Effects of repeated practice in pre-task planning on the acquisition of English personal pronouns by Chinese EFL learners

Abstract

Abstract While the literature concentrates on the effects of one-time planning on immediate task performance, this article aims to uncover how repeated practice in planning helps promote L2 learners acquisition of English third-person singular pronouns, conceptualized as pronominal use and selection of referential strategies in their oral monologue. In this study, 63 intermediate-level Chinese EFL learners were enrolled in a longitudinal experiment, in which they narrated picture-prompted stories 12 times under one of three conditions, namely, unguided planning, guided planning, or no planning. Comparison of posttest data among the groups showed that (a) long-term practice in planning facilitated the learners control over accurate use of “he” but not the use of “she”; (b) repeated planning practice did not alter L2 learners strategy for reference selection when doing a new task, but task repetition seemed to improve referential use; and (c) planning guidance did not promote their acquisition of the target form. Such results also suggested that effects of pretask planning might be moderated by the cognitive load required for producing the linguistic forms.