This study is a longitudinal study that investigated the development of English oral proficiency—complexity, accuracy, and fluency—under the pre-task and on-line planning conditions with task repetition among Japanese high school students. This study is unique because it is longitudinal and includes qualitative data. The participants were 15 Japanese high school students whose English proficiency level is categorized as low proficiency. Narrative tasks, post-task questionnaires, journals, and interviews were used in this study. In the narrative tasks, they were asked to describe a four-picture story three times with two minutes planning time, when they were allowed to listen to an ALT (assistant language teacher) tell the story and take notes. They completed a post-task questionnaire and a journal after completing the task. Interviews were conducted two times to further investigate their questionnaire responses and what they wrote in their journal entries. The results showed that low proficiency learners increased oral fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and syntactic accuracy through repeating the same task within a single session, and syntactic complexity and lexical complexity through repeating the same type of task during the academic year. The aural input between the first, second, and third performance can lead them to draw their attention to form-meaning connections, resulting in increased oral performance. In addition, low and intermediate beginners benefited in increasing oral fluency, syntactic complexity, and syntactic accuracy, while high beginners benefited in improving oral fluency and lexical complexity under pre-task and on-line planning conditions with repetition during the academic year. The study suggests that the combined use of pre-task planning, on-line planning, and task repetition have a cumulative effect and can facilitate the development of oral fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and syntactic accuracy for low proficiency high school learns of English. If learners are given the opportunity to plan before and during task performance with repetition, and to make the condition that draws their attention to both form and meaning, it is the most effective strategy to improve oral fluency, syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and syntactic accuracy in task-based teaching in the classrooms. / Language Arts

<p>Despite an emphasis on oral communication in most foreign language classrooms, the resource-intensive nature (i.e. time and manpower) of speaking tests hinder regular oral assessments. A possible solution is the development of a (semi-) automated scoring system. When it is used in conjunction with human raters, the consistency of computers can complement human raters’ comprehensive judgments and increase efficiency in scoring (e.g., Enright & Quinlan, 2010). In search of objective and quantifiable variables that are strongly correlated with overall oral proficiency, a number of studies have reported that some utterance fluency variables (e.g., speech rate and mean length of run) might be strong predictors for L2 learners’ speaking ability (e.g., Ginther et al., 2010; Hirotani et al., 2017). However, these findings are difficult to generalize due to small sample sizes, narrow ranges of proficiency levels, and/or a lack of data from languages other than English. The current study analyzed spontaneous speech samples collected from 170 Japanese learners at a wide range of proficiency levels determined by a well-established speaking test, the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages’ (ACTFL) Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI). Prior to analysis, 48 <i>Complexity, Accuracy, Fluency</i> (CAF) measures (with a focus on fluency variables) were calculated from the speech samples. First, the study examined the relationships among the CAF measures and learner oral proficiency assessed by the ACTFL OPI. Then, using an empirically-based approach, a feasibility of using a composite measure to predict L2 oral proficiency was investigated. The results revealed that <i>Speech Speed</i> and <i>Complexity</i> variables demonstrated strong correlation to the OPI levels, and moderately strong correlations were found for the variables in the following categories: <i>Speech Quantity, Pause</i>, <i>Pause Location</i> (i.e., Silent pause ratio within AS-unit), <i>Dysfluency</i> (i.e., Repeat ratio), and <i>Accuracy.</i> Then, a series of multiple regression analyses revealed that a combination of five CAF measures (i.e., Effective articulation rate, Silent pause ratio, Repeat ratio, Syntactic complexity, and Error-free AS-unit ratio) can predict 72.3% of the variance of the OPI levels. This regression model includes variables that correspond to Skehan’s (2009) proposed three categories of fluency (speed, breakdown, and repair) and variables that represent CAF, supporting the literature (e.g., Larsen-Freeman, 1978, Skehan, 1996).</p>

<p>I collected two types of data throughout Weeks 1-14, with the original purpose of enhancing teaching and learning in ENGL620. The data included weekly assignment recordings and weekly surveys.</p><p>The primary data were students' speech data, which were collected through 14 weekly timed speaking assessments conducted from Week 1 to Week 14. These assignments were made available on Monday at midnight and were required to be completed and submitted by Sunday at midnight). The assignments were delivered, and responses were collected using Extempore (<a href="http://www.extemporeapp.com/" target="_blank">www.extemporeapp.com</a>), a website specifically designed to support oral English assessment and practice.</p><p>To conduct more comprehensive assessments of students’ performances, I incorporated two OEPT item types into the weekly assignments, including PROS and CONS (referred to as “PC”) and LINE GRAPH (referred to as “LG”). See Appendix B for the assignment items. The PC item presented challenging scenarios ITAs may encounter and required the test-takers to make a decision and discuss the pros and cons associated with the decision. An example item is “<i>Imagine you have a student who likes to come to your office hours but often talks about something irrelevant to the course. What would you do in this situation? What are the pros and cons associated with the decision?</i>”. The LG item asked students to describe a line graph illustrating two or three lines and provide possible reasons behind those trends. It can be argued that the two tasks targeted slightly different language abilities and background knowledge. The two item types were selected because they represented two key skills that the OEPT tests. The PC task focused on stating one’s decision and presenting an argument within a personal context, while the LG item assessed students’ ability to describe visual information and engage in discussions about broader topics such as gender equality, employment, economic growth, college policy. The PC and LG items are the most difficult items in the test (Yan et al., 2019). Therefore, progress in the two tasks can be a good indicator of improvement in the speaking skills required in this context. All the items were either taken from retired OEPT items or developed by the researcher following the specifications for OEPT item development. In particular, the design of the items aimed to avoid assuming prior specific knowledge and to ensure that students could discuss them without excessive cognitive load.</p><p>For each task, the students were allocated 2 minutes for preparation and a maximum of 2 minutes to deliver their response to the assigned topic. The responses were monologic, resembling short classroom presentations. During the preparation time, the participants were permitted to take notes. Each item only allowed for one attempt, which aimed to capture students’ online production of speech and their utilization of language resources. Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics of the responses.</p><p>The PC prompt was deliberately kept consistent for Week 2 and Week 12 randomly selected as time points at the beginning and end of the semester. This deliberate choice of using the same prompt at these two distinct stages serves multiple purposes. Firstly, it provides a valuable perspective for analyzing growth over time. This approach adds depth to the study results and conclusions by providing additional evidence and triangulation. Second, this approach addresses one of the specific challenges identified by Ortega and Iberr-Shea (2005) in studies involving multiple data collection points, as maintaining consistency in the prompt can minimize potential variations in task difficulty or topic-related factors.</p><p>After completing each speaking assignment, the students were requested to rate the level of difficulty for each item on a scale of 1 (Very Easy) to 5 (Very difficult). Additionally, they were asked to fill out a weekly survey using Qualtrics. The Qualtrics survey contained six questions related to the frequency of their English language use outside of the classroom and their focus on language skills in the previous and upcoming week. These questions were considered interesting as potential contributing factors to changes in their performances throughout the semester. Refer to Appendix C for the survey questions.</p>