Investigating the effects of task repetition on fluency and accuracy in English oral performance of low level adult students: A case study at Vietnam air defence and air force academy

The major aims of this case study were to investigate the effects of task repetition on three adult students’ accuracy and fluency in speaking English. Also, it sought to examine changes to the level of anxiety when speaking, which is a secondary aim. Qualitative research method was applied, with assistance of some quantitative analysis.

v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY INVESTIGATING THE EFFECTS OF TASK REPETITION ON FLUENCY AND ACCURACY IN ENGLISH ORAL PERFORMANCE OF LOW LEVEL ADULT STUDENTS: A CASE STUDY AT VIETNAM AIR DEFENCE AND AIR FORCE ACADEMY LUONG THI PHUONG* * Vietnam Air Defence and Air Force Academy,  phuong.luong9@gmail.com Received:23/12/2018; Revised: 31/01/2019; Accepted: 28/4/2019 ABSTRACT The major aims of this case study were to investigate the effects of task repetition on three adult students’ accuracy and fluency in speaking English Also, it sought to examine changes to the level of anxiety when speaking, which is a secondary aim Qualitative research method was applied, with assistance of some quantitative analysis The findings revealed that the participants generally showed improvements in their accuracy, while fluency took slightly different ends As regards the level of anxiety, some minor decrease was observed as a result of repeating the task Besides, all the participants made modification of content in their second presentation, which opens a new research domain for my future study Keywords: accuracy, fluency, task repetition, teaching English speaking, Vietnam Air Defence and Air Force Academy INTRODUCTION This paper reports a case study done at Vietnam Air Defence and Air Force Academy (hereafter referred to as VADAFA), aiming at examining the effects of task repetition on learners’ accuracy and fluency when speaking about a past event Besides, it was expected that students would feel less anxious when speaking English in front of others as a result of being familiar with the task The students at VADAFA follow a ten-month intensive English course which is specially designed for the military officers who have been experienced in their profession for at least three years Though the researcher is not the main instructor of this class, so far she has taught them for a few weeks 26 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) as a supplementary teacher The course uses the English File series as course books, and includes English speaking as one of the major macro skills to be taught and tested on The target students are mainly the ones who wish to develop further in their career by pursuing higher education either abroad or in-country Even if some of them have no intention to study further, being fluent in English speaking may be a great advantage when they have opportunities to join international conferences and workshops During the period of ten months, the course runs for five successive classes a week, from Monday to Friday, consisting of five forty-fiveminute sessions per day This syllabus in fact LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY allows the students to practise a substantial amount of speaking activities both in and after the class So far, a commonplace of a speaking lesson has been the fact that the teacher provides one or two short speaking activities, whether guided or free, then while monitoring, s/he often gives onthe-spot feedback, either implicitly or explicitly, on some basic mistakes such as the pronunciation of sounds, verb tenses, or subject-verb agreement At the end of the course, the students will have already practised a variety of topics ranging from elementary to intermediate level, plus the same amount of situations in which they need to use functional English Most of these topics and situations will reoccur in the end-of-course examination After testing three different courses, however, the researcher found that a majority of students performed the oral task with limited accuracy and fluency Moreover, many of them showed a high degree of anxiety or nervousness when speaking in front of the others As soon as they start speaking English, for instance, some of them displayed these feelings through their trembling voice or hands, while some others showed evidence of tension on their face When it came to communication with foreign friends, these shortcomings became a real hinderance to their mutual understanding While reflecting back on the teaching of speaking skill that the researcher and other English instructors at VADAFA have been applying, it seems that although this intense syllabus may result in the students “knowing” a huge amount of speaking tasks, yet their being able to use the appropriate language to “perform” the tasks is open to question In other words, our delivery of speaking activities are somehow superficial Lynch (2001) has a related concern and he explains this reality by stating that nowadays teachers try to maximize learner activity and output at the expense of allowing too little time for reflection (p.124) In addition, our traditional ways of correcting speaking errors and giving feedback appear to be v ineffective as many of the students tend to make the same mistakes that have already been corrected before This may be because once the students are really involved in the speaking, they normally focus their attention on the content of what they intend to say, “rather than on potentially helpful signals from their interlocutor about what they have already said” (Lynch, 2007, p.312) Bearing those sources of the VADAFA students’ speaking weaknesses in mind, this case study aimed to answer the following primary question: • In what ways can task repetition improve my learners’ accuracy and fluency in their English oral performance? And the following subquestion: • How does the degree of learners’ anxiety in English speaking change as a result of being familiar with the task? It was hoped that the transcribing process, which makes the student’s speaking visible, would be a favourable condition for the students to first of all raise awareness of the strengths and weaknesses in their oral product More specifically, learners are in fact encouraged to “externalize their thoughts about the formal correctness and semantic precision of their own output” (Lynch 2001, p.131) In the similar vein, Mennim (2003) also states that the procedures of this innovation not only encourage real-time language processing, but a more explicit language focus that could allow more time for the noticing of language forms as well (p.133) Furthermore, the repetition process enables the automatization of procedures to take place, which offers learners more attentional resources to devote to other components of task execution (Finardi, 2008, p.138) This condition, hopefully, would by nature result in more fluent speaking Consequently, the level of anxiety when speaking English may decrease as a byproduct All in all, this route to noticing, supported KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) 27 v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY by reflective self-correction, interactive peer correction, supplementary teacher intervention with explicit feedback, would possibly make a contributing factor to successful language learning (Lynch, 2001) A considerable number of professionals in the research world have also made use of task familiarity, for various purposes and in various contexts One of the pioneers who set the earliest ground for repetition of task in second language acquisition may be Bygate Martin and Porter Don The three-month study that Bygate and Porter (1991) carried out in the United Kingdom was to examine whether repeating a task for the second time has any effects on students’ language production in terms of fluency and linguistic complexity Other researchers interested in the influence of repeating a task on fluency, accuracy, and complexity of second language output include Mennim (2003), Finardi (2008), Birjandi and Ahangari (2008), Baleghizadeh and Derakhshesh (2012) Additionally, Lynch (2001) investigates the effects of task familiarity on noticing, while Finardi (2008) examines the relationship between this variation and working memory capacity THE STUDY 2.1 Participants The participants of the current research were three adult male students studying in one intact English class, which the researcher described earlier in this report One of them is in his late twenties, and the other two are in their early thirties At the time of the study, the English proficiency of two students was roughly at elementary level, and the other student was at beginner level All of them are military officers who share the same first language, that is Vietnamese, and similar cultural background Although preparation for a speaking task is something these students are familiar with, they have been experienced in neither 28 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) videorecording nor transcribing their speech before These learners voluntarily took part in the project by signing a consent in which the purposes as well as the procedures of the study were thoroughly stated, and the participants’ rights were clearly mentioned Further, one of the ways the researcher guaranteed the subjects’ confidentiality was to name them pseudonymously 2.2 Methodology First and foremost, the researcher’s choice of qualitative case study was initiated by Bent Flyvbjerg’s viewpoints as he argues that the closeness of the case study to real-life situations and its multiple wealth of details are not only important for the development of a nuanced view of reality, but also for researchers’ own learning processes in improving the skills needed to good research (Flyvbjerg, 2006, p 223) More specifically, case studies produce context-dependent experience and knowledge, which is essential for any researchers who aim to develop from rule-based beginners to high level experts, as Flyvbjerg (2006) expands his ideas Most importantly, qualitative case study is pertinent to this research aim in that, according to Baxter and Jack (2008), this design empowers the researcher to answer “how” and “why” type questions, and at the same time takes the influential contextual factors into consideration For such a novice researcher, a case study is an exceptional opportunity to gain enormous insight into a case (Baxter and Jack, 2008, p.556) This is because by means of gathering data from various sources, the researcher can explore a phenomenon through a variety of lenses, hence multiple facets of the issue are able to be illuminated and understood (Baxter and Jack, 2008, p.554) The concerned issue is therefore scrutinized from a holistic view, and biased interpretation of data is hoped to be avoided as a result Another plausible reason was that qualitative studies enable the researcher to LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY explore new areas of research via its “principle of openness” (Flick et al., 2004, p.9), thus professional reflection and development becomes a nonstop process Yet two of the drawbacks of qualitative case study are claimed to be the lack of rigour and weak grounds for establishing reliability and generality as a consequence of small sampling (Zainal, 2007, p.5) In an attempt to minimize these disadvantages, the researcher triangulated the data sources by using three tools, including physical artifacts, videotapes, and face-to-face individual semi-structured interviews The first source of data is in the form of the transcripts of student’s oral performance in time and time Lynch (2007) points out that by examining their transcription, the students are more likely to be able to notice, remember, and produce reprocessed forms highlighted in the feedback (p.312) This visible form of speech was obviously crucial for the participants to analyse not just the use of language forms, but the pronunciation of words as well Accordingly, the use of and changes in students’ interlanguage may be easier to be evaluated Videotapes was a dual-purpose tool because they provided audio source for the transcribing as well as the analysing of sounds, while it was hoped to better the researcher’s verification of the changes in students’ affective variables The reason for the use of videotape is that the researcher could obtain supplementary information on body language and facial expressions from this source (Hinchey, 2008, p.85), though at some surface level The last method of data collection, which is semistructured interviewing, is significantly beneficial to the research aims One of the rationales for this method lies in the fact that qualitative interviews can provide rich and in-depth information about the experiences of individuals, as concluded by Dicicco-Bloom and Crabtree (2006) By means of talking face-to-face to the researcher, the participants have a chance to provide the most direct, relevant, and hopefully reliable information about the issues being studied (Hinchey, 2008, p.81) v 2.3 Procedures and data collection The research site was an ordinary classroom at VADAFA with pleasantly quiet surroundings The stages of the two-week research are as follows: Stage 1: On the 18th February 2013, each of the three students (whose pseudonymous names are Minh, Thanh, and Hieu) was given a topic in which they had to narrate their last holiday in about five minutes Narrating has been a common activity in this course, yet they were not told about this specific topic until the first stage took place They had five minutes to prepare for the speaking, and could make some notes on a piece of paper Stage 2: The students spoke without scripts in front of the researcher and other two participants Their performance was videotaped Stage 3: At home, the students watched and listened to their performance again using their personal computer, and handwrote their entire speech verbatim with double-spacing They then tried to correct any mistakes by themselves in red pen, before doing peer correction with another participant (Transcript 1) Stage 4: Four days after stage 3, the students gave transcript to the teacher, who then indicated further corrections and feedback on what the students had missed (Transcript 2) Stage 5: One day later, the researcher returned transcript to its original writer At this stage, the participants re-read their transcript, and they could ask about any points they were unclear in the feedback On the same day, she spent forty five minutes to revise some of the basic linguistic points that the students had trouble with, and about one hour to drill pronunciation of the words that they failed to utter in their speech Also, the researcher introduced some supplementary materials for selfstudy, and had them practise pronunciation with the Pronunciation Power software at home KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) 29 v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY Stage 6: The second trial speaking was videorecorded on the tenth day of the study This time the transcribing was done by the researcher Stage 7: On the 4th March 2013, the students were invited to take part in an individual indepth interview, with the questions being sent to them in advance so that they could have time to consider their answers to those questions The interviews lasted about twenty minutes each, and were taperecorded This final stage aimed to delve into the learners’ views on their own English speaking problems, their understandings of the innovation process, and most crucially, their appraisal of the research as a whole in regards to their learning style and context Basically, the case study followed Mennim (2003) and some of the aforementioned scholars’ procedures, yet it was different from the previous research in some fundamental points First of all, most of these studies were done within classroom hours, and covered a fairly long time span, which is up to three months, whereas this two-week project took place after class hours, in students’ self study time This is because the three participants had to attend normal lessons in the morning with the rest of the class However, in the selfstudy session, they also need to be present in the classroom for two hours in the afternoon, without teacher’s monitoring In addition, the very busy working schedules of both the researcher and the participants restricted the length of time allocated for the research, so the researcher had the learners complete stage three at home in their own time The second difference is that while the subjects in previous studies were mainly at intermediate English proficiency level, all of the participants in this study were at low level when they started to take part in the research Taking these contextual features into great account, the speaking time for the topic was restricted to as short as five minutes, and only a limited number of basic linguistic features was measured That is to say the term “accuracy” in my research question limits itself 30 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) to the ability to build simple sentences using appropriate verb forms, subject-verb agreement, and correct forms of plural nouns Accuracy here also means producing understandable segmental aspects of pronunciation, which are individual sounds Evidence of increased fluency may take various forms, yet due to the small scope of the present study, the amount of pausing and selfrepair was taken into account in order to examine the effects of increasing task familiarity According to Bygate and Porter (1991), pausing is taken as an indication of the number of selection or access problems engaged by the speaker, and includes individual filled and unfilled pauses (p.42) Repairs are considered as false starts, repetitions of words or utterances, incomplete fragments, redundant repeated words, which indicates the speaker’s hesitation about lexical decision (Bygate & Porter, 1991, p.42) As far as the project was carried on, there appeared a few practical ethical issues that are worth reporting The first constraint was again related to the time arranged for the stages As two of the participants often had unexpected personal business to during the research process, the researcher had to rearrange stage and stage twice so that every subject could manage to be ready for the activity Given the fact that people are not always willing to speak truthfully during interviews (Hinchey, 2008, p.81), on the one hand, the researcher clearly advised them of the protection of the learners’ anonymity and the confidentiality of their information, and she tried to develop a rapport with these learners on the other hand Dicicco-Bloom and Crabtree (2006) argue that rapport, which includes trust and respect for the interviewee and the information s/he shares, plays a vital role in the interview (p.316) By setting up a secure and comfortable environment for the videoing as well as interviewing, this positive relationship was successfully created during this entire research process, particularly during the interviewing time Besides, it seems that as the LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY subjects are all adults, they were free from any fears of telling the truth of their speaking shortcomings and the reasons behind that Another potential issue was the English translation of the interviews As all of the students were low-level English speakers, the interviews were done in Vietnamese, which might result in the unreliable translation into English as well as misrepresentation The researcher therefore asked the participants to check the interview’s transcripts for clarification and admendment if needed After that, she invited another competent colleague to read the translation and gave feedback on unclear points Furthermore, while analysing the interviews, she relistened to the original recording so as to ensure the nature of the learner’s intonation, pauses, and hesitations DATA ANALYSIS The data will be presented on a theme-by-theme basis, using qualitative content analysis approach, yet including some quantitative summary The researcher compared the rehearsed transcription with the final one to evaluate the changes to students’ use of verb forms, subject-verb agreement, and plural forms of nouns Also, the changes to the pronunciation as well as the level of fluency were investigated through both the transcripts and videorecordings Changes to levels of anxiety was evidenced mostly from the interview, and some from the videos Surprisingly, some changes in content will be discussed here, though they are not the original focus of the research It is important to note that the students were supposed to speak in five minutes, but on both occasions they spoke for less than the allowed time, maybe due to their inadequate interlanguage This results in the amount of evidence exemplified hereafter 3.1 Verb forms In general, the group successfully modified their use of verb forms after reviewing their rehearsed transcripts On the first artifacts, the total number v of mistakes spotted by both the students and the researcher is 11, and about half of them were successfully repaired in the second trial speaking Table Response to feedback: Verb forms Student Number of suggested repairs on 1st transcript Targetlike repairs in final presentation Structure left out in final presentation Minh Thanh Hieu 1 Hieu made the fewest mistakes of verb forms, but he did not repeat one of them in his final speech Thanh reused more than half of the verbs, he left one highlighted verb unrepaired: Rehearsal Final Performance We get up early and walking We got up early and and walk and walking Thanh showed his confusion about the form of the verb “walk”, which might be explained by the fact that he had had little practice on using simple sentences with compound predicates This is coupled with his opinion in the interview about his English speaking weaknesses: “ One of the most serious difficulties I have been facing in speaking English was the insufficient knowledge of grammar , while the teachers have not created regular speaking practice activities” Both Minh and Thanh replaced their suggested repairs with more familiar verb forms Student Rehearsal Final Performance Minh We enjoy it so much We loved the holiday so much Thanh I like saw the fields I liked the fields Basically, the students were able to make their own alternations to the use of most verb forms in the final speaking, yet to some extent, they seemed to be afraid of repeating the same mistakes, even KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) 31 v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY when those mistakes had been already corrected by the teacher on the first transcript 3.2 Subject-verb agreement As the student narrated a past event, the instances of subject-verb agreement were not frequently observed Totally, errors were noted on the rehearsals Table Response to feedback: Subject-verb agreement Student Minh Suggested repairs on 1st transcript Targetlike repairs in final presentation Structure left out in final presentation - It were next to - It look like a - It was next to Thanh - She live with - She lives with Hieu - Its were in June - It was in June -Ø Unsurprisingly, all the examples of this type of fallacies lie in the third person singular subject-verb agreement, which is a very common trouble when the VADAFA students use present simple verbs Three of the errors were noticed and successfully modified by the students themselves as they worked with their peer before the researcher made the final feedback 3.3 Plural forms of nouns The amount of suggested corrections of this category vary greatly across the subjects The largest number of mistakes was found in Minh’s speech, and he responded very well to five out of six spotted occasions Besides, he was the only one who misused two new plural nouns in the second presentation This may mean that Minh needs more time to practise this specific linguistic area Thanh made the most mistakes on verb forms, but he showed a good grasp of plural forms of nouns, though he used only plural nouns in his first speech Also, very few plural nouns were 32 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) Table Response to feedback: Plural forms of nouns Student Number of Targetlike Nouns left suggested repairs out in final repairs on 1st in final presentation transcript presentation New suggested repairs in final presentation Minh Thanh 0 0 Hieu 2 0 observed in Hieu’s first transcript, and he included changes to both instances in the final performance as a result of collaborating with one of his partners It is worth noting that both Minh and Hieu left out the final letter “s” in all the nouns highlighted in the first transcripts This can be explained by that they did not know when to use a plural noun, or that they understood the rules of using plural nouns, but failed to utter them The former could be a more reasonable explanation because at the time the study was implemented, they learners had merely had some practice on spelling rules of plural nouns without being provided with the clarification of their use However, Thanh was an exception because before this course, as he stated in the interview, he had learnt English for longer time than the other two participants and might have practised using plural nouns more often 3.4 Pronunciation of sounds The most frequently occurring inaccuracies noted in the students’ rehearsal presentations belong to this theme Totally, 27 mispronounced words were highlighted, yet only about half of them were correctly altered by the students It seems that most of the recalled words sound more similar to some of Vietnamese sounds such as also, ice creams, holiday, rice, as crowded as In addition, all the participants had difficulty pronouncing newly-added words in their second speaking, with Hieu facing the most challenges LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY Table Response to feedback: Pronunciation of sounds Student Number of Targetlike Words left New suggested repairs out in final suggested repairs in final presentation repairs in final on 1st presentation presentation transcript Minh 11 Thanh Hieu 5 He failed to fix three words (especially, ancient, much) when repeating the task, while including five more cases of mispronunciation in his second trial, which are went, last, stayed, restaurant, talk These examples indicate Hieu’s inconsistent imperfection in different aspects of sounds, that is he had troubles with pronouncing not only vowel and consonant sounds, but also cluster sounds Minh made his own alternations to pronunciation of less than half of the spotted words The three repeated errors include next, West, wild, and the two new errors include August and walk He appeared to find cluster sounds the most challenging because he pronounced next as /nek/, West as /wet/, wild as /wai/, August as /ɔːgə/ Unlike Minh, Thanh was unable to fix the words with /ʃ/ sounds, including fishing, fresh, she, and some final sounds, as in will and wife in his second speech Although the teacher’s feedback, one-hour pronunciation drilling lesson, and student’s self practice with Pronunciation Power software could result in only half of fruitful targetlike modifications, these interventions helped the students, though to a modest extent, achieve such nontargetlike repairs as word stress, schwa and sound linking Schwa Minh: the bank of the lake, around ­Thanh: a long time ago Sound linking Thanh: and I v Hieu: was in The numerical evidence in Table clearly demonstrates that these students found pronunciation of sounds more challenging than other aspects of English language mentioned in this study This is in accordance with their opinions in the interviews Minh: “ One of the problems I have in speaking English is the pronunciation of individual sounds because I could not pronounce the words correctly right at the beginning, so it becomes my pidginised language.” Thanh: “ even some of the teachers not have good pronunciation, so it is difficult for the students to know whether they themselves pronounce correctly or not , the accuracy in pronunciation is one of the most serious problems to me ” Hieu: “ I find vocabulary and pronunciation the most problematic” Paradoxically, at VADAFA, the majority of the current English teachers were originally trained as Russian teachers When English language became one of the main foreign languages to be taught at this school about twelve years ago, those teachers joined a two-year English course as an ad hoc solution to the new working situation As a result, not only their pronunciation of English is strongly influenced by Russian accent, but many of them underestimate the importance of teaching pronunciation Most of the teachers who have been teaching these three participants are no exception, which may explain why Minh could not pronounce the words correctly at the first time, while Thanh found it difficult to know whether he pronounces the words accurately or not KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) 33 v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY 3.5 Fluency The researcher followed Bygate and Porter’s (1991) procedures of observing changes in students’ fluency, in which the ratios of the amount of pauses and the amount of self-repair to number of words were calculated This is to say the higher the ratio is, the less fluent their speech is Table Comparison of fluency measures on the task at Time and Time Student Ratio pauses: number of words Repairs: number of words Total Minh Thanh Hieu Minh Thanh Hieu Minh Thanh Hieu Narrative task (Time 1) Narrative task (Time 2) 0,11 0,31 0,36 None 0,11 0,06 0,11 0,42 0,42 0,11 0,10 0,16 0,02 0,04 0,03 0,13 0,14 0,19 Two out of three students (Thanh and Hieu) showed dramatic improvements in fluency in the familiar mode, with regard to a decrease in pauses and in self-repairs However, given that Hieu had a lower general English proficiency than Thanh, he created more pauses at Time and at Time than Thanh Also, Hieu did not make many self-repairs because perhaps his interlanguage was limited Minh was the only one who went against the trend of the other two subjects as he made no changes to the proportion of pauses, and even increased his self-repairs at Time Nevertheless, it is important to note that amongst the three subjects, Minh committed the least pauses as well as repairs, which also means he was a more fluent English speaker than Thanh and Hieu 3.6 Degree of anxiety This affective aspect proved to be the most difficult to be measured When scrutinizing the videorecordings, the researcher found very little 34 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) evidence of improvement in students’ confidence The data therefore came mostly from the interviews Thanh was the only one who stated that “so far anxiety when speaking English is not a problem for me”, yet he also confirmed that “After seeing and understanding my weaknesses in the transcript, and being actively involved in diminishing these weaknesses, I felt more confident” Unlike Thanh, anxiety when speaking English was a real problem for Hieu and Minh As a result of being familiar with the task, both the two students expressed that in the second speaking, they felt a little bit more confident, but the feelings of anxiety and nervousness still existed Minh: “I felt a bit less anxious because after my mistakes were corrected, I reviewed them, familiarized myself with the words and structures, and was no longer afraid of making these mistakes, especially the ones on pronunciation” 3.7 Elaboration of content This was an unexpected area of student focus, yet it is worth some analysis as it may open new aspects for future investigation Quantitatively, in their second trial, Minh and Hieu increased the amount of independent clauses, while Thanh did not produce extra sentences Table Number of independent clauses and time of speech Student Number of independent clauses-Time Number of independent clausesTime Minh 16 18 Thanh 19 19 Hieu 13 15 Nevertheless, on a qualitative basis, all of the three participants not only inserted new contents but also modified their language so as to make LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY it more comprehensible in the final presentation In many instances, the elaboration of content aimed to expand the ideas and add more detailed descriptions Student Content Time Content Time Minh .the weather was so good the weather was so good It was sunny and windy, and very pleasant and my two sister were very interested in them My sisters were very interested in them They fed the monkeys bread and banana Thanh .my grandmother can walk My grandmother can walk Si very kind, very funny And I and my wife love si very much Hieu I liked food here so much Weee had a party inn a restaurant near the sea I I liked food here so mut Interestingly, all of the students made some alternations to contents, that is they left out some information in the first speech, and/or added different ideas in the second one For example, the sentence “We take photograph in My Khe beach” was not repeated in Hieu’s final presentation Instead, he ended his narration by making a completely new utterance: “I enjoyed traveling to Danang, I hope I will return Danang soon.” Obviously, the modification of content helped the speech more refined, and accordingly, more sophisticated DISCUSSION 4.1 Discussion In general, the learners showed a certain extent of improvement in both accuracy and fluency in performing the familiar narrative task after about two weeks, with only one exception of Minh on fluency Bearing in mind that Minh’s English proficiency was the best of the three students, as shown in his classroom performance and regular test marks, task repetition may not be much effective in accelerating fluency of higher level v students, whereas the effects were more clearly identified in lower level learners In Minh’s case, the reason could be that he added more new information in his second story than the other two participants, thus executing more selfrepairs was inevitable This result was partly in line with Bygate and Porter’s (1991) research in which their two students coming from English as a Foreign Language (EFL) backgrounds gained more fluency in the repeated task than the one who spoke English as a second language As subject-verb agreement and verb forms are not totally new linguistic areas to these students, they made relatively successful alternations to these features However, it is possible that one of the ways these students avoided repeating the mistakes was to eliminate some of the sentences which included the highlighted verbs in the first transcript, even when these verbs were already feedbacked by the researcher The changes to plural nouns were somehow productive partly because adding letter “s” to a noun is a more simple way than adding “es” or utterly changing the spelling of it As a result, the students perhaps found it fairly easy to pronounce this kind of plural forms However, because only a limited number of plural nouns were used by the three learners, plus Minh had the same trouble with two new nouns in his second speaking, it might be concluded that these participants need more explanations and practice on how to use plural nouns Pronunciation of individual English sounds, unfortunately, has never been systematically introduced to these students before Neither had they had a chance to practise pronunciation with a software In addition, the teacher’s intervening lesson was too short to provide a thorough drill on the entire sound system, whereas student’s self study with Pronunciation Power software in fact depended much on each individual’s time management These might explain why the subjects demonstrated fairly modest advancement in this particular section Despite this fact, a bright KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) 35 v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY signal was that all the students agreed that the transcribing process helped them be aware more of their pronunciation than previously, and they paid more attention to the sounds when starting to speak This short study could not lead to a significant decrease in anxiety, especially in the cases of Minh and Hieu, yet the confidence was somewhat observed in their second performance Moreover, the most striking result was possibly the modification of content, which was most overtly seen in Minh’s and Thanh’s transcript It could be understood that the planning time allowed the students to extend their thoughts, and that some changes in the content might have helped them avoid repeating the mistakes Generally, the learners followed the stages of task repetition closely, except for the transcribing Despite having been clearly instructed and modeled by the researcher, all of them failed to write their articulation word for word at first They either missed the pauses and repetitions of words, or wrote down the words they thought they had said rather than the ones they actually articulated The researcher therefore had to edit some pieces of their information The reasons behind this could be because these learners had had no experience of transcribing verbatim so far, and they did this step at home, thus could not get immediate help from the researcher when necessary 4.2 Reflections on future work The present project was supposed to be the starting point of the researcher’s ongoing cyclical reflective practice For more fruitful results in future research, she may need to adjust a few points First of all, the rehearsed transcribing should be done at the presence of the researcher, just after students finish their recording It is hoped that this could ensure the exactness of the transcript Moreover, when students are familiar with such written reproduction, the final performance may be also transcribed by the speaker themselves It is 36 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) believed that learners will benefit from the second transcribing the way the benefit from the first one, not to mention they can see first hand the changes in their interlanguage, which could be a motivational factor Additionally, this helps the researcher save a lot of time for the whole research process Also, to deal with the problem of large class, she will have them record their speaking in the language labs where there are enough computers for more than fifty students to work synchronically Secondly, various types of task will be used so as to investigate the multifaceted effects of repetition This idea derived from two of the students’ opinions in the interview when the researcher asked them about what she should differently to improve task repetition in the future A circle of two weeks is believed to be enough for reviewing and repeating a task, yet it is unsure to guarantee the longer term effect of the innovation The future projects would hence include successive cycles of task repetition throughout the course in order to make it become a regular practice among students Finally, the researcher may adapt this intervention for writing skill because basically, reviewing a writing piece is to a large extent comparable to reviewing a transcript CONCLUSION The case study’s primary aims were to explore in what ways repeating a narrative speaking task would result in student’s changes to accuracy and fluency It also sought to examine the changes to level of anxiety when speaking as a secondary aim Regarding accuracy, the findings revealed in a fairly similar pattern for all the subjects, that is they generally showed improvements after two weeks However, it can also be concluded that the influence of task repetition on accuracy could have been more effective if the students had been presented and had practised those linguistic features more profoundly earlier in the course The results of fluency took different ends since the LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY v highest level student was immune to the repetition of task, while the other lower level students responded rather well to it Some minor decrease in anxiety was also observed, yet there should be more similar practice in the future in order to achieve significant improvements in this affective variable Interestingly, the modification of content recorded in the learners’ second presentations opens a new research domain It was hoped that this small scale study would set foundations for the researcher’s future innovations, and that by means of gaining such little changes over the course, the VADAFA students would consequently make substantial gains in the foreign language./ References: Baleghizadeh, S & Derakhshesh, A (2012) The effect of task repetition and noticing on EFL learners’ oral output International Journal of Instruction, 5(1), 41-152 Baxter, P., Jack, S (2008) Qualitative case study methodology: Study design and implementation for novice researchers The 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transcribing as a route to noticing ELT Journal, 55(2), 124-132 Lynch, T (2007) Learning from the transcripts of an oral communication task ELT journal, 61(4), 311-320. Mennim, P (2003) Rehearsed oral L2 output and reactive focus on form ELT journal, 57(2), 130-138 ẢNH HƯỞNG CỦA VIỆC LẶP LẠI NHIỆM VỤ TỚI ĐỘ TRÔI CHẢY VÀ ĐỘ CHÍNH XÁC TRONG KỸ NĂNG NĨI TIẾNG ANH CỦA HỌC VIÊN CẤP ĐỘ THẤP: MỘT NGHIÊN CỨU TÌNH HUỐNG TẠI HỌC VIỆN PHỊNG KHƠNG-KHƠNG QN LƯƠNG THỊ PHƯỢNG Tóm tắt: Mục đích nghiên cứu tình điều tra ảnh hưởng việc lặp lại nhiệm vụ tới độ xác độ trơi chảy kỹ nói tiếng Anh ba học viên Bên cạnh đó, nghiên cứu xem xét thay đổi tâm lý thực kỹ nói Phương pháp chủ đạo nghiên cứu định tính, với bổ trợ vài phân tích định lượng Kết nghiên cứu cho thấy, nhìn chung ba học viên có tiến độ xác, độ trôi chảy cho kết không giống Đồng thời, hồi hộp nói ba học viên giảm Trong lần thực nói thứ hai, tất học viên có điều chỉnh nội dung, điều mở hướng nghiên cứu cho tác giả tương lai Từ khóa: độ xác, độ trôi chảy, lặp lại nhiệm vụ, dạy kỹ nói tiếng Anh, Học viện Phòng khơng – Khơng quân Ngày nhận bài: 23/12/2018; ngày sửa chữa: 31/01/2019; ngày duyệt đăng: 28/4/2019 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰ No 19 (5/2019) 37 ... recording so as to ensure the nature of the learner’s intonation, pauses, and hesitations DATA ANALYSIS The data will be presented on a theme-by-theme basis, using qualitative content analysis approach,... this case study aimed to answer the following primary question: • In what ways can task repetition improve my learners’ accuracy and fluency in their English oral performance? And the following... find vocabulary and pronunciation the most problematic” Paradoxically, at VADAFA, the majority of the current English teachers were originally trained as Russian teachers When English language