Massed Task Repetition Is a Double-Edged Sword for Fluency Development

Abstract

To examine the effects of task repetition with different schedules, English-as-a-foreign-language classroom learners performed the same oral narrative task six times under three different schedules. They narrated the same six-frame cartoon story (a) six times consecutively in one class (massed practice), (b) three times at the beginning and at the end of a class (short-spaced practice), and (c) three times as a part of two classes 1 week apart (long-spaced practice). The results yielded by an immediate posttest using a novel cartoon showed that massed practice reduced breakdown fluency (mid-clause and clause-final pauses) the most. However, the participants in the massed-practice group showed degraded speed (slower articulation rate) and repair fluency (more verbatim repetition). The effects of repetition schedule seem limited on a 1-week delayed posttest involving a novel cartoon. Yet, when participants narrated the same practiced cartoon 1 week later, massed practice also resulted in more verbatim repetition.

Incidental and Multimodal High Variability Phonetic Training: Potential, Limits, and Future Directions

“…To promote automatization, instruction can further help consolidate learners’ partially acquired L2 speech knowledge. Through communicatively authentic (Saito, 2015) and systematically repetitive tasks (Suzuki & Hanzawa, 2021), learners can perceive and produce target forms provided by different talkers (Uchihara, Webb, Saito, & Trofimovich, 2021) and in different modalities (visual, audio, and kinesthetic; Tsunemoto, Lindberg, Trofimovich, & McDonough, 2021).…”

Spacing Effects in Task Repetition Research

“…More recently, research has also begun to examine how spacing interacts with task repetition to influence task performance and L2 development (Bui et al, 2019;Kobayashi, 2022;Y. Suzuki, 2021;Y. Suzuki & Hanzawa, 2022).…”

“…Researchers studying task repetition have only recently begun to control for this variable in order to examine how manipulations of the time between task repetitions influence L2 performance and/or development (Bui et al, 2019;Y. Suzuki, 2021;Y. Suzuki & Hanzawa, 2022).…”

Using Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication to Develop L2 Learners’ Oral Fluency

“…With the custom script developed by de Jong and Wempe (2009), the utterance and pause portions were automatically segmented and were then manually checked by a trained coder to identify filled and unfilled pauses. We adopted the pause threshold of 200 milliseconds based on practices in previous studies (e.g., Suzuki & Hanzawa, 2021). Also, the coder transcribed the utterances and identified the mid-clause and final-clause pauses based on analysis of the speech unit (AS unit ;Foster, Tonkin, & Wigglesworth, 2000).…”

“…Utterance fluency is generally analyzed in terms of speed fluency, breakdown fluency, and repair fluency (e.g., Tavakoli & Skehan, 2005). We chose nine measures in line with previous studies (e.g., Kahng, 2014;Suzuki & Hanzawa, 2021). Speed fluency measures included articulation rate, mean length of run and phonation time ratio.…”