The Effects Of Task Type On English Majors’ Oral Performance

It is generally acknowledged that the ultimate purpose of learning a language is tocommunicate with others, especially for oral communication. However, it has long beenthe case in China that many EFL learners are rather poor in oral communication afteryears’ experience of English learning. With the introduction of communicative languageteaching in China in the late1970s, task has become one of the key factors affecting thenature of language performance in the context of task-based instruction. How to make fulluse of oral tasks to facilitate the development of learners’ oral performance is ofconsiderable importance. Nevertheless, researches on the effects of task type on learners’oral performance in China, especially in all the three dimensions of fluency, accuracy andcomplexity of language, are very limited and the findings are far from conclusive.Therefore, the present study sets out to explore the effects of two widely used task types(i.e. monologic and pair-discussion tasks) on the three aspects (fluency, accuracy andcomplexity) of language respectively in learners’ oral performance.36second-year English majors participated in this study. Monologic task andpair-discussion task were adopted to elicit learners’ oral performance, with a view toexamine the differences in language fluency, accuracy and complexity when Englishmajors perform the two types of task. As for monologic task, each participant had to talkabout one unexpected experience he or she had had and what he or she had learned from it.For pair-discussion task, each pair of participants had to have a discussion on campus love.Their linguistic performance was recorded and transcribed carefully. Then the codedtranscripts were analyzed form three dimensions of fluency, accuracy and complexity.These dimensions were measured respectively according to the indexes employed by Yuan&Ellis (2003). Fluency is measured by calculating the number of syllables per minute andthe number of meaningful syllables per minute. Complexity is measured from the aspectsof syntactic complexity, syntactic variety and mean segmental type-token ratio. Accuracyis measured from the aspects of error-free clauses and correct verb forms.Major findings, yielded from the data, are summarized as follows:(a) Task type significantly affected English majors’ oral fluency. Pair-discussion taskelicited markedly higher fluency than monologic task. Participants in performing pair-discussion task tended to produce more syllables as well as meaningful syllables perminute.(b) Task type influenced English majors’ oral accuracy to a great extent.Pair-discussion task enabled students to produce more error-free clauses and correct verbforms, compared with monologic task.(c) The effects of task type on oral complexity were mixed. Compared withpair-discussion task, monologic task led to higher syntactical variety, but with lower meansegmental type-token ratio. No significant effect was found on syntactic complexity.In view of the above findings, implications for language teaching and testing aredrawn, presented and discussed. Limitations and suggestions for further research are alsotouched on.