6. Conclusion
6.2 Implications
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speech than unguided planners, while paired planning had no distinct effects on benefiting participants’ discourse accuracy. The former result conforms to the observations in previous research that guided worksheets help learners to focus on grammatical accuracy, and such guidance worked especially for young learners.
The latter result obtained from the paired planning accords with findings in previous studies. It is indicated that participants’ concentration on oral complexity might threaten the devotion of cognitive attention to discourse accuracy. However, it was surprising that the participants held positive attitudes towards the beneficial role of paired planning in discourse accuracy. Such divergence between
quantitative analysis on accuracy and participants’ perceptions might be explained by the argument that paired planning might pose not only merits but also demerits to participants’ accuracy performance. It is revealed that the interacting context might encourage the internalization of correct grammatical rules as well as incorrect ones.
6.2 Implications
The following broad pedagogical implications can be drawn from the research reported here. Above all, the findings of this study have implications for predicting more effectively the balance among linguistic goals, i.e. fluency, complexity, and
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accuracy, which have been controversial issues in task-based instruction research. Of key importance here is that guided planning and paired planning can be utilized to remarkably boost participants’ performances of grammatical accuracy and use of higher level words, respectively. Guided worksheets are useful tools to maintain the focus of low proficient participants, who are incapable of supervising their own grammatical errors while carrying out meaning- oriented narrative tasks. The integration of paired planning into an oral task activity can motivate students to
master more advanced vocabulary, such as the higher level words on the 320-word list, stipulated for elementary students by Hsinchu City Education Department.
In addition, planning with guidance or pair work can help students with incipient proficiency. While most of prior strategic planning research puts emphasis on
intermediate to high proficiency teenagers or adults, it is found that beginners can also benefit from planning tasks. These tasks can serve as a preparation for real world communication because they are more authentic than drills and sentence pattern practice.
Another implication is that teachers can first introduce familiarization activities when applying guided or paired tasks to boost young students’ speaking ability. These activities can accustom students with task instructions or the cooperative planning procedures. For young learners, teamwork skills and task familiarization play a
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critical role in strategic planning tasks.
Finally, this study not only estimates the task effects on learner’ language but also values the importance of learner interpretation. Learners’ opinions from the questionnaires provide both supportive evidence to validate quantitative data and an alternative perspective in comparison with analytical results.
6.3 Limitations
This empirical study reflects a highly positive attitude towards the application of guided worksheets and paired planning to task-based instruction. However, there are limitations to the tentative claims made in this paper.
Most importantly, this study only recruited students with primary English proficiency. Although the present study has demonstrated the positive effects of the paired planning and guided planning, these results may not be generalized to EFL learners with different proficiency levels. This study was initially conducted with the intention to examine two variables among three groups, with thirty students for each group in order to warrant reliability of quantitative measures in this research.
However, due to the lack of personnel resources, it was challenging for the researcher to negotiate appropriate timing to implement the sampling test, familiarization task, and the main task for ninety samples, plus the laborious work in transcribing and
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analyzing the discourse data. It seemed beyond the researchers’ ability to carry out this research with extra students to accommodate heterogeneous proficiency. For this reason, care needs to be taken not to over-interpret the results.
Furthermore, the nature of what students do during planning remains obscure.
Although the study has incorporated post-task questionnaires to collect participants’
remarks as much as possible, it was still impossible for participants to recall every detail during planning time, not to mention some introspective information that required further reflective skills. Besides, there were only forty minutes for each period during which the researcher needed to explain task demands, and the students had to plan for and give the presentation. It would be impractical to carry out the time-consuming interview individually with all the participants right after the performance due to the limitation of resource and time.
The third limitation concerns the involvement of only narrative tasks. Research with various task types would be essential to build up a clearer picture about the framework within which planning time can be most useful in the area of task-based instruction. Nevertheless, there was little access to criterion-referenced tasks designed for beginning oral activities, with a narrow choice of task types. The Cambridge young learners’ English speaking test, which was narrative-based, was the only qualified and accessible oral task for beginners.
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6.4 Further Research
Among the many possibilities to be explored for future research, several important dimensions can be listed. First, it is recommended that this study can be replicated in various contexts or on participants of different proficiency so that the results can be generalized to a larger group of students.
Second, a longitudinal investigation of learners’ productive complexity and fluency is necessary in order to determine the effects of strategic planning on
long-term inter-language development, which is beyond the scope of this study. Due to the generally gradual development of linguistic fluency and complexity, it is possible that strategic planning might benefit indirectly and cumulatively through extended planning tasks.
Another fruitful direction for future research should examine the planning process during which learners prepare in different ways either owing to the
manipulation of experimental variables or because of personal attributes. With more qualitative research instrument and more exploratory attitudes, our understanding about the construct of the central role that strategic planning plays in learner discourse might be broadened.
Finally, additional research on other types of oral tasks should be quite beneficial for predicting the correlation between the task type and the three linguistic goals. This
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is quite important for teachers who should play an active role to foresee the
characteristics and maximize the profitable influence of each task type, rather than just passively observe students’ language progress after accomplishing tasks. If the value of each task type is predictable, teachers would save time and energy to have a resourceful library of tasks for different language purposes in task-based instruction.
6.5 Conclusion
Oral skills have not figured centrally into SLA research until the advent of the theory of communicative competence (Hymes, 1972). Since then, speaking has become a focal point in English teaching, especially in the elementary stage, based on the nine-year integrated curriculum proposed by the Ministry of Education. In
accordance with the current trend, task-based instruction (TBI) has been in
widespread use by advocates to reinforce learners’ oral communication skills. And yet, it has been extensively recognized that speaking is the most demanding language skill to achieve.
Among the various topics of TBI research, there has been an issue about how pre-task planning has acted on students’ oral discourse, especially on the linguistic dimensions of fluency, complexity, and accuracy. While many researchers have dedicated research to equally boost students’ language skills on the three linguistic
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goals through communication activities, it remains controversial on two of the three aspects: complexity and accuracy.
In an attempt to improve students’ productive quality on the two facets, this study has proposed that the employment of guidance and paired planning in speaking tasks could be a feasible and profitable way to teach oral discourse. Such finding has illuminated the instruction of speaking at primary stage. Even so, guided planning and paired planning teaching activities, with their own limitations, can only complement other speaking teaching techniques. It is hoped that these short-term gains in pre-task planning will contribute in the longer term to the progress in task-based language teaching.
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