Task difficulty and self-repair behavior in second language oral production

Abstract

This study investigated how the degree of task difficulty, operationalized as the existence of a loose or tight storyline structure, affects self-repair behavior in L2 oral speech. Thirty Iranian female lower-intermediate EFL learners performed two oral narrative tasks, with loose and tight storyline structures. Then, they listened to the audio-tapes of their own performances and were asked to report their thoughts at the time they were performing the task, retrospectively. Results of the analyses revealed that there is a relationship between task difficulty and self-repair behavior such that with the difficult task, participants mostly effectuated appropriacy and different-information repairs. However the participants who performed the less difficult task were predominantly concerned with rectifying their ungrammatical or lexically inappropriate utterances and therefore executed error-repairs more frequently. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.