Factors Affecting Adult EFL Learners’Speaking Performance: Planning and Proficiency

• Main Authors: Meng-Ching Sandra Li, 李孟青
• Other Authors: Chun-Yin Doris Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2003
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/66110766466110509233

碩士 === 國立臺灣師範大學 === 英語研究所 === 91 === The present study discusses the influence of planning on adult EFL learners’ speaking performance by investigating the characteristics of the high and low achievers’ oral production, the effect of planning on the resultant discourse and the common errors made by the EFL learners, hoping to shed light on EFL teaching. Two planning settings, planned and unplanned, were administered to thirty adult EFL learners, with two different proficiency levels─high and low. Two different pictures with a similar level of difficulty were adopted in order to avoid the “practice effect.” All the thirty subjects had to carry out the task of picture description in the two settings. The overall results show that the oral production of the high achieves was different from those of the low achievers. On the whole, the high achievers were able to produce significantly more fluent, more complex and more accurate utterance than the low achievers. In addition, the differences among fluency, complexity and accuracy were significant only for the low proficiency group in the planned condition. Moreover, planning was more effective for the low achievers than for the high achievers. It was found that the low achievers produced more complex and more accurate utterance in the planned condition than in the unplanned condition, the differences in complexity even reached a significant level. However, planning did not help the low achievers generate more fluent speech. With regard to the high achievers, planning only had a positive effect on complexity, but the effect was not significant. As for fluency and accuracy, the effects were negative. Finally, it was found that the subjects in the present study produced five types of errors (i.e., split, new, absent, coalesced and correspondence) in their oral production. Other types of errors, such as inter- and intra-lingual errors, were also found. However, these error types were not generalizable due to the small size of the subject pool. Thus, further research is necessary.