Does repeated pre-task planning have an impact on form-focused LREs? Evidence from EFL children

Pre-task planning has been shown to improve fluency and complexity in adult learners’ speech in monologic tasks. Previous work considered pretask planning in interactive tasks with young children in an ESL setting and reported that, in general, it had an impact on the amount of talk. However, no study so far has considered the impact of planning on the production of language-related episodes (LREs) by young children. This study examined the relationship between planning time and the accurate production of three target form-focused LREs (FFLREs) by thirty-three dyads of 11–12-year-old EFL learners who took part in a longitudinal experiment in which they narrated picture-prompted stories four times under one of three conditions: unguided planning (12 dyads), guided planning (12 dyads), or no-planning (9 dyads). Results showed that no significant improvement in target feature production was observed across weeks or conditions. Regarding accuracy, a notable difference emerged between the pre-test and delayed post-test in the unguided planning condition. Regarding betweengroup comparisons, although the guided planning group initially demonstrated higher accuracy than their counterparts, this distinction was not maintained. Thus, planning had limited benefits when considering FFLREs. Methodological and pedagogical implications will be discussed.