The narrative task during speaking practice in the EFL classroom
The challenge of promoting, fluency, accuracy and complexity
Abstract
For more than three decades, tasks have been used to teach and learn the language because they promote cognitive processes required for the development of the L2. However, the performance of tasks has been surrounded by controversy motivated by cognitive and practical limitations which hinder their effectiveness. Following this, the present study was carried out with the objective of exploring the effects of a narrative task on the oral performance of university students with the use of three language dimensions: Complexity, accuracy, and fluency. Also, with the use of interviews, their perceptions concerning the task and their oral performance were examined. The results show that the characteristics of the task encourage students to construct oral structures more complex, but at th expense of fluency and accuracy. Moreover, by exploring the students’ perceptions, the results suggest that the lack of familiarity with the task motivate the students to perceive it as a difficult task, with a high demand of speaking skills and in turn a high complexity to attain the goal of the task. This article provides some pedagogical implications which language teachers might consider when using tasks to practise and evaluate language performance.
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