A focus on learners' metacognitive processes: the impact of strategic planning, repetition, strategic planning plus repetition, and strategic planning for repetition on L2 oral performance

Abstract

The present study, carried out under an information-processing perspective, investigated the impact of four metacognitive processes - strategic planning (Foster & Skehan, 1996), repetition (Bygate, 2001b), strategic planning plus repetition (D'Ely & Fortkamp, 2003), and strategic planning for repetition (D'Ely, 2004) - on 47 L2 learners' oral performance of a video-based narrative task. The participants of this study, registered in the Licenciatura, Secretariado, and Extra-curricular courses of the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, were divided into 5 groups: (1) the control group (2) the strategic planning group, (3) the repetition group, (4) the strategic planning plus repetition group, and (5) the strategic planning for repetition group. Following Foster and Skehan (1996) and Fortkamp (2000), learners' oral production was examined in four dimensions of speech: fluency, complexity, lexical density, and accuracy. Post-task questionnaires were administered for the purpose of assessing learners' appraisal of task type, their oral performance, and the conditions in which they performed. In general, statistical analyses revealed that repetition, strategic planning plus repetition, and strategic planning for repetition exerted a positive and significant impact on some of the dimensions of oral performance such as fluency, lexical density, and accuracy for the repetition group, lexical density for the strategic planning plus repetition group, and accuracy and lexical density for the strategic planning for repetition group. The strategic planning for repetition group also obtained significant gains in complexity. The strategic planning condition, for participants in the strategic planning group, had little impact on participants' oral performance. Overall, these results may be taken as evidence for the trade-off effects among the different dimensions of L2 learners' oral performance. Furthermore, the multifaceted results signal that learners' approach to different experimental conditions is idiosyncratic and that a series of variables interact in different ways when learners perform orally in L2. These variables include the nature of the task, learners' focus of attention during performance, and learners' effectiveness in implementing and retrieving pre-planned ideas. The findings of the present study might contribute to theory building in second language performance as well as to L2 pedagogy.