A Study On The Effects Of Pre-task Strategic Planning On Argumentative Writing

With the spreading of task-based approach,an increasing number of researchers have diverted their attention to study the role of tasks on language teaching and learning.According to Skehan(1998),the implementation procedures of the tasks are crucial to the quality of learners’ output,so it is very important to design effective pre-task activities.Planning is believed to play a key role during pre-task stage,especially in cognitive demanding tasks.However,most of previous research is concentrated on the effects of planning on oral performance,but few on written performance.Moreover,previous studies rarely examine the effect of manipulating learners’ attention onto certain aspects of production while they are planning.This study aims to investigate whether pre-task planning can enhance the fluency,complexity,accuracy and holistic quality of L2 written argumentation.It also probes into the impacts of different strategic planning contents(vocabulary-matching,idea-generating and outlining)with the purpose of exploring the most effective way to improve L2 learners’ written performance.The subjects in this study were 64non-English major students from a university in Jiangxi province and they were divided into four groups,including three experimental groups and a control group.During the process of experiment,participants in the control group had no time to plan and were required to start writing immediately after they have received the writing paper;while the three experimental groups were given 10 minutes to complete different pre-task planning activity(vocabulary-matching,idea-generating and outlining)before the formal writing.All the written texts were encoded and analyzed by using a comprehensive set of measures for fluency,complexity,and accuracy as well as holistic quality.Afterwards,the data were input into the computer and analyzed through SPSS 17.0.Compared with non-planning group,one-way ANOVA results showed that idea-generation and organization group could significantly improve the holistic quality and fluency(measured by length of text);all the planning groups produced significantly higher accuracy than non-planners;as for complexity,no significant difference was found between non-planning group and pre-task planning group in terms of grammatical complexity,but idea-generation and vocabulary group reported an obvious positive effect on lexical complexity.The results of comparisons amongdifferent planning conditions indicated that idea-generation group and organization group outperformed vocabulary group in terms of fluency,accuracy and the holistic quality;while vocabulary group and idea-generation group produced much more variety words than organization group.It can be inferred that students benefit most in the idea-generation group,followed by organization group,and then vocabulary group.The evidence from this study brings some pedagogical implications.First,teachers can improve students’ written performance by providing an opportunity to plan before a task performance or by instructing them how to arrange the writing time properly.Second,teachers should design a variety of planning activities in L2 writing classes,whereby they can train learners how to employ planning techniques according to different writing needs.Furthermore,it also brings some enlightenment to Task-based instructions in L2 writing.In order to effectively improve students’ writing ability through task-based approach,instructors should take into consideration how to sequence the tasks selected for an instruction,and how to implement the tasks to increase learners’ writing ability in a timely manner.