Abstract

This paper is aimed at reviewing the theoretical and practical issues regarding careful within-task planning and task repetition in EFL classrooms. In particular, the paper focuses on the combined effects for these two implementation variables on the enhancement of accuracy, complexity, and fluency in EFL learners’ oral production. Research shows that careful within-task planning has positive impacts on accuracy and complexity of learner language. Nonetheless, it is sometimes avoided because of its detrimental effects on fluency. Also, the practice of task repetition might be sometimes frowned upon given its superficial resemblance to what was prevalent in the Behaviorist era. However, both theory and teachers’ experience in the EFL context confirm that repeating tasks, with certain time-intervals in between, assists complexity and fluency. Careful within-task planning and task repetition, combined, have the potential to help learners attending to both form and meaning and thus enhancing accuracy, complexity, and fluency simultaneously.

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