The Effects Of Task Type And Preparation On Junior High School Students’ Oral English Performance

In the late 1970 s,with the introduction of communicative approach to language teaching in China,task has become one of the key factors affecting oral performance in task-based teaching.However,research on the effects of task types on English learners’ oral performance in China is still very limited,and the relationship between task preparation time and oral performance has not been concluded.Therefore,based on Skehan’s limited attention capacity model and Robinson’s cognitive hypothesis and Levelt’s oral output model,the author explored the effects of task type（picture story description,topic discussion）and pre-task preparation time（1-minute preparation,3-minute preparation,5-minute preparation）on oral performance of second language learners.The research questions are as follows:1.What is the effect of task type on junior high school students’ oral English complexity,accuracy and fluency?2.What is the effect of pre-task preparation time on junior high school students’ oral English complexity,accuracy and fluency ?3.What are the interactive effects of task type and pre-task preparation time on junior high school students’ oral English complexity,accuracy and fluency?Forty-eight third-grade students participated in the study.The author used the picture story description task and the topic discussion task as well as three different preparation times to analyze learners’ oral performance in order to investigate the differences in fluency,accuracy and complexity of the two tasks under different preparation times.For the picture story description task,each subject was asked to describe the topic according to the picture and the given key words and the other task required the subject to discuss a topic.Their speech was recorded and transcribed into text using Wechat’s speech recognition.Then the coded text was quantitatively analyzed from three dimensions of complexity,accuracy and fluency.These dimensions were measured separately according to the indicators used in Ellis（2003）.Complexity is measured from syntactic complexity and type-token ratio.Accuracy is measured from the error-free clauses.Fluency is measured by counting the total number of syllables produced per minute and the number of meaningful syllables produced per minute;The quantitative data were processed by SPSS24.0 sociological statistical software,and the following conclusions were drawn after analysis: 1.Task type has a significant effect on the accuracy of English oral performance,but the effect on complexity and fluency has not reached a significant level.However,it can also be found that the picture description task performs better in syntactic diversity and fluency than the topic description task.2.Preparation time has a significant effect on accuracy and lexical diversity,but the effect on fluency and syntactic complexity has not reached a significant level.However,the fluency increases systematically with the increase of preparation time,while syntactic complexity decreases with the increase of preparation time.3.There is no interaction between task type and preparation time on the complexity,accuracy and fluency of English oral performance.The effect of task type on the complexity,accuracy and fluency of English oral performance don’t change over timeThe results of this study have important implications for teaching.First of all,in the process of English teaching,teachers can choose oral task types reasonably according to teaching objectives.Secondly,English teachers can reduce students’ cognitive burden and improve the quality of learners’ oral performance by providing time for pre-task preparation.Finally,teachers need to arrange preparation time effectively and design oral English teaching reasonably according to the task characteristics in class.