced to and are usually beset with

insurmountable problems during the writing. Foreign language teachers see writing a difficult and a

frustrating experience due to the limited vocabulary of the learners in the second language. Another

objection refers to the repetition of the same errors by the learners in their writing which may lead to

the fossilization of certain errors. However, the merits of writing in the foreign language outweigh

these concerns and will assist learners to increase their overall language proficiency and to

implement and support other language skills as well (Homstand and Thorson, 1996).

The teaching of writing in the FL classes is frequently viewed as “an ancillary activity

subordinated to oral practice and grammar-oriented or functionally oriented tasks” (Hedgcock &

Lefkowiz, 1992, p. 255). In Iran, learners from the junior high school onwards have to start learning

the rudiments of writing which makes the situation more difficult. As Raimes (1987) stated, both the

surface semantics (what to write) and the deeper rhetorical features of text-creation (how to write)

engender serious problems to L2 writers. English is a foreign language in Iran and all communication

necessary in daily life is fulfilled in Persian language to bridge communication with outsiders. The

need to learn English for higher studies and professional careers has become paramount although

learning English is in a transitional phase. In Iran, schooling is aimed at entry into prestigious

professional courses at the college and university level. In such a context, tasks can help learners in

acquiring writing styles for different purposes or the different pre- and post-writing subskills, and

can test the learners' knowledge of writing for real life objectives.

Process and product approaches have been merged in TBLT including the use of authentic

writing inputs. In such an atmosphere, TBLT can motivate the learners and can reveal FL writing as

an activity in which most language learners are reluctant to engage in. The lack of motivation in

learners caused by their inability to write effectively may turn into a real psychological 'block' when

the need to write arises in real life (Leki, 1992). As a result, using written tasks may ease the correct

method of learning writing skills.

2.13 Conclusion

Several issues associated with time planning conditions and task types raised from the

findings of previous studies are worthy of further investigation in the present study and are expected

to encapsulate various aspects of written language development in FL learners. First, only very few

researches to date have revealed an interest in the interaction between time planning conditions and

task structures, and FL learners' written performance. The body of literature on planning has

emphasized heavily on learners’ oral output under the absence or presence of various planning

conditions (e.g., Ellis, 1987; Crookes, 1988; Skehan & Foster, 1997; Wiggleworth, 1997; Mehnert,

1998; Ortega, 1999). Investigating how FL learners perform different written tasks with multiple

structures in various planning conditions enhance understanding of the interactive nature of time

planning in the writing modality. Second, the variations among different planning conditions and

task structure at different levels assist researchers to capture the comprehensiveness of FL writing

processes with relevance to planning. Third, uncovering the relationship between various time

planning conditions and written task structures helps language practitioners implement appropriate

planning activities in the classroom settings. The findings of the previous studies assert on great

variation in the influence of planning which are related to the types of writing tasks employed (e.g.,

Kellogg, 1990; Koda, 1993; Skehan, 1996; Skehan & Foster, 1997). Acknowledgment of how time

planning conditions and task structures interact in FL writing performance, however, has been of less

importance in writing research than other factors.

This chapter presented and discussed various theories in relation to task-based language

teaching and time planning conditions. As the focus was on the role of time planning conditions and

task structure in the EFL context of Iran, a general view of the nature of English and then task-based

language teaching was presented. Then, the chapter presented a detailed view of the different

planning conditions and the studies conducted by various researchers in the domain as well as task

structure and task performance. The chapter also dealt with the different concepts of task-based

language teaching including task types, task goals, task definition, and merits of tasks related to the

study. Since the study focused on the written task, a frequently neglected area in the EFL context, it

was concluded by the importance of writing skills in language studies particularly in the EFL writing

as well as the role of modality in TBLT.

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