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Exploring the benefits of task

repetition and recycling for classroom

language learningTony Lynch and Joan Maclean Institute for Applied Language Studies, University of Edinburgh

Task-based methodology is particularly suited to teaching languages for

specific purposes, because of its affinity to behavioural objectives.

Doubts have been expressed as to whether learners actually learnlanguage through doing tasks, and if they do, exactly what they learn.

This paper reports the preliminary results of an ongoing study of the

benefits of building repetition into a communicative task in an English

for Specific Purposes course. We compare the performances of two

learners at markedly different levels of English proficiency and find that

both benefited from the opportunity to recycle communicative content

as they repeated complex tasks. This suggests that task repetition of the

type reported here may be a useful pedagogic procedure and that the

same task can help different learners develop different areas of their

interlanguage.

1 Introduction

Task-based learning (TBL) is capable of a range of interpretationswhich, as Kumaravadivelu (1993) notes, are both enriching andpotentially confusing. Even establishing a satisfactory definition of task is not straightforward (cf. Skehan, 1998; Widdowson, 1998). Inpart the differences in approach reflect the provenance of the

evidence used by proponents of TBL to justify their particular formof task-based course design. Two main sources can be identified:‘ecological’ arguments for using real-world tasks in the classroom,and evidence drawn from second language acquisition.

© Arnold 2000 1362–1688(00)LR069.OA

Address for correspondence: Institute for Applied Language Studies, University of

Edinburgh, 21 Hill Place, Edinburgh EH8 9DP, UK; [email protected]

Language Teaching Research 4,3 (2000); pp. 221–250



1 The ‘ecological’ case

The first source of justifications for TBL is what we might term

the ecological one: the belief that the best way to promote effective

learning is by setting up classroom tasks that reflect as far aspossible the real-world tasks which the learners perform, or will

perform – which means that TBL has particular value in the designand teaching of courses in English (and other languages) forSpecific Purposes. Task performance is seen as rehearsal forinteractions to come, be they professional or social (Krahnke,

1987). Pedagogic tasks are derived from real-world tasks to‘provide a vehicle for the presentation of appropriate targetlanguage samples to learners – input which they will inevitably

reshape via application of general cognitive processing capacities’(Long and Crookes, 1992: 43). However, as a number of critics havepointed out, the idea of importing real-world tasks into the

language classroom rests on a simplifying assumption that thelearners are studying in an ESL context (Sheen, 1994; Fotos, 1998).While it is certainly true that ESL dominates the world of published research, most learning and teaching of English around

the world occurs in an EFL setting. The ecological rationale forTBL is therefore weaker than many proponents claim and the task-based approach will have at least to be modified, in order to be

relevant to EFL classrooms ‘which at best can only operate aslinguistic microclimates within the native language culture’ (Fotos,1998: 303).

2 SLA research

Those arguing for TBL, drawing on SLA research, have tended to

focus on issues such as learnability, the order of acquisition of

particular L2 structures, and the implications of the input,interaction and output hypotheses. Objections have been raised

about the quantity and validity of the empirical SLA evidence citedto support the claim that TBL is effective at all, let alone moreeffective than traditional approaches. Sheen (1994) argued that the

movement towards TBL was precipitate and an act of faith.Particular prominence has been given to research into the

negotiation of meaning and the claim that learners make progressthrough experiencing the need to modify their own production of

222 Exploring the benefits of task repetition and recycling



the L2 (Pica et al ., 1996). However, Aston (1986) questioned the

advisability of setting learners tasks containing deliberate obstaclesto communication, which required them to negotiate meaning by

continual requests for precise clarification from their task partners.Aston argued that there would be an affective and interpersonalprice to pay, and that such tasks might easily degenerate into

conflict and confrontation between learners – a point also made

by Yule (1994). Moreover, Foster (1998) has argued that ordinarylearners – i.e. those in intact classes, not set up for research

purposes – can behave rather differently to what has beendescribed by experimental researchers: ‘contrary to much SLA

theorizing ‘‘negotiation for meaning’’ is not a strategy that

language learners are predisposed to employ when they encountergaps in their understanding’ (Foster, 1998: 1).

Despite these and other doubts, such as the actual linguisticbenefits of activities drawn from non-classroom settings and the

lack of longitudinal data (Sheen, 1994), TBL has become a

dominant paradigm in the teacher education literature. Willis(1996) provides perhaps the most extensive treatment, presenting

an overall framework for classroom action, in which the ‘task’ is

taken as organizing principle and reified into a Method: Pre-task

(introduction and topic), Task (the task itself, planning and report)and Post-Task (language analysis and practice). Willis’s proposalsenable teachers to visualize how they would adopt her classroom

procedures, but have relatively little support from research, as

Skehan (1998) has pointed out. For TBL methodology to beeffective it needs to be grounded and principled: ‘the challenge for

a task-based pedagogy . . . is to choose, sequence and implement

tasks in ways that will combine a focus on meaning with a focuson form’ (Foster, 1999: 69).

II Research specifically relevant to our study

This question of the role and potential of form-focused learningand teaching has been taken up by a number of critics who have

addressed TBL from very different perspectives, ranging from the

highly sceptical Sheen, who rejected TBL outright as a product of ‘the liberal ethos which has permeated the approach to teaching

in recent decades, particularly in the field of ESL’ (Sheen, 1994:

Tony Lynch and Joan Maclean 223



144) to the more sympathetic Foster, who has called for a morerealistic view of how learners perform classroom tasks (Foster,1998). If the ultimate claim is that TBL provides a valid means of

packaging language experience and leads to effective learning, thenwe need to assess that effectiveness by asking what preciselylearners gain from specific tasks. Relatively few studies haveinvestigated performance gains in a task-oriented environment (fora recent review see Skehan, 1998), but research into three specifictask conditions has potential relevance to the work we will bereporting in this paper: task repetition, planning and time pressure.

1 Task repetition

Exact repetition of a task was the focus of a study (Bygate, 1996)which analysed two performances by one subject who was showna video extract and then asked to retell the story. The task wasrepeated without warning three days later. Bygate found that thisform of repetition led to some improvement in fluency andaccuracy, and a marked improvement in repertoire – for example,a 75 per cent increase in subordinate clauses. He argued that thesefindings supported the hypothesis that during the initial task thelearner was concerned primarily with heuristic planning of content,and was under pressure of time when seeking the linguisticresources to communicate it. On the second attempt, the contentof the task being more familiar, she was more concerned withgiving attention to the linguistic formulation. Bygate also noted thepossible pedagogic value of manipulating task variables, such asrepeating the task with different partners: ‘different people will dotasks in different ways and a variety of partners could providedifferent learning opportunities’ (Bygate, 1996: 145). This is

particularly important in our study.

2 Planning

Planning has been the focus of a series of studies (e.g. Foster, 1996,1998; Foster and Skehan, 1996; Skehan and Foster, 1997)investigating the effect of different forms of pre-task phase onstudent performance. Foster (1996) reported the performances onthree 10-minute tasks: (1) a personal information exchange task,which was the least conceptually demanding; (2) a narrative task,




in which students had to reconstruct a story from pictures; and (3)a decision-making task, in which agreement had to be reached. Of 32 students, half were given no planning time, a quarter were given

planning time but no guidance, and a quarter were given guidedplanning time.The last of these conditions was expected to be the most

conceptually demanding, since it allowed least time for attentionto language forms. The first five minutes of each task wererecorded and analysed for measures of fluency (e.g. pauses,repetition of words), complexity of language (e.g. variety of verbtenses, number of subordinate clauses) and accuracy. The mainfindings were as follows: (1) students without planning time were

much more likely to pause frequently and at length; (2) studentswithout planning time tended to use less complex language; (3)both of these effects were more marked in the conceptually moredemanding tasks; (4) the planners tended to be more accurate thanthose without planning time, but among the planners those whohad no guidance were consistently more accurate than those withguidance. Guided planning tended to increase the complexity of language but reduce its accuracy.

3 Time pressure

The time available to complete a task has long been recognized asan important factor in task difficulty and therefore in task grading(e.g. Candlin, 1987; Skehan, 1996a; Johnson, 1996). But as far as weare aware, it has not been explored in a TBL framework. Wheretime has been investigated, it has been the time available tolearners at the pre-task stage, e.g. as time for planning or rehearsal(for example Ellis, 1987; Crookes, 1989; Foster and Skehan, 1996)rather than time allowed during the task itself. Time pressure isclearly an important strand of what Brown et al . (1984) refer to as‘communicative stress’; Johnson mentions it as a potential factorin grading tasks, in his discussion of real operating conditions

(Johnson, 1996: 141).

III The task in our study

Our study arose out of our experience as teachers interested in thedynamics and effects of a task that we have used for some years




in an ESP course. Our objective was therefore to examine theevidence for gains in performance of a specific task with a specifictype of learner. As we have emphasized in the title of this paper,

our focus was on performance of a classroom task under routineconditions.

1 Course context

The task forms part of a course called English for MedicalCongresses, which caters for health professionals who want toimprove their ability to present papers in English at internationalmeetings and conferences. The aims of the course are as follows:to facilitate general fluency; to improve pronunciation, especially

of medical terms and expressions; to raise awareness of appropriate language for communication at congresses; and todevelop effective presentation skills in English. One feature of English for Medical Congresses is that we accept applicants froma wide range of language levels, which has influenced task designin the course.

The course itself is ‘task-based’, in the sense that it involves aseries of linked activities that build up to a final-day conference atwhich research papers are presented, discussed and evaluated.During the course the participants work through a number of taskspreparing them for their presentation, for example, describing anddiscussing data in graphic form. They also have a full rehearsal toan audience of one (a tutor), which is videotaped for feedbackpurposes prior to the conference. Some of the lessons have specificlanguage input (for example, expressions for describing differentstatistical patterns and trends), but in most lessons the main focusis on getting a communicative task done and then receivingfeedback from the teacher; linguistic input tends therefore to beresponsive rather than preventive. From the learners’ perspective,as we know from course evaluations, they are aware of a languageagenda, even though the general orientation is to the task in hand.

2 The task

The specific task we investigated is called the ‘poster carousel’(Lynch and Maclean, 1994). Briefly, the activity is as follows:




1. Participants are paired up and each pair is given a different

research article. They have one hour to make a poster based on

the article.

2. The posters are displayed round a large room. From each pair,one participant (A) – the ‘host’ – stands beside their poster,

waiting to receive ‘visitors’ asking questions. The B participants

visit the posters one by one, clockwise. Their task is to ask

questions about each poster. The host is instructed not to

present, but to respond to questions. They are allowed only

limited time (approximately 3 minutes) at each poster.

3. When the B participants arrive back at base, they stay by their

poster and the A participants go visiting.

4. Once the second round is completed, there is plenary discussionof the merits of the posters (by the participants) and the

teachers provide feedback on general language points.

It will be clear that repetition in the title of this paper does not

mean strict duplication of a task, as generally used in the literature

(e.g. Bygate, 1996). In the case of the poster carousel, it is not a

second (or third etc.) performance by one speaker on an identical

task with the same listener; repetition in the case of the carousel

means something more like recycling, or retrial (Johnson, 1996),where the basic communication goal remains the same, but with

variations of content and emphasis depending on the visitor’s

questions.

Pedagogically, there were three main reasons for introducing the

carousel into English for Medical Congresses: first, to provide freer

talk after more controlled reporting tasks, which produce plenty of

teacher feedback; second, as a lighter activity before the stresses

of the final conference presentations; and third, as practice in

formulating and handling questions under time pressure.We had informal evidence that it was successful as

communicative practice. When teaching the course, we had

observed how the poster carousel generates a great deal of

interactive involvement and apparent enjoyment. We had also had

positive comments from participants, one of whom said he had

enjoyed the ‘hurry, hurry, hurry’ of the activity. On the other hand,

there had been occasional criticisms that the poster involved too

much preparation for too little pay-off, and this was one of the




reasons for our decision to study the task. The questions that wewanted to explore in our study were these:

1. Do learners gain from repetition in the poster carousel – and

do they think they gain?

2. In what ways do they gain from repetition – and in what waysdo they think they gain?

3 The carousel compared with research tasks

The poster carousel differs in various ways from those investigatedin TBL research. First, it features a more complex type of input.The input to the speaking tasks reported in the experimental

literature is typically very limited, in order to oblige the subjectsto rely on their own language resources. Prompt or cue materialstend to contain no language at all (e.g. the cartoon in Bygate, 1996)or brief role instructions (e.g. less than 50 words in Foster andSkehan, 1997). However, for the poster carousel, the learners reada medical journal article of 800–1,000 words, which they thenreduce to summary points in poster format.

Second, there is the question of planning. The poster carouselinvolves a large amount of planning time: 60–70 minutes of

reading, discussion, selective summarizing of the original article,and then the joint production of the poster. However, none of thisincludes explicit planning of the language to be used during thecarousel; the learners are primarily wrestling with the conceptualmaterial and its linguistic expression in the poster. Equally, thereis no rehearsal for the task, in the sense of a private performancebefore a public one (Skehan, 1996b): the interaction with the firstvisitor is not a ‘dry run’ for the later visitors, since each cyclerepresents a performance in its own right, between host and visitor.

Third, the instructions for the task are oral; there is no detailedwritten guidance of the type provided in the Foster and Skehanseries (illustrated in Skehan, 1998: ch. 6). Prior to the posterproduction session, the learners receive advice on aspects of posterpresentation such as layout, distribution of information, legibility,and so on. But for the carousel there is no instruction, other thanthe reminder that the hosts are not to launch into a ‘pre-emptive’mini-presentation, but are to wait for and respond to questionsfrom each visitor.




Fourth, the pedagogic focus is on the way the partners handlequestions under time pressure, and in particular theircomprehensibility and their ability to repair breakdowns. But the

task is not ‘seeded’ with target L2 structures or lexis (Ellis, 1987;Fotos and Ellis, 1991; Fotos, 1998).

The final difference between the carousel and the typicalresearch task is that it features a very short interval between cycles– three minutes. In other studies of the effects of task repetition,

the intervals between first and second performance have been daysor weeks (e.g. Brown et al ., 1984; Nobuyushi and Ellis, 1993). The

only researchers we are aware of who used a shorter interval arePlough and Gass (1993), who implied that the two tasks they

compared were performed in consecutive lessons.So our study was intended to see whether the particular type of

recycling featured in the poster carousel, presenting each host withthe challenge of dealing with questions from a series of visitors,

promoted gains in accuracy in the short term. Apart fromobserving the learners’ performances on the task, we were alsointerested in exploring their own perceptions of whether (and if so

how) they benefited from the opportunity for linguistic retrial,given that the task itself was not ‘seeded’ with specific target

structures and proceeded without teacher intervention.

IV Method

The subjects in our study were 14 participants on English forCancer Conferences, a specialist version of the course, for

oncologists and radiotherapists. They came from six Europeancountries, and ranged in age from their late twenties to late fiftiesand in English proficiency from below 400 to over 600 on TOEFL.

All were experienced in presenting conference papers in their ownlanguage and most had also already presented in English.

We collected two types of data. First, we recorded all sixinteractions between each host and visitor by placing anaudiocassette recorder near each of the seven posters. This sort of

recording is a routine part of the course and so the participantswere used to being recorded by the time they did the postercarousel. All 14 sets of six interactions were transcribed. Our

second source of data was a self-report questionnaire, which we




asked the participants to fill in at the end of the carousel sessionbut before we had commented on their performance. The aim of the questionnaire was to ask them to reflect on their experience

of the task as learners.For this preliminary study we have analysed the ‘host’performances of the two participants at the extremes of theproficiency range of the group: Alicia, from Spain (the weakest inthe group, at less than 4.0 IELTS/400 TOEFL), and Daniela fromGermany (over 7.0 IELTS/600 TOEFL). We chose these two to seewhether there was evidence of different effects at differentproficiency levels, since it is often assumed among EFL teachersthat a task-based approach may work better at higher levels of

proficiency, and that tasks should be graded and matched tolearners’ level (Brown, 1986). Our analysis of Alicia’s performancerevealed changes in the accuracy of her subject-verb structures,aspects of her lexico-grammatical output, and her pronunciation.Analysis of Daniela’s performance led us to focus on herexplanation of a complex concept, aspects of her lexico-grammatical output, and her pronunciation.

V Findings

1 The questionnaires

We will comment briefly on the responses of all 14 participants tothe questionnaire items (see Table 1), which give some insight intothe learners’ perceptions of the experience of taking part in theposter carousel.

Approximately half the participants said they had consciouslyplanned changes and a similar number were aware of makingchanges to their language over the six cycles. Two said they had

not planned changes but had in fact made them in the course of the carousel. The language area in which changes were mostcommonly mentioned was vocabulary.

The two participants we will be focusing on here, Alicia andDaniela, provided contrasting comments in their questionnaires.Alicia indicated that during the carousel she had not consciouslydecided to change the way she expressed herself, nor had shenoticed any unplanned changes. Daniela, on the other hand, wrotemore on her questionnaire sheet than any other participant: she




indicated that she had taken deliberate decisions to changelinguistic expressions and had also noticed unplanned changes inher performance. She was sure she had made lexical andphonological changes, and she thought she had made grammaticaladjustments as well. She completed her commentary on her

thoughts and actions during the task as follows:

I wanted to use phrases I have learned during the course and I worked at

it . . . I tried to find out if different explanations were accepted [by the

visitors]. I felt I was quite relaxed all the time. I got to know the vocabulary

better during the time.

2 The transcripts

We now turn to extracts from the transcripts of Alicia and

Daniela’s recordings, which suggest that their performanceimproved over the series of six cycles in a number of ways.

a Alicia: Alicia’s English was very weak: on the dictation testthat we administer at the start of the course, she scored only 5 percent. But she was quite a determined communicator, which may beclear from the transcript extracts below. Her speech showeduncertainties about basic sentence syntax that one would expect of a learner at a level below IELTS 4.0/TOEFL 400.


Table 1 Summary of questionnaire responses

Conscious changes?

Yes 6

No 7

Can’t remember 1

Unplanned changes?

Yes 7

No 5

Can’t remember 2

Changes to vocabulary 8

segmental pronunciation 2

syllable stress 1

grammar 5

speed of speaking 3

other: ‘fluency’ 1



Subject-verb structures Despite her relatively low level in English,Alicia gained in accuracy during the six task cycles – a total of some 20 minutes’ classroom work. One example of this gain is in

terms of basic subject-verb (SV) order. The extracts (seeAppendix) show all the instances of her use of ‘is’ during the sixvisits, the letter C or I on the right-hand side indicating where sheappears to have achieved a correct or incorrect SV sequence,respectively. Where necessary, we have added our gloss of Alicia’sintended meaning (shown in italics). Incidence of correct andincorrect SV structures over the six visits is shown in Table 2.

The article that Alicia and her partner had worked on for theirposter was a meta-analysis of research into the progress of patients

who had undergone less extensive surgery, more extensive surgery,or surgery plus radiotherapy.

At this level of proficiency, data can be hard to interpret, evenin terms of basic SV sequence. Interpretation of Alicia’s speech ismade more difficult by the fact that she appeared to use ‘is’ in fivedifferent ways:

1. for it is (null subject), e.g. ‘is meta-analysis’ (also cases 22, 32,37);

2. in clause-initial position, for ‘it’s that . . .’ (possibly influencedby spoken Spanish es que . . . ) : ‘is the group surgery more versussurgery less is the same survival’ (also cases 11, 13, 15);

3. for there is/are – e.g. ‘is more deaths non-breast cancer insurgery and radiotherapy’ (case 31);

4. as a substitute for a verb such as produce or require – e.g.‘surgery versus surgery plus radiotherapy is the same survival’(also cases 24, 39);

5. as a left-shifted element – e.g. ‘is very important the conclusion’(also cases 6, 10, 23).


Table 2 Alicia: subject-verb structure accuracy

Correct Incorrect

Visit 1 3 6

Visit 2 2 5

Visit 3 5 2

Visit 4 3 8

Visit 5 4 1

Visit 6 8 2



In spite of the difficulties of interpretation, there is someevidence that Alicia’s basic SV accuracy did increase in overallterms during the carousel. The Correct and Incorrect cases in her

‘is’ expressions for the six visits show that her accuracy rate was(1) 33 per cent, (2) 29 per cent, (3) 71 per cent, (4) 33 per cent,(5) 80 per cent, and (6) 80 per cent. With the exception of visit 4,those figures suggest that she was able to benefit (for reasons thatwe will explore in Discussion, below) from opportunity for practicein the first two visits and then achieved a broadly stable level of accuracy, at which she produced a correct order of elements sevenor eight times out of ten. A possible explanation for the lower ratein visit 4 is that two of Alicia’s persistent errors were predominant

in that visit: six of the ten relevant expressions involved her use of ‘is’ in initial position, in place of either ‘it’s’ or ‘it’s that . . .’. Therelative dominance of those two errors in visit 4 seems to bediscourse related: during the visit, her interlocutor requestedconfirmation and clarification of minor details, such as the meaningof ‘surgery more’ (extensive surgery) in case 20, and whether ornot a particular group of patients had been included in the analysis,in cases 25 and 26. During other visits, the visitors’ questions andcomments required Alicia to elaborate on wider topics such as the

nature and significance of the findings, and in those cases she usedfewer ‘is’-initial structures.

Lexico-grammatical accuracy A second general feature of Alicia’s performances is the way in which she used herinterlocutors as a source of language. She turned the interactivenature of the task to her advantage, even if the effect was relativelylimited. For example, during visit 1 she appeared to be searchingfor the word ‘thousand’; five minutes (and two visits) later she was

able to access the word without audible difficulty:

Visit 1

Alicia Seventeen ( pause)

Visitor Thousand

Alicia Thousand

Visit 3

Alicia Seventeen thousand analysed




Similarly, during visit 6, she produced a lexico-grammatically

more correct expression than in visit 2, in response to a question

from her interlocutor:

Visit 6

Visitor Relapse of disease. I see. It’s very interesting. Well . . . but overall

survival is not different?

Alicia Is not different

Visitor But disease-free survival is different?

Alicia Yes, yes.

There Alicia produced ‘is not different’, while in visit 2 she had

said, less accurately, ‘is not difference’ and ‘is difference’. However,

it could be that during the final visit she was simply ‘reflecting’ the

words of her interlocutor, repeating them as a holistic chunk, rather

than achieving an improvement of her own.

Pronunciation As the weakest speaker in the class, Alicia was

also given the potential benefit of more coaching or prompting

from her visitors than we have found in other pairs’ interactions.

In the example below, her pronunciation of the initial vowels of

the words surgery, radiotherapy and plus came in for attention:

Visit 6 pronunciation

Alicia That surgery versus surgery and /suzeri/

radiotherapy /rΛdio/

[moderates?] non-breast cancer in

group surgery. /suzeri/

And (eh) other conclusion very

important is the surgery – /suzeri/

Visitor Surgery corrects vowel to /s-/

Alicia Surgery (eh) plus ‘surgery’ now correct ;

but /plu:s/

Visitor Plus radiotherapy corrects to /plΛs/ and/reidio/

Alicia Plus radiotherapy is local recurrence both now correct

7 per cent.

Visitor O-oh, ah I see.

Alicia And surgery alone is 20 per cent. – now correct

However, although Alicia was – as she herself was well aware –

the least proficient in the class, she was not totally dependent

on the language used by her visitors. Here is a case where she




rejected ‘contamination’ from an error (underlined) in a visitor’s

question:

Visit 1

Visitor And . . . yes . . . only on this group it was statistically significantresults? Only on this group?

Alicia In on in this group em + in global eh in global group

Visitor Mhm (etc.)

To summarize, we have discussed evidence in Alicia’s recordings

that during the course of the carousel her spoken English output

became more accurate, in three broad areas: (1) in syntax – her

ordering of SV elements of the verb ‘to be’; (2) in lexicogrammar

– greater ease of access to the word ‘thousand’, and accurate useof the adjective ‘different’ rather than the noun ‘difference’; and

(3) in phonology – her production of vowels in ‘surgery’, ‘radio’

and ‘plus’, at first in response to coaching from an interlocutor, and

then spontaneously. However, these improvements contrast with

her responses to our questionnaire, in which she wrote that she

had made no changes to her English during the interaction with

her six visitors.

b Daniela Daniela’s performances reveal a quite different levelof linguistic sophistication; she had scored 97 per cent on the

dictation (against Alicia’s 5 per cent). Nevertheless, Daniela’s

output also shows evidence of improvement over the same 20–25

minutes of the carousel.

Unlike Alicia, Daniela reported in the questionnaire that she

thought she had made both conscious and unplanned changes

during the carousel. She wrote: ‘I wanted to use phrases I had

learned during the course and I worked at it’, and ‘I tried to find

out if different explanations were accepted’. She noted that shehad made changes in vocabulary and pronunciation, and

commented: ‘I got to know the vocabulary during the time’.

Explanation of a complex concept The topic of her poster was

whether the addition of chemotherapy to tamoxifen increased the

quality of life, which was defined in this study as the length of time

in which patients were symptom-free. Quality of life was calculated

by a statistical procedure referred to in the original article as Q-




TWIST, unfamiliar to both Daniela and her visitors. The acronym

was not explained in the article, and she told us before the start

of the carousel that she was uneasy about her lack of knowledge

about the statistical method. Five of Daniela’s six visitors did infact ask her questions, directly or indirectly, about the statistical

method, and this is where she experimented to ‘find out if different

explanations were accepted’.

To her first visitor, who asked directly about Q-TWIST, Daniela

gave a short explanation, which may have been acceptable but was

not acknowledged. For her second visitor, she produced a longer

explanation, broken down into short steps, and received

acknowledgement. (In the extracts below, the words in brackets are

back-channelling from the visitor.)

Visit 1

Visitor I don’t understand this. What’s Q-TWIST? Is a . . . statistical test,

or it is a . . . conclusion done from the response of some patients

to tamoxifen alone or chemotherapy more tamoxifen?

Daniela Q-TWIST is a new method of calculation. And we calculated the

. . . quality adjusted . . . outcome. . . . It is a method to find out how,

how much of the time the patients live without tumour and without

toxicity . . . how much of this is really good for them. . . . So it was

a calculation on a . . . meta-analysis of breast cancer studies . . . all

applying the same –

Visitor But you have not said if it was early breast cancer?

Visit 2

Visitor What is it, Q-TWIST [??] conclusion?

Daniela It’s a new method we used for finding out the quality adjusted

survival time. It takes into measurement the time . . . (mhm) from

the beginning of the therapy. First the patients do have toxicity side-

effects. Then they feel better and they are well. And this is the time

that is . . . interesting for finding out what we call quality adjusted

survival time (mhm) the survival without any symptoms at all. And

this is the time and it has to be estimated on different um . . . from

different other times and . . . we turn, we take this time and

calculate on it . . . in a way to turn it from absolute time into some

percentage.

Visitor But that TWIST it is only a mathematical method?

Daniela Yes it is a mathematical method. A statistical method.

The explanation given in visit 2 is confirmed as at least partly

successful by the visitor’s response. However, the explanation is




much longer: 108 words, as opposed to 60 words in visit 1 (word

totals here exclude hesitation sounds). Daniela’s aim, as a medical

scientist, is presumably to be both clear and concise. The first part

of the description is clear, but the last part is over-wordy andrepetitive, without gaining in clarity: ‘And this is the time and it

has to be estimated on different, from different other times, and

we turn, we take this time and calculate on it in a way to turn it

from absolute time’.

The third visitor did not ask about Q-TWIST.

The fourth visitor did ask about Q-TWIST, but wanted an

explanation of the acronym, rather than of the procedure. When

Daniela could not supply that explanation, the visitor registered

disapproval (‘Well!’, produced with a marked high fall) andchanged the topic.

Visit 4

Visitor Please could you explain me what is Q-TWIST?

Daniela Yes, I would like to. It is a method of finding out the time . . . the

patient is without any symptoms after the beginning of a therapy.

As you can see on this –

Visitor Yes but these shortage, what does it means? Q-TWIST? Q-TWIST?

Daniela I’m sorry, I don’t know what it means.

Visitor Because I am puzzled, when I see Q-TWIST. I don’t know whatthat expression means.

Daniela Yes. I’m sorry, I cannot explain that.

Visitor Well! And the aim of the study, as I see, was the quality of life?

The fifth visitor asked Daniela to explain the table of Q-TWIST

data, and this time she incorporated her explanation into a

summary of the study. She stated the research question, the method

(including Q-TWIST) and the findings. This fuller explanation ran

to 231 words, compared with 108 words in visit 2 and 60 words in

visit 1. This explanation appears to have been satisfactory, withcontinual acknowledgement from the visitor. As in visit 2, the least

concise part of the explanation is that concerning the actual

statistical calculation (underlined).

Visit 5

Visitor This table . . . it looks like being a little bit complicated. Can you

help me?

Daniela Of course I can. We were interested in the time . . . without any

symptoms the patients had once they were treated for breast




cancer. (yes) That’s the question (yes). . . . What we did was a meta-

analysis of nine different trials (yes) taking the data, and estimating

the time between the outset of therapy, the end of toxicity (and

chemotherapy?) and the point where first symptoms of recurrent

cancer or death occurred.Visitor This is the period of uh high . . .

Daniela This is the period of . . . [??] . . . any symptoms with high well-being

(yes), just in terms of what we know (yes, yes), it’s not a quality of

life analysis (yes) or anything like that. And then we take this time,

and the time between . . . the time of relapse and the death or end-

point of the study, and we do this calculation. It looks a little bit

difficult but it’s (but, yes) a statistical method . . . to find out if there

is . . . it’s weighing the different times and . . . it’s calculating um

the . . . outcome of this time that is without any symptoms. And it’s

comparing . . . we did this on each study (yes) and then put ittogether (yes), and afterwards we compared the patients who had

tamoxifen only with those who had tamoxifen and chemotherapy

(yes). And we found out that there’s no difference in the time spent

without symptoms. So what we can conclude is that um . . . the

addition of chemotherapy to tamoxifen does not improve the

quality adjusted survival time, as we can calculate it with this

method.

Visitor Yes.

The sixth and final visitor also asked for a general explanation,and Daniela followed the same strategy, stating the research

question, the method including Q-TWIST, and the findings. Again,

the fuller explanation was acknowledged by regular back-

channelling from the visitor. This time the explanation of the

statistical calculation (underlined) was more concise. A request for

clarification of the acronym was handled more successfully than in

visit 4, although this may have been because the visitor was more

co-operative.

Visit 6

Visitor Can you explain it to me? I don’t understand it.

Daniela Yes, it looks a bit difficult. um . . . The question is . . . the question

we wanted to answer is (yeah?) um how much time do the patients

have after the onset of therapy (mhm?) until . . . death or relapse

(mhm?) without any symptoms at all (mhm), neither toxicity (yeah)

nor symptoms of relapse (yeah). So we measured these two times,

time of toxicity (yeah) and time until relapse (aha!) that’s the

symptom-free survival, and we calculated the time in between them

(mhm). And then –




Visitor Why is it called TWIST? I don’t understand TWIST.

Daniela Well it’s just an abbreviation. I can’t really translate it to you.

Visitor Uhuh. Uhuh, uhuh. But it’s understandable. This –

Daniela This is the time. And we take this time . . . and some others (yeah)

to do the Q-TWIST calculation . . . (yeah) and what we get is theresult that . . . the time without symptoms is not different for

patients . . . who (yes) received tamoxifen (yeah) or tamoxifen plus

chemotherapy. (yes) So in regards to this aspect (yes) there is no

difference between the two groups.

Visitor I understand it. Mhm, mhm, I understand.

The explanation in this last visit was 134 words, compared with 231words in visit 5. So during the course of the carousel Daniela canbe considered to have improved her explanation, first making it

fuller and then making it more concise.

Lexico-grammatical performance In her questionnaire, Danielareported that she had deliberately worked at using expressions shehad learned during the course, and had noticed changes made tovocabulary and pronunciation. There are also signs in therecordings of an improvement in her choice of words. For example,in visit 1 she said ‘how much time the patients live without tumourand without toxicity, how much of this is really good for them’.

This is rephrased in various, better ways to subsequent visitors: forexample, ‘survival without any symptoms at all’ (visit 2), ‘the timespent without symptoms’ (visit 5), and ‘the question we wantedto answer is how much time do the patients have after the onsetof therapy until death or relapse without any symptoms at all’(visit 6).

Pronunciation We have more objective evidence of consciouschange in her pronunciation of data, which shows a shift from/dat/ to /deit/. Earlier in the course, Daniela had asked about the

pronunciation of the word data because she had noticed bothversions (as /dat/ or /deit/) in her professional conversations withnative speakers, and wondered what the difference was. When shewas told that the latter was more common in Britain, Danielaannounced her intention to use that. Below are all the occurrencesof the word data during her turns as host in the carousel. She usedboth pronunciations, but in visits 2 and 4 she explicitly correctedherself, and the trend in the series was towards the pronunciation/deit/.




Visit 2

In a retrospective analysis of many different /dat/ /deit/

Visit 3

And they were em the the /deit/ were collected from nine different studieswe just . . . we concentrated on the toxicity /dat/ and the time of relapse.

We don’t have the detailed /dat/ about the length of tamoxifen application.

Visit 4

What we have here are /deit/ on treatment-related toxicity –

the the (tut ) /dat/ of /deit/ of this analysis are taken from nine different

centres

Visit 6

These are the /deit

/ on survival and relapse-free survival.So we concentrated only on these /deit/.

Given her questionnaire comment ‘I got to know the vocabularyduring the time’, we investigated whether increased familiarity withthe vocabulary had resulted in greater fluency (measured bynumber of words per minute). We found that her speaking rate wasslowest during the first visit (about 98 words per minute) but afterthat it remained stable, at about 140 words per minute. It can beseen from these measures that in general Daniela was a reasonably

proficient speaker of English. During each visit she was planningand experimenting with her language and communicationstrategies and so it is not surprising that her rate of speech did notchange. The slower speed in the first visit was probably due to theunfamiliarity of the task itself.

VI Discussion

Our research questions were as follows:

• Do learners gain from repetition in the poster carousel? Do theythink they gain?

• In what ways do they gain? Again, in what ways do they think

they gain?

We have established that when receiving visitors to their poster,attention to language was evidenced by: self-corrections of vocabulary and pronunciation (Daniela); corrections of pronun-ciation and grammar prompted by the interlocutor (Alicia); correct




fluent use of some language forms after initial difficulty (Alicia);

correct use of forms introduced and practised earlier in the course

(Daniela and Alicia). For Alicia, who had severe language

problems, some errors (e.g. SV order) occurred less frequently withtask repetition; for Daniela, information density and expression of

precise meaning improved with task repetition.

The recordings and transcripts have allowed us to observe

changes in performance, but we were also interested in finding out

about learners’ own perceptions during the poster carousel. The

questionnaire responses – though admittedly more limited –

suggest that Alicia and Daniela had very different perceptions of

their performances over the six poster cycles. As we noted earlier,

Alicia wrote that she had neither planned nor made changes toher English, whereas Daniela told us that she had made both

planned and unplanned changes. As teachers we face the paradox

that weaker learners like Alicia may be so concerned with making

themselves understood that they do not have the chance to

monitor the changes and improvements they are making to their

L2 output. It may be useful if teachers point this out to them.

Alicia and Daniela reacted to the communicative challenge in

different ways. Both showed evidence of making their English

more native-like during the six cycles of the carousel: Alicia interms of vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation; Daniela in terms

of pronunciation and of the precision with which she was able to

explain Q-TWIST to her later visitors. This may be evidence of the

shift of attention outlined in Bygate’s (1996) study of identical task

repetition, in which the learner moved her focus from accessing

expressions at Time 1 to monitoring them at Time 2:

this shift, from a preoccupation with finding the expressions to a greater

capacity for monitoring formulation, may be precisely what teachers mightwish to encourage since it may enable learners to pay more attention to the

task of matching language to concepts, and possibly to improving their

knowledge and organization of the language.

Bygate (1996: 144)

Daniela’s comments in the questionnaire that she had made

conscious changes to both vocabulary and pronunciation are borne

out by the evidence of her choice of words in explaining Q-TWIST

and her self-corrections of the initial vowel of ‘data’. On the other




hand, Alicia commented that she had neither planned nor noticedchanges. Yet we have seen that in some respects her English didbecome more accurate, even if she did not realize it. We have also

discussed instances where she was able to incorporate her visitor’sexpressions into her own talk, but it may be that these were casesof temporary loans rather than lasting adoptions.

Why did Alicia’s performance improve? It may be that she feltgradually more at ease with the material, and also gained from thepositive experience of having coped with the problems of communicating with fellow professionals, under the quite severetime pressure of the 3-minute task cycle. She had expressed fearsat the start of the course that she would not make herself

understood, and perhaps this greater confidence over the carouselseries allowed her to free up some processing space to payattention to language.

It seems plausible that the differences in the way Alicia andDaniela reacted to challenge in the task were related to their levelsof English. Learners at lower levels of proficiency may be so(pre)occupied with marshalling their resources to expressthemselves adequately that they do not have spare capacity todeploy on correcting or refining their means of expression. Alicia’s

response that she had made no changes during the six carouselcycles suggests that her attention was so firmly fixed on conveyingwhat she wanted to say that she was unable to monitor her ownperformance.

In contrast, Daniela was one of two participants who said in theirquestionnaires that they had both consciously planned to makechanges and also noticed unplanned changes; they were among thethree most proficient speakers in the group.

From the pedagogic point of view the interactive nature of this

task is particularly important. The carousel is based on the ideathat the arrival of a new visitor should present the host with anovel challenge and a relatively natural opportunity to recycle thecommunicative form and content of the poster. As we stressedearlier, repetition in the carousel involves retrial rather thanduplication; the visitor is not simply a cipher, someone to listen toa different version of the same monologue, but a communicativepartner – indeed, one who takes the initiative by asking thequestions and then reacts to the adequacy and comprehensibility




from the poster carousel’s particular configuration of input,interlocutors and repetition under time pressure.

We would not wish to claim that all TBL therefore ‘works’; a

study such as this, in which we have focused so far on just twoparticipants, raises obvious questions of generalizability. We thinkit is likely that the repeated task cycles and the time pressure arelikely to be important variables, so researchers and teachersworking with larger groups of learners will need to be carefulabout generalizing from this specific task. However, we also believethat the evidence of differential gains and levels of awareness inAlicia’s and Daniela’s performances underlines the value of studying task effects on a case-by-case basis, rather than using

mean figures for a group of learners. As Foster (1998) has recentlyargued, one must have some doubts about a group-based analysisof classroom performances especially, in which – as teachers knowand as we have shown with Alicia and Daniela – different pairs of learners actually do very different things in what is apparently the‘same’ pedagogic event. Of course, the disadvantage of the case-by-case approach is that it is highly labour-intensive, and at thisstage we are not in a position to offer generalizations from ananalysis of all 14 participants’ performances. However, the findings

from an investigation of three further participants, selected acrossthe range between Alicia and Daniela, show similar patterns of change to those identified here. That analysis (Lynch and Maclean,2000) confirms the influence of proficiency level on both the typeof linguistic change and also on the degree to which the learnerswere conscious of making those changes.

Having underlined that this study is preliminary – though, webelieve, suggestive – we will close by discussing possibleimplications of our findings.The first point to emphasize is that the

changes we have identified occurred during a task with no targetedlinguistic items. The carousel is designed to stimulate interactionof a relatively free kind – at least when compared with some of the experimental tasks discussed in the TBL literature. In designingthis particular classroom task, we were concerned mainly with thecomprehensibility of both partners’ contributions and theappropriateness of the hosts’ responses to questions, and less withformal accuracy. Nevertheless, this ‘unfocused’ task resulted in anumber of changes in the output of both learners under study.




The second point to stress is that the changes we have discussed

arose from ‘mere’ practice, from learner-to-learner talk in which

the teacher did not intervene in any way. While we agree that ‘it

is optimistic to suppose that retrial alone will efficiently eradicatemistakes’ (Johnson, 1996: 129, our emphasis), it seems reasonable

to conclude that there are some linguistic benefits of retrial, even

without teacher intervention. Bygate (1996) asked what learners

might gain from unprompted, unguided task performance. In this

case, the answer appears to be that the combination of task

conditions and professional curiosity meant that the visitors

prompted the hosts towards more accurate performance without

the need for direct intervention by the teacher.

Third, there is evidence that the same task can be productive forlearners at different levels, including those with English as limited

as Alicia’s, so teachers who are sceptical about the role of task-

based learning at lower levels of proficiency may draw some

comfort from the fact that even Alicia was not apparently

overwhelmed by a task that many native speakers find challenging,

namely, responding effectively to probing questions from a fellow

professional.

However, our final note is cautious and cautionary. We have no

evidence that Alicia was aware of the changes she was making –indeed there is her own testimony (in the questionnaire) that she

had made no changes – and there was no time in the poster lesson

for the learners to engage in the sort of post-task activity that

might have drawn her attention to the changes in her performance.

This initial study has led us to appreciate more clearly the potential

role of post-task language work guided by the teacher. Although

there is evidence that repetition of the task enabled Alicia and

Daniela to improve in accuracy in the short term (over the 20minutes of the carousel), we see a need for teachers to follow up

task-based practice with ‘noticing’ activities, so that we can help

learners consolidate for the longer term what may otherwise be

fragile changes in their interlanguage.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank ‘Alicia’, ‘Daniela’ and the other

participants in the English for Cancer Conferences course, who




allowed us to use the recordings of their carousel performances for

this research, and also Martin Bygate and two anonymous

reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

VIII References

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Appendix

Alicia: subject-verb sentence structure

Visit 11. Is the group surgery more versus surgery less is the

same survival C I

= It’s that in the groups undergoing more and less

extensive surgery there is the same survival rate

2. In conclusion very important is . . . I

= In conclusion it is very important that . . .

3. . . . the surgery versus surgery plus radiotherapy is the

same survival C

= . . . surgery, compared with surgery plus radiotherapy,

produces the same survival rate

4. Is reduced radiotherapy isolated local recurrence I

= radiotherapy reduces isolated local recurrence

5. Is significant the reduction the local recurrence I

= the reduction in local recurrence is significant

6. Is very important the conclusion I

= The conclusion is very important

7. And is this important I

= And this is important

8. Important conclusion is the radiotherapy group more died C

= An important conclusion is that more of the radiotherapy

group died

Total for visit 3 6

Visit 2

9. Is very conclusion . . . I

= It is a very (important) conclusion

10. Is very important the study I

= The study is very important

11. Is surgery versus surgery plus radiotherapy is not

difference significant C I= it’s that surgery, compared to surgery plus radiotherapy,

produces no significant difference

12. Is meta-analysis I

= It’s a meta-analysis

13. Is the isolated local recurrence is difference

significantly em versus surgery C I

= It’s that isolated local recurrence is significantly

different compared to what it is with surgery

Total for visit 2 5




Visit 3

14. Is a meta-analysis on . . . I


15. Is the group lumpectomy or quadrantectomy . . . versus

surgery eh more eh mas non-radiotherapy is nondifference significant C I

= It’s that comparing lumpectomy or quadrantectomy

with surgery plus non-radiotherapy there is no

significant difference

16. The conclusion is very . . . C

17. Conclusion eh, the first important is C

= in conclusion the first important thing is

18. Extensive surgery is not necessary C

19. And eh isolated local recurrence is very important in

group eh surgery alone C

= And isolated local recurrence is very common in the

surgery-only group

Total for visit 5 2

Visit 4

20. Is the surgery versus surgery less, mastectomy I

= It’s surgery as opposed to less extensive surgery,

mastectomy

21. Lumpectomy in this work is also radiotherapy, is eh

menos extensive, eh less extensive, mastectomy CC

= Lumpectomy in this study is plus radiotherapy (and)

is less extensive mastectomy

22. Is the meta-analysis I


23. Is the conclusion very important I

= it’s a very important conclusion

24. Is the surgery adequate versus surgery plus

radiotherapy is the same survival C I

= it’s that appropriate surgery, compared with surgery

plus radiotherapy, achieves the same survival rate

25. Is the group yes included I

= the group is included, yes

26. Is included. I

= It’s included

27. Is the same, yes I

= It’s the same, yes

28. Is eh reduced local recurrence I

= there is reduced local recurrence

Total for visit 3 8




Visit 5

29. ‘Less’ is the mastectomy C

= ‘Less extensive’ means mastectomy

28. ‘Surgery’ is mastectomy modified C

= ‘Surgery’ is modified mastectomy

29. And ‘more surgery’ is amplified mastectomy C

= and ‘more extensive surgery’ means amplified

mastectomy

30. Quadrantectomy is surgery less, plus radiotherapy C

= Quadrantectomy is less extensive surgery plus

radiotherapy

31. Is eh more deaths non-breast cancer in surgery and

radiotherapy, versus surgery only I

= There are more deaths from . . .

Total for visit 4 1

Visit 6

32. Is a meta-analysis I


33. The objective is . . . C

34. And no chemotherapy is included in this study C

35. And other conclusion very important is the surgery plus

radiotherapy is local recurrence 7 per cent CC

= and another very important finding is that surgery

plus radiotherapy produces 7 per cent local recurrence

36. And surgery alone is 20 per cent local recurrence C

= and surgery alone leads to 20 per cent local recurrence

37. Is not different I

38. My experience is . . . C

39. The tumour less three centimetres is surgery

quadrantectomy and lumpectomy plus radiotherapy C

= a tumour of less than 3 cm requires quadrantectomy . . .

40. And tumours more three centimetre is mastectomy

and neo-adjuvant chemotherapy . . . C

= and tumours of more than 3 cm require mastectomy

and neo-adjuvant chemotherapy

Total for visit 8 2


lynch and mc clean

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