2018The Effect of Task Repetition on Students’ Written Language Production

Abstract

Various types of tasks are used to promote language learning in Task Based Language Teaching. Teaching repetition of tasks in class is regarded to help learners to improve their performance. The present study aims to investigate and shed light on the attitudes towards and the effectiveness of two types of repeated tasks, same-type tasks and identical tasks, on the students‟ written production in terms of its complexity, accuracy, and fluency. Data are gathered through the use of a questionnaire administered to 10 teachers who have taught written expression at the department of English, Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia University, Jijel. Furthermore, a quasi-experiment was conducted with two groups of second year students at the same university (n 30). The results obtained from the teachers‟ questionnaire demonstrate that the majority of teachers support same task-type repetition in classroom and they claim that it contributes to develop students‟ writing. Moreover, the researchers relied on a t-test analysis in order to test the validity of the results obtained from the quasi-experiment which were not statistically significant. In other words, the repetition of either the same task or a same type of task does not improve the students‟ writing skill. On the basis of this analysis the two hypotheses were rejected. Thus, repeating the same task or same task-type do not enhance the students‟ written production. However, the results obtained from identical task repetition raised in terms of the frequencies of fluency (words and verbs), accuracy (correct words and articles) and complexity (lexical words and adverbs). Similarly, the results obtained from task-type repetition increased in terms ratios of fluency (word per sentences), complexity (lexical words per total words, conjunctions per sentencesand passive sentences per sentences).