Languagehttp://ltr.sagepub.

com/
Teaching Research

Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level foreign language

classrooms: A study of guided planning and relativization
Naoko Mochizuki and Lourdes Ortega
Language Teaching Research 2008 12: 11
DOI: 10.1177/1362168807084492

The online version of this article can be found at:

http://ltr.sagepub.com/content/12/1/11

Published by:

http://www.sagepublications.com

Additional services and information for Language Teaching Research can be found at:

Email Alerts: http://ltr.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts

Subscriptions: http://ltr.sagepub.com/subscriptions

Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav

Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

Citations: http://ltr.sagepub.com/content/12/1/11.refs.html

>> Version of Record - Jan 7, 2008

What is This?

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 11

Language Teaching Research 12,1 (2008); pp. 11–37

Balancing communication and grammar

in beginning-level foreign language
classrooms: A study of guided
planning and relativization
Naoko Mochizuki Tokyo Metropolitan Koishikawa Secondary
Education School, Japan, and
Lourdes Ortega University of Hawai’i, USA

This study investigated whether pre-task planning that embeds grammatical

guidance to attend to a specific L2 form might be a suitable pedagogical choice in
beginning-level foreign language classrooms. First-year high school students of
English in Japan were asked to do an oral story-retelling task with a class partner
under one of three conditions: without any prior planning (n  17), after 5 minutes
of unguided planning (n  20), or after 5 minutes of planning with guidance in the
form of a grammar handout about English relative clauses (n  19). The resulting
narratives were analyzed for task essentialness, amount and quality of use of
relativization, and global complexity and fluency. It was found that the guided
planning group produced more and more accurate relative clauses in their narratives
than the other two groups, to both statistically significant and large degrees, while at
the same time exhibiting global levels of complexity and fluency that were similar to
those of the other two groups. The results show that guided planning can succeed in
creating favorable conditions for striking a pedagogical balance between
communication and grammar, even with high school learners at incipient levels of
proficiency and under conditions that are typical of many foreign language contexts.

Keywords: English as a foreign language, foreign language education, pre-task

planning, relative clauses, task-based language learning

I Introduction
Communicative language use, meaning making, and collaboration are valued
features in influential contemporary theories of instructed second language
acquisition and in proposals made by advocates of task-based language teach-
ing (R. Ellis, 2003; Skehan, 2003) and form-focused instruction (Doughty &
Williams, 1998; Spada, 1997). And yet, it is not uncommon for teachers who

Address for correspondence: Lourdes Ortega, Department of Second Language Studies, Moore Hall
585, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa, 1890 East-West Road, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, 96822, USA; email:
[email protected]

© 2008 SAGE Publications (Los Angeles, London, New Delhi and Singapore) 10.1177/1362168807084492

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 12

12 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

work in foreign language (FL) contexts with students at incipient levels of

proficiency to object that pedagogical approaches that revolve around com-
munication, meaning, and collaboration do not suit well their classroom realities.
In a country like Japan, for example, large English language classes of 30 to 40
students and extremely scarce chances for interaction in the target language out-
side the classroom are the norm. Thus, beginning-level learners can be expected
to encounter very few opportunities for individually tailored communicative and
form-focused experiences, if the responsibility for initiating and monitoring such
one-on-one experiences is solely placed on already overburdened classroom
teachers or on rarely available target language (L2) users outside the classroom.
It is no wonder then that resistance or at least skepticism is a common teacher
response to the top-down policy efforts by the ministry of Education in Japan to
change the English as a foreign language (EFL) school curriculum from a trad-
itional focus on grammar and reading to an instructional focus on communica-
tion (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT),
2003). To get the important job done of preparing their students for university
entrance exams, which mainly test English reading skills and knowledge of
grammar and vocabulary, many Japanese teachers choose to teach grammar at
the expense of teaching communication. Studies about teachers’ perceptions of
Communicative Language Teaching in Japan reveal that behind such tensions
lies the belief that teaching for communication does not help with grammar
learning (Browne & Wada, 1998; O’Donnell, 2005; Sakui, 2004).
In the present study, we explore a pedagogical choice during task-based L2
performance which we believe holds particular promise for enabling a balance
between teaching for grammar and for communication in FL contexts, particu-
larly with learners who are still beginning to develop their capacities in the target
language. Specifically, we investigate whether pre-task planning that embeds
grammatical guidance to attend to a specific L2 form might be a suitable peda-
gogical choice to foster potentially interlanguage-expanding L2 practice among
school-aged, low-proficiency FL learners. Our approach is motivated by what
we see as an imperative to conduct task-based language learning research that
addresses problems of educational relevance (Bygate, 2007). Our goal is to con-
tribute context-responsive knowledge about pedagogical options that strike a
balance between a focus on communication and grammar and are appropriate
for implementation in beginning-level foreign language classrooms.

II Balancing communication and grammar

Tasks have come to be seen as a main vehicle for promoting meaningful practice
in the L2, engendering potentially competence-expanding interaction (Long,
1996), and generating pushed output (Swain, 1998). There are many under-
standings of what a task is, but Nunan’s (1993) definition is conveniently broad
and can be recognized by L2 teachers and researchers alike: ‘a piece of class-
room work which involves learners in comprehending, manipulating, producing

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 13

Mochizuki and Ortega 13

or interacting in the target language while their attention is principally focused

on meaning rather than form’ (p. 59). The focus on meaning during task engage-
ment, however, entails potential risks for L2 learning if attention to the message
overrides attention to the code (Skehan & Foster, 2001). For that reason, many
proponents of task-based language teaching recommend that some element of
attention to the code be externally orchestrated during task performance. The
psycholinguistic rationale is that learners need to notice linguistic features
(Schmidt, 1995) and that attention processes summoned during meaningful lan-
guage use can often make target linguistic structures salient and more noticeable
(Robinson, 2007). In turn, these noticing opportunities are thought to be favor-
able for interlanguage development, that is, for grammar learning. By infusing
tasks with an attentional focus on the language code, the proposal goes, we can
‘teach’ both communication and grammar to our students (Ortega, 2007).
Researchers vary in their proposals for how this attention to the code during
task-based performance ought to be best achieved. Some stress the psycho-
linguistic importance of striking a simultaneous attentional balance between
form and meaning, as in the focus-on-form position outlined by Doughty and
Williams (1998). Others emphasize the need to introduce more explicit and
proactive elements in the design of tasks, for example via pre- and post-task
activities where accuracy is prioritized (Skehan & Foster, 2001), in order to pre-
empt the possibility that learners will sacrifice accuracy in favor of getting the
message across.
Yet other researchers suggest that tasks can be designed so that specific forms
are used in the service of meaningful communication. The term ‘focused’ tasks
has been suggested by R. Ellis (2003) to distinguish such cases from both ‘un-
focused’ tasks, in which no particular form is targeted, and grammar drills, in
which meaningful communication is given only secondary importance. Particu-
larly addressing the realities of EFL teaching in Japan, Fotos (2002) advocates
the suitability of focused tasks (or structure-based tasks, as she calls them). She
argues that focused tasks can provide learners with opportunities for interaction
and output while accomplishing the grammatical goals that are unavoidably pri-
oritized in many FL curricula. Loschky and Bley-Vroman (1993) raised the
important caution that it may not be sufficient to design a communicative activ-
ity in which the use of a given grammatical point simply appears to be possible,
natural, or even useful. Instead, they suggested that the ideal type of focused task
is one in which the use of a particular form is made essential for successful task
completion. They coined the term task essentialness to refer to this task design
feature.
In a recent meta-analysis of 14 task-based interaction studies, 10 of which
involved FL learners of English, Japanese, and Spanish, Keck, Iberri-Shea,
Tracy-Ventura, and Wa-Mbaleka (2006) provided robust evidence of the
empirical link between oral task-based activities and the learning of vocabulary
and grammar targets. Specifically, they found that the gains for groups who
used the targeted L2 forms during task-based interaction were substantial, with
an average effect size around d  0.90, that is, almost a standard deviation unit

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 14

14 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

better than the baseline groups. In a few cases, primary researchers had striven
by design to make these forms essential for completion of the L2 tasks,
in Loschky and Bley-Vroman’s sense. Keck, Iberri-Shea, Tracy-Ventura, and
Wa-Mbaleka (2006) found that in such cases the effects not only endured but
grew stronger (d  1.66) over a lag period of up to about a month.
Thus, both sufficient empirical evidence and ample theoretical motivation
suggest that it is possible to strike a pedagogical balance between communi-
cation and grammar during task-based performance. Optimally designed
communication, in which learners are asked to engage in L2 use while creat-
ing and negotiating referential and interpersonal meaning, can foster gram-
matical acquisition. A challenge, however, is to ensure that the use of certain
formal linguistic resources is made as essential as possible to the meaning of
the task at hand. In addition, learners may need to be encouraged and assisted
to attend to form as well as meaning.

III Pre-task planning and interlanguage performance

Planning, or the provision of preparation time before completing a task, is one
of the pedagogic techniques most widely studied in the task-based teaching lit-
erature to date (see R. Ellis, 2005b). The rationale is that if learners are asked
to plan, their limited cognitive resources are freed up during actual performance
and more space is available for attending to micro areas of production besides
content and meaning, including formal aspects of the L2 code. Evidence for the
facilitative role in interlanguage oral production of pre-task planning has been
found in foreign language contexts, such as with FL German learners in the UK
(Mehnert, 1998), FL Spanish learners in the USA (Ortega, 1999), and EFL
learners in Japan (Kawauchi, 2005; Wendel, 1997), China (Yuan & Ellis, 2003),
and Thailand (Sangarun, 2005). The extant findings generally converge to the
conclusion that the speech produced after planning is more complex and fluent,
and some times (although not always) more accurate, than unplanned speech.
However, with the exception of Sangarun (2005), planning researchers
have focused exclusively on university students, who typically have already
achieved some intermediate level of proficiency in the L2 and can be con-
sidered relatively mature in terms of cognitive and metacognitive functioning.
More evidence is needed before we can generalize these planning findings
to high school learners of beginning proficiency who are cognitively and
metacognitively less mature. Namely, the nature and quality of planning, and
its subsequent effects on linguistic performance, may be different when pro-
ficiency is only incipient and students are young.

IV Guided planning
An interesting strategy for investigating how to promote the quality of produc-
tion through pre-task planning is to modify instructions and requirements

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 15

Mochizuki and Ortega 15

during planning, that is, to manipulate the very nature of planning. A particular
concern in this strand of research has been with fostering linguistic accuracy, an
area in which planning effects have resisted firm conclusions. Indeed, some
researchers have reported accuracy benefits (e.g. Ellis, 1987; Kawauchi, 2005;
Sangarun, 2005), but others have found no accuracy differences (Crookes,
1989; Wendel, 1997; Yuan & Ellis, 2003) and yet others have uncovered vari-
able accuracy effects according to task type (Foster & Skehan, 1996), linguis-
tic feature (Ortega, 1999), learners’ proficiency (Wigglesworth, 1997), or the
length of the planning time (Mehnert, 1998).
Foster and Skehan (1996, 1999) have addressed the possibility that certain
types of planning may accrue differential advantages in interlanguage per-
formance, and particularly in the evidently more resilient area of accuracy. In
the first study, they hypothesized that what they called detailed/guided plan-
ning would enable learners to aim for greater accuracy during oral perform-
ance than undetailed/unguided planning and no planning at all. In the end,
however, an advantage for the guided condition was observed in the complex-
ity, but not the accuracy, of the resulting performances. In the second study,
they compared different sources of planning (teacher-led, solitary, or group-
based) in combination with different foci during planning (on language or on
content). Another novel feature of the design was that the conditions involving
a focus on language directed learners’ attention to specific L2 forms: modal
verbs and conditionals. As it turned out, the benefits were different for differ-
ent sources of planning, but the language versus content focus did not seem to
matter. Reflecting upon their own research methodology, Foster and Skehan
wondered if their operationalizations of the two planning foci were distinct
enough. For example, in the content-focused, teacher-led condition, in order to
provide content as preparation, the relevant structures were inevitably used.
We would also note that, while modal verbs and conditionals were specifically
targeted in the language-focus conditions, a global accuracy measure (error-
free clauses) was subsequently employed to gauge the effects. Thus, we cannot
discard the possibility that target-specific increases in accuracy, if any, may
have gone undetected.
More recently, Sangarun (2005) asked 40 sixteen- and seventeen-year old
high school students in Thailand to engage in one of four conditions: minimal,
meaning-focused, form-focused, and meaning-plus-form-focused planning. In
the form-focused condition, students were asked to pay attention to up to four
specific structures in each task. As in Foster and Skehan (1999), accuracy was
subsequently evaluated via global measures (percentage of error-free clauses
and number of errors per 100 words). Unlike Foster and Skehan, however,
Sangarun reported positive effects for the three planning conditions on the
quality of speech, including accuracy. She argued that past operationalizations
of specific types of planning may have failed to orient participants to pay atten-
tion to form and accuracy in appropriate ways.
In sum, the accumulated findings suggest that in order to maximize the effect-
iveness of planning time some sort of guidance is beneficial, particularly when

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 16

16 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

increased accuracy is the goal. At the same time, it is clear that deciding on the
appropriate nature and content of that pre-task planning guidance has proven to
be a challenge in previous research. We argue that from a pedagogical standpoint,
carefully operationalized guidance is even more important when low-proficiency
and young learners are asked to do the planning. In addition, we believe that it
makes good theoretical sense to look for any expected benefits specifically in the
use of the L2 targets to which attention is drawn via guided planning.

V The present study

Our study was designed to explore the effects of guiding learners to attend to
a specific linguistic target during planning prior to an oral communication
task, taking into account the issues raised by past research as well as the edu-
cational concerns that characterize many FL contexts. The independent vari-
able was planning with three levels: no planning, unguided planning (planning
without grammatical guidance), and guided planning (planning with gram-
matical guidance). In keeping with previous studies, three qualities of learners’
task performance were examined: accuracy, complexity, and fluency. We rede-
fined accuracy, however, as the quality of use of the same specific form that
our guided planning treatment targeted: English relative clauses. The follow-
ing research questions and corresponding predictions were investigated:
Task essentialness: To what extent can EFL learners with beginning-level
proficiency be supported to engage in relativization while producing meaningful
L2 oral output on a communicative task? It was hypothesized that efforts to
address by design task essentialness (in Loschky & Bley-Vroman’s 1993 sense)
would enhance the ability among incipient proficiency learners to engage in nar-
rative production that contains relativization.
Amount and quality of relative clause use: How does planning opportunity,
with and without grammatical guidance to attend to English relativization,
influence the amount and the quality of the relative clauses produced during an
oral narrative task by EFL high school learners? Following Sangarun (2005) as
well as the rationales of form-focused instruction, it was hypothesized that the
guided-planning group would produce more and more accurate relative clauses
than the other two groups, given that they were externally supported to pay
attention to and use this particular form. On the other hand, no significant dif-
ferences were expected in either the amount or the accuracy of relativization
between the unguided-planning and the no-planning groups, since neither con-
dition entailed a specific focus on relativization.
Global complexity: How does planning opportunity, with and without
guidance, affect the syntactic complexity of L2 oral narratives? In keeping
with findings reported by Foster and Skehan (1996) and Sangarun (2005),
both planning groups were predicted to produce more complex oral narratives
than the no-planning group.

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 17

Mochizuki and Ortega 17

Global fluency: How does planning opportunity, with and without guidance,
affect the fluency of L2 oral narratives? Both planning groups were hypothe-
sized to exhibit more fluent oral production than the no-planning group. In
addition, it was predicted that the guided-planning group would not be as fluent
as the unguided-planning group because, following Skehan (1996), some trade-
off effects might be expected. Namely, since the guided-planning condition
attempts to attract learners’ attention toward relative clauses, the learners may
prioritize accurate use of the target feature at the expense of fluency.

VI Method
1 Participants
The participants were 56 fifteen- and sixteen-year-old students, who were asked
to be speakers in an oral task, and their classmates, who took the role of listen-
ers (n  112 total). All students were enrolled in a public high school in Tokyo,
Japan. The speakers were 11 males and 45 females. They were assigned to a no
planning group (n  17), an unguided planning group (n  20), and a guided
planning group (n  19). Assignment to each condition was done blindly, but
not randomly. Rather, it was based on student membership into six intact
classes. All first-year students in this high school were required to take an
English exam at the beginning of the school year, the results of which were used
to place them into one of six upper-level and six basic-level classes. The six
upper-level intact English classes were recruited to participate in this study. All
students signed written consent forms, and two classes were arbitrarily assigned
to each of the three experimental conditions.
That the participants’ proficiency was still incipient was confirmed by the
results of a survey of the students’ English learning history. Over half of the
speakers (33 or 57%) reported that they began to learn English in junior high
school. Thus, at the time of the research, they all had studied English in school
for 3 to 5 hours weekly for approximately four years, as is typical in formal
education settings in Japan. Since some had also received private English
lessons prior to beginning English in school, the overall average length of
English study was 5.5 years. None of the students reported living abroad for
longer than a month. One student had a British parent but reported speaking in
Japanese only at home. The results on the Society for Testing English Profi-
ciency test (STEP), a standardized English proficiency test in Japan, were avail-
able for 50 of the 56 speakers. The great majority (35 or 70%) had passed the
third level of the STEP test. This level is approximately equivalent to a TOEFL
score range of 360–380 (TOFL Seminar, 2005). Only a small group (14 or
28%) had passed the pre-second level of the STEP test, which is approximately
equivalent to a TOEFL score range of 400–420 according to the same TOFL
Seminar (2005) source.

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 18

18 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

2 Task design and procedures

A picture story-retelling was chosen in order to enhance the comparability of
findings with previous planning studies, many of which have featured this task
type. An additional important reason is that high school Japanese students are
familiar with this type of task. For example, the interview portion of the STEP
test employs story retelling, and so did some of the students’ previous text-
books. Task familiarity was desirable in order to allay these beginning-level
students’ fear of speaking in the L2.
The picture story-retelling prompt was created specifically for the study, fol-
lowing closely the task and procedures described in Ortega (1999). (For reasons
of space, partial materials are shown in the Appendices; complete task mater-
ials and instructions are available from the authors upon request.) As in Ortega
(1999), the speakers also listened to a pre-recorded version of the description of
the pictures. The rationale for having an audio narrative stimulus was to make
the content of the story less open to interpretation as well as to discourage learn-
ers from skipping details. In a departure from the previous Spanish study, how-
ever, the story was delivered in the L2, rather than the L1 (see Appendix A).
This design decision was in response to the learners’ low proficiency level.
Namely, we (and their teachers) feared that they might have perceived too wide
of a gap between an L1 stimulus narrative and what they could do with their
own beginning English abilities; if so, they may have frozen and produced very
little or no English. Furthermore, a pre-recorded L2 narrative was ideal to help
us foster task essentialness during performance for all speakers, as will be
explained in more detail in Section 4 below.
The task was done during regular class time in the students’ regular class-
room. All instructions were delivered in Japanese. The 112 participants were
grouped in pairs and randomly assigned to the speaker and listener role. The 56
speakers were given pictures depicting the complete story (see Appendix B),
while the 56 listeners were given jumbled pictures, including some distracters.
This created an information gap and a communicative motivation for speakers
to explain the details of the story. While the speakers were engaged in listening
to the L2 recorded story (and in planning, for two of the conditions), the listen-
ers were asked to guess and write the storyline of their pictures. No time pres-
sure was placed on the speakers in any of the three conditions once they began
retelling their stories to their partners. As they listened to the story, the listeners
chose the right pictures from their full set.
After completing the task, all students were asked to answer a questionnaire
about their English learning history (see Participants section). The speakers in
the four intact classes assigned to the two planning conditions were also asked
to fill out a questionnaire about their strategic behavior during planning. Un-
fortunately, this latter instrument elicited responses that were too brief and
vague to be interpretable and the data had to be discarded. The difficulty was
perhaps due to our inexperience in designing paper-and-pencil questions that

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 19

Mochizuki and Ortega 19

would encourage teenage students to engage in metacognitive and metalin-

guistic introspection.

3 Operationalizations of unguided and guided planning

Speakers in the no-planning group were asked to retell the story immediately
after listening to the L2 story while looking at the pictures. By contrast, speak-
ers in the two planning groups were asked to engage in planning for five min-
utes after experiencing the same aural and pictorial stimuli. This departure from
the conventional 10-minute planning time featured in many previous studies
was decided on the basis of results from a pilot study conducted in the same
context, in which no time limit was set for planning. Under such conditions, the
pilot participants had begun to tell the story approximately after three to four
minutes of preparation.
The two planning conditions differed in the following way. Those in the
unguided planning group were told to prepare for the retelling carefully during
their five minutes so that they could convey as many details of the story as pos-
sible to the partner. They were not given any specific instruction on language
to be possibly used. In the guided-planning group each participant received
these same instructions. In addition, they also received a handout which briefly
explained how to make sentences using relative clauses (see Appendix C). The
participants were told that the explanation may be helpful for their story-telling
and were encouraged to refer to it as needed while preparing for the task. They
were also told they would not be able to look at the handout once they began
retelling the story.

4 The L2 target: English relativization

Relative clauses were targeted in the present study because the learnability of
this aspect of English is well understood. Therefore, the extant SLA research
findings could be most usefully brought to bear on our design of the treat-
ment. It also aided greatly in the development of our analytical measures.
Evidence by Pavesi (1986) suggests that L2 relativization is a late-acquired
system but that instructed learners have an advantage over naturalistic learners
in terms of rate and ultimate attainment. Indeed, relative clauses are taught
during the second and third year of junior high school in Japan, and therefore we
expected this to be a known structure for our participants. On the other hand, and
in agreement with Izumi (2003), we expected our participants would experience
difficulties with productive use of relativization. Furthermore, considering their
beginning proficiency, we decided to target only the easiest types of relative
clauses. Following the careful review by Izumi (2003), we concluded these were:
object–subject (OS, I like the dog which has long ears), object–direct object
(OO, I want the dog which the little girl has in her arms), and subject– subject
(SS, The dog which has long ears looks friendly).

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 20

20 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

Our predictions of difficulty were confirmed by the results of a paper-and-

pencil test administered to the six intact classes approximately two weeks
before the experiment. The instrument tested knowledge of OS, OO, and SS
English relative clauses and consisted of a comprehension subtest with six
sentence-translation items and a production subtest with six sentence-combining
items. The results are shown in Table 1. As expected, these learners’ produc-
tive knowledge of relativization lagged behind their receptive knowledge. On
the comprehension subtest, almost all participants responded correctly to
almost all items, resulting in high means, narrow standard deviations, and a
very low Cronbach alpha reliability index for this part of the test (  0.24).
By contrast, the production subtest resulted in lower means, individual per-
formances that were widely spread (as shown in larger standard deviations),
and therefore better internal test reliability (  0.70). It should be noted that
the results in Table 1 were submitted to a multivariate analysis of variance
(MANOVA) with alpha set at p  0.05. The MANOVA revealed no significant
differences across the three groups in either comprehension or production of
the target structure (F [2, 54]  0.133, p  0.97), indicating that knowledge of
the target structure was roughly equivalent across the three conditions.
Schachter (1974) convincingly showed that relative clauses are easily
avoided in L2 production, particularly by Japanese L1 learners. It was therefore
all the more important to take great care to design the task materials and pro-
cedures so as to make the use of relative clauses as essential as possible for
completion of the task in Loschky and Bley-Vroman’s (1993) sense. To achieve
this goal, the story was designed to contain seven obligatory contexts for the use
of the target structure and the aural L2 stimulus was seeded with the 7 English
relative clauses (cf. Appendix A). This strategy added pressure to make rela-
tivization essential to the completion of this particular task. It should be noted
that the choice of an L2 aural stimulus was a key ingredient of this task essen-
tial design. An aural stimulus in the L1 could not have served our task essential
needs as well, since it is well known that what counts as a relative clause in
Japanese and English is quite different (Comrie, 2002; Hakuta, 1981; for recent
research on L2 relativization in East Asian languages, see Shirai & Ozeki,
2007).

Table 1 Paper-and-pencil relativization test

Test Condition n mean sd min. max.

Comprehension No planning 17 5.65 0.61 4 6

Unguided planning 20 5.65 0.59 4 6
Guided planning 19 5.53 0.77 4 6
Production No planning 17 4.35 1.70 0 6
Unguided planning 20 4.40 1.19 2 6
Guided planning 19 4.30 1.50 1 6

Note: Total possible maximum score  6

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 21

Mochizuki and Ortega 21

Finally, SLA researchers, and particularly Gass (1979) and Izumi (2003),
have offered an inventory of typical L2 developmental errors when attempting
relativization (e.g. resumptive pronouns, preposition deletion, and so on), and
we made use of these findings in our devising of the relative clause coding
system, which is explained in detail in the next section.

5 Interlanguage analyses
a Amount of relative clauses: The raw frequency of relative clauses pro-
duced per narrative and group was tallied and statistically compared. Non-
targetlike renditions of relativization were accepted as long as it was clear that a
relative clause was intended by the speaker (e.g. as evinced by the presence of a
relative pronoun).

b Quality of relative clause use: We developed a polytomous six-point

scoring system in order to be able to gauge the L2 relative clause performances
in this understudied population of L2 learners, who not only were of low profi-
ciency but also had little familiarity with speaking. First, we undertook a care-
ful review of the L2 relative clause literature (and particularly the errors attested
and described by Gass, 1979; and Izumi, 2003). We then conducted a bottom
up analysis of the realizations of the seven relative clause contexts in each of
the 56 learner narratives. Based on the insights yielded by these two steps, we
finally decided on the following six levels of performance quality: (a) perfectly
accurate relativization (5 points); (b) recognizable but non-targetlike relatives
showing developmental solutions attested in the SLA literature (4 points); (c)
non-targetlike features resulting from processing overload (3 points); (d) unsuc-
cessful and near-unintelligible attempts that exhibited traces of both develop-
mental solutions and processing breakdown (2 points); (e) simplification of
relativization by recourse to alternative structures (1 point); and (f) complete
avoidance of the content targeted for relativization, which was not rendered in
the narrative (0 points). Maximum total score in the use of relativization in the
narrative task was 35 points (a maximum of 5 points by 7 contexts for obliga-
tory suppliance). Table 2 lists more detailed definitions and examples for each
of the six scoring levels.
As an anonymous reviewer noted, this polytomous scoring scheme captures
a combination of amount (scores 0 and 1, where the targeted contexts and/or the
relative forms were avoided) as well as degree of accurate use of relativization
(scores 2 through 5, where a relative clause was used with less or more accur-
acy) and is more performance based than linguistically based. However, it
also has two crucial advantages when analyzing the quality of oral relative
clause production in low-proficiency samples like ours. First, it allows for an
interlanguage-sensitive measurement of performance of relativization rather
than an all-or-nothing binary accuracy scoring. Second, it maintains the number
of contexts to be assessed constant across learners (k  7), thus making the

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 22

22 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

Table 2 Relative clause scoring scheme

Descriptor Definition Example Points

Targetlike A relative clause that exhibits ‘I want the dog which 5

suppliance targetlike relativization; have long ear’
it may contain one or
more errors that are
irrelevant to the target
structure, such as verb
tense or the use of articles
Developmental A relative clause that 1. Pronoun retention: 4
suppliance contains any of four error ‘I want the dog which
types (i.e. pronoun many people are
retention, nonadjecency, watching dog.’
incorrect relative marker, 2. Non-adjacency: ‘The
and inappropriate relative dog is friendly which
pronoun omission) described has long hair.’
in the previous studies 3. Non-targelike relative
on relative clauses (e.g. marker morphology:
Izumi, 2003) ’Ken likes the dog
who has long ears.’
4. Relative pronoun
omission:’I like the
dog has long ears.’
Attempt with Relative clause attempted ‘She wants which has 3
processing but containing a breakdown long ears.’
overload such as omission of head ‘She wants the dog
noun or verb in the relative which long ears.’
clause; these cases were
frequent in the sample but
have not been attested in
previous studies of English
relativization
Least succes- Relative clause where both ‘Kanako wants to buy 2
sful attempt developmental and pro- which has long hair
cessing load errors combine and long ear dog.’
to cloud the success of the
product and hinder
intelligibility
Simplification An utterance in which the 1. A direct translation 1
of form participant tried to convey form Japanese ‘long
meaning without attem- ear dog’ vis-à-vis ‘the
pting relativization, via dog that has long ear’
alternative structures; 2. Alternative structures
these include either the in English ‘the dog
structure derived from a with long hair’
direct translation form
Japanese or alternative
structures in English
Avoidance of Formulation of the content 0
content involved in one of the seven

(continued)

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 23

Mochizuki and Ortega 23

Table 2 (continued)

Descriptor Definition Example Points

contexts for obligatory sup-

pliance was not attempted
Partial An utterance that fell short of ‘Mother wants the dog Dedu-
scoring being placed in one category which Kanako holds.’ ction
but did not exactly fit in the Although structurally of
category below. The majority this utterance was 0.5
of these cases involved mis- Nearly Perfect (5),
understandings or slips of based on the pictures
the tongue that changed the it was the little girl
meaning from the and not Kanako who
original story held the dog in her
arms. Therefore 4.5
was awarded

Note: All illustrations are from the data collected in the present study

scores into a true interval scale that can be directly submitted to inferential analy-
sis without performing arcsine or other kinds of transformation. With a low-
proficiency sample like this, where some speakers produced all 7 expected
relative clauses, others only half of them, and yet others none of them, it would
be difficult to propose percentage based interpretations about performance and
accuracy across participants. Two independent raters obtained a simple percent-
age agreement of 92% using the coding system on a randomly selected 10% of
the data.

c Global complexity: Complexity was tapped via three measures: the num-
ber of words divided by the number of T-units in each narrative (henceforth
MLTU), the number of subordinate or dependent clauses divided by the number
of T-units in each narrative (henceforth DCTU), and the number of relative
clauses divided by the number of T-units in each narrative (henceforth RCTU).
MLTU gauges general global complexity that may have been achieved by any
means, for example, via increased use of modification such as adjectives and
adverbs, increased use of subordination, or a mixture of both. By comparison,
DCTU is a more specific measure of complexity achieved via subordination
only. The third measure, RCTU, was calculated in order to tease out increases
in overall subordination from treatment-induced increases in relative clause use
specifically. A T-unit was defined as a main clause with or without subordinate
clauses. It is the most popular unit for the analysis of both written and spoken
performance. Alternative segmentation units exist that allow for the inclusion of
fragments with no syntactic status (see Foster, Tonkyn, & Wigglesworth, 2000).
However, speech at this incipient level of proficiency comprised so many sen-
tence fragments that were brief and simple in structure that, if included in the
counts, they would have unfairly depressed the appraisal of complexity with
these beginning speakers. A randomly selected 10% of the transcripts were

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 24

24 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

segmented into T-units by a second coder, yielding an intercoder simple percent

agreement of 95%.

d Global fluency: Fluency was operationalized as speech rate and measured

as the mean number of words per minute. We followed a modification of the
pruned speech rate employed by Lennon (1990). First, all the speech transcripts
were pruned by deleting pauses of more than three seconds, fillers, off-task utter-
ances, and L1 conversation with partners. Then, the number of words (excluding
self-repetitions, self-corrections, and any L1 utterances) was divided by the total
time length of pruned performance.

VII Results
The task essential qualities of the story-telling design were evaluated by tallying
the actual attempts at formulating the seven contexts for relative clauses. The
total attested number of relative clauses in the corpus was 132 (out of a total tar-
geted 392 possible, or seven per narrative). On average, these EFL high school
learners produced a low mean of 2.36 relative clauses per narrative, although
individual production varied greatly (sd  2.24). Thirty-six percent of the speak-
ers produced four or more of the expected seven relative clauses in their L2 nar-
ratives, whereas 27% produced between three and one relative clauses only, and
36% produced no relative clause at all. We also inspected, for each obligatory
context separately, the number of participants who produced the expected rela-
tive clause (supplied), the number of them who conveyed the content in the story
but circumvented the use of relativization by choosing to use some other struc-
ture (simplified), and the number of speakers who avoided the formulation of
that content altogether (avoided). Table 3 displays the results.

Table 3 Seven obligatory contexts for relativization and their suppliance patterns

Contexts Avoideda Simplifiedb Suppliedc

Speakers % Speakers % Speakers %

1(OS) 1 2 28 50 27 48
2(OO) 35 63 11 20 10 18
3(OS) 0 0 28 50 28 50
4(OO) 27 48 16 29 13 23
5(SS) 33 59 8 14 15 27
6(SS) 33 59 13 23 10 18
7(OO) 5 9 21 38 30 54

Notes: aAll instances of a score of 0 in the relative clause scoring scheme.

bAll instances of a score of 1 in the relative clause scoring scheme.
c All instances of a score of 2, 3, 4, or 5 in the relative clause scoring scheme. The

seven contexts are given in Appendix A.

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 25

Mochizuki and Ortega 25

It can be seen that contexts 1, 3, and 7 were most successful in that they fea-
tured in the narratives of almost all speakers. However, even in these cases
about equal numbers of speakers managed to deliver the message using and
without using the targeted relative structure. An even bleaker picture is seen for
the four remaining, least successful contexts where speakers completely
avoided the formulation of that content between 48% and 63% of the time.
These results remind us that, as Loschky and Bley-Vroman (1993, p. 140) an-
ticipated, task essentialness may be an unattainable goal when designing pro-
duction tasks. Nevertheless, the data collected in this study indicate that at
least task usefulness may be a reasonable goal, even with low-proficiency
learners.
Table 4 shows the descriptive statistics for the five interlanguage measures in
the narratives produced across the three experimental conditions. In order to
investigate the statistical significance of any mean differences observed, the data
were submitted first to an omnibus test, a multivariate analysis of variance
(MANOVA) with alpha set at p  0.05. The results revealed a significant effect
for the independent variable (Pillai’s trace F [2, 54]  3.61, p  0.00, 2  0.31).
Therefore, univariate follow-up tests were conducted on each of the five inter-
language measures. The results are shown in Table 5.

Table 4 Descriptive statistics for interlanguage measures

Measure Condition n mean sd Min. Max.a

Amount of RC No planning 17 1.59 1.97 0 5

Unguided planning 20 1.75 2.07 0 6
Guided planning 19 3.68 2.11 0 7
Quality of RC use a No planning 17 10.82 7.66 3 24
Unguided planning 20 10.25 8.18 2.50 28.50
Guided planning 19 17.84 9.10 3.50 33.50
MLTU No planning 17 8.53 1.92 5.89 12.89
Unguided planning 20 8.49 1.75 6.22 12.80
Guided planning 19 9.02 2.15 5.50 14.00
DCTU No planning 17 0.37 0.38 0.00 1.11
Unguided planning 20 0.43 0.50 0.00 1.80
Guided planning 19 0.63 0.34 0.00 1.17
RCTU No planning 17 0.16 0.20 0.00 0.50
Unguided planning 20 0.25 0.31 0.00 1.00
Guided planning 19 0.57 0.33 0.00 1.17
Words/minute No planning 17 50.42 9.72 36.64 70.71
Unguided planning 20 58.65 11.41 43.64 86.79
Guided planning 19 54.66 11.72 34.38 84.00

Note: RC  Relative clause; MLTU  Mean length of T-unit in words; DCTU  Mean
number of dependent clauses per T-unit; RCTU  Mean number of relative clauses
per T-unit.
a Maximum score  35.

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 26

26 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

Table 5 Univariate follow-up test results

Source Dependent Sum of df Mean F p

variable squares square

Planning Amount of RC 50.88 2, 53 25.44 6.02 0.00

Quality of RC use 677.25 2, 53 338.63 4.85 0.01
MLTU 1.28 2, 53 1.66 0.44 0.65
DCTU 0.12 2, 53 0.33 1.90 0.16
RCTU 1.67 2, 53 0.84 10.02 0.00
Words per minute 624.81 2, 53 312.40 2.56 0.09

Note: RC  Relative clause; MLTU  Mean length of T-unit in words; DCTU  Mean
number of dependent clauses per T-unit; RCTU  Mean number of relative clauses
per T-unit

It can be seen that there was a significant effect for planning on the three
measures involving relative clauses (amount of relativization, quality of use,
and mean number of relative clauses per T-unit), but not on the two complexity
measures of MLTU and DCTU or on the fluency measure of words per minute.
Subsequent Scheffé post hoc tests were conducted in order to determine where
these statistical differences resided.
The Scheffé results revealed that the guided planning group produced signif-
icantly more relative clauses than both the no planning (p  0.01) and the
unguided planning (p  0.01) groups. They also exhibited an associated higher
RCTU than the other two groups (p  0.00 and 0.02, respectively). In addition
to being statistically significant, these differences were large, as the guided
planning group produced on average over twice more relative clauses than the
other two groups (cf. Table 4). The guided planning group also attained signifi-
cantly higher quality of relative clause use scores than the other two groups
(p  0.03 and 0.05, respectively), suggesting that they not only used more rela-
tive clauses but used them more accurately (compare the mean of 17.84 for the
guided planning group with the very similar and substantially lower means for
the other two groups: 10.82 and 10.25). By contrast, neither planning condition
affected fluency or global complexity (beyond relativization) to any visible or
statistically significant degree.
Thus far, we have presented the descriptive and inferential results. In add-
ition, a distinct and important piece of information is the magnitude of observed
effects, or so-called effect sizes. In order to investigate the size of the differ-
ences between the two (unguided and guided) planning conditions, Cohen’s
(1988) d values were calculated, taking the no-planning group as the baseline
for all contrasts. Table 6 shows the results. If we use the rules of thumb for psych-
ology findings proposed by Cohen (1988), a d value around 0.20 is small,
around 0.50 is medium, and around or above 0.80 is large. Accordingly, for
these data, the guided-planning group exhibits large effect sizes for amount of
relativization (d  1.02) and the related measure of RCTU (d  1.53) as well as
for the quality of relative clause use (d  0.83). The guided planning condition

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 27

Mochizuki and Ortega 27

also yielded a medium towards large DCTU effect of d  0.72, undoubtedly

reflecting indirectly the increase in relative clause production, but this effect is
not statistically significant (cf. p values in Table 5).
An interesting point to make about the remaining results in Table 6 is that the
unguided planning group outperformed the no planning group on the measure of
words per minute by a sizeable effect size of d  0.77. The mean differences for
speech rate across conditions appear to have been small, only about four words
per minute in each case (cf. Table 4), and they were statistically not significant
(cf. Table 5). Nevertheless, the effect size is noteworthy not only because it is
close to the large-size benchmark of 0.80 standard deviation units proposed by
Cohen but also because robust benefits for general, unguided planning in the
area of fluency have been repeatedly documented in the literature (e.g. Foster &
Skehan, 1996; Mehnert, 1998; Ortega, 1999; Wendel, 1997; Wigglesworth,
1997; Yuan & Ellis, 2003). A large p accompanied by a large d may be indica-
tive of a Type II error, where an important difference is missed (and, conversely,
a small probability value coupled with a small effect size value may be indica-
tive of a Type I error, where the null hypothesis is rejected when it is in fact true;
see Kramer & Rosenthal, 1999, for a helpful discussion). It is in part to be able
to detect such potentially problematic cases that contemporary statisticians insist
on using both types of statistical outputs together, probability and magnitude, to
interpret findings (Thompson, 2006; Wilkinson et al., 1999).
The ambivalence in the fluency findings prompted us to take a closer look at
the spoken narratives and consider not only speech rate but also the overall
length of the produced narratives, a measure of productivity. As it turns out,
when we inspected the pruned transcripts, the average length of narratives was
54.90 words for the unguided-planning group (sd  17.58), 60.05 words for the
guided group (sd  18.10), and 79.41 for the no-planning group (sd  28.61).
A one-way ANOVA revealed that the unplanned narratives were statistically sig-
nificantly longer than the narratives produced by the guided planning (p  0.00)
and the unguided-planning (p  0.00) groups. The effect sizes further showed
that the unplanned narratives were clearly longer when compared to the narra-
tives produced in the unguided-planning (d  1.08) and the guided-planning
(d  0.84) conditions. It appears that the availability of the L2 taped-version of
the story may have made it easier for the no planning learners to produce more

Table 6 Effect sizes of planning conditions (Cohen’s d)

Guided planning Unguided planning

Amount of RC 1.02 0.08

Quality of RC use 0.83 0.07
MLTU 0.24 0.02
DCTU 0.72 0.13
RCTU 1.53 0.35
Words per minute 0.39 0.77

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 28

28 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

language that was more closely modeled in the L2 aural input, although evi-
dently not to the point of helping them with the formulation of the seven relative
clauses seeded in that input.

VIII Discussion
Let us summarize the findings of the study before we discuss each in turn. In
terms of the general question of whether we were successful at achieving task
essentialness, we found that our design made relative clauses useful for task
completion, but not essential, since many speakers were able to produce narra-
tives with minimal or no relative clauses. Task essentialness was also a matter of
relative degree, with three of the seven targeted contexts closer to that ideal than
the remaining four. With regard to the research questions posed pertaining to
interlanguage production, it was found that the 19 participants who engaged in
guided planning produced substantially more and more accurate relative clauses
in their oral narratives than the 20 participants who engaged in unguided plan-
ning and the 17 participants who did not plan at all. On the other hand, contrary
to our expectations, neither planning condition led to any observable differences
in the linguistic complexity of the narratives (except for the measure of RCTU,
which also tapped amount of relativization) or in the fluency of delivery of the
oral stories. The results bearing on fluency, in particular, turned out to be diffi-
cult to interpret because statistically not significant differences were nevertheless
of some size. The trend, as predicted, was for somewhat more fluent narratives
in the unguided-planning condition, but the evidence must remain inconclusive.
Finally, an unexpected, post hoc discovery was that the speakers in the no-
planning group produced significantly and substantially longer narratives than
the speakers in the two planning groups.
Taken together the present results suggest that when learners were provided
with external guidance to consider how grammar can help plan for an oral task
in which the target form was essential, or at least useful, to task completion,
their attention during planning as well as during performance appears to have
been oriented towards that L2 form. This finding supports Sangarun’s (2005)
findings and conflicts with the null accuracy effects reported for guided plan-
ning by Foster and Skehan (1996) and the lack of a difference between the lan-
guage and content focus found by Foster and Skehan (1999). The difference
may in part be explained by the fact that the operationalizations of planning
type in these studies are markedly different from ours. Furthermore, none inves-
tigated directly the use of the specific targeted form in subsequent production.
Judging from the present findings, we need more planning studies that probe
the link between providing form-specific guidance during pre-task planning
and using the specific targeted form in subsequent production. This strategy of
asking learners to focus on a specific L2 form, rather than on language in gen-
eral, and then evaluating specific benefits in the subsequent use of the same
structure, rather than on global traits of production in general, has been adopted

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 29

Mochizuki and Ortega 29

in many studies of the effectiveness of instructional interventions but remains

underutilized in task-based language learning research.
Despite the extra sheer time to plan that these speakers had, and even though
there was some implicit encouragement to use relative clauses via the seeded
L2 aural input, the unguided-planning group could not produce more or better
relative clauses than the no-planning group. This is suggestive of a potential
ceiling for unguided planning for learners who are still functioning at low levels
of proficiency (a possibility also noted by Ortega, 2005; and Wigglesworth,
1997). Together with similar previous results in the area of accuracy for a gen-
eral planning condition (Crookes, 1989; Wendel, 1997; Yuan & Ellis, 2003), the
present finding supports the conclusion that sheer planning time does not ne-
cessarily guarantee higher accuracy of production.
In the face of so much past accumulated evidence for robust benefits of gen-
eral pre-task planning, however, it is nevertheless surprising that unguided
planning did not accrue these speakers any measured benefits, not even in the
areas of complexity and fluency, when they retold their narratives. In hind-
sight, we suspect our operationalization of the unguided-planning condition
may have put them somewhat at a disadvantage, when compared to the speak-
ers in the other two groups. When compared to the no-planning group, learn-
ers in the unguided-planning group could rely less on their memory of the
linguistic input offered by the pre-recorded L2 input, since they had an inter-
vening planning time of five minutes between the delivery of the aural story
and their narration. When compared to the guided-planning group, on the other
hand, they were not given a grammar handout, which means that they did not
get any assistance to focus on particular linguistic resources that they would
try to utilize in the task. Under these conditions, the unguided-planning speak-
ers might have given up on telling some parts of the story and may have con-
centrated instead on rehearsing what they could say. A possible content
avoidance strategy may help explain why they produced the shortest narratives
across conditions (by almost 25 words fewer on average than the no-planning
group). A focus on rehearsal may help explain why they might have been more
fluent than the no-planning group, to some noticeable although not statistically
significant degree (d  0.77, with speech that was on average about four and
eight words faster per minute than the guided-planning and the no-planning
groups, respectively).
Finally, we feel some explanation is needed for the null findings for the two
planning conditions in the area of global complexity, which contradict the results
reported in most previous studies featuring a range of planning conditions. We
suspect this outcome may be related to the low level of proficiency of the
participants in the current study, which is lower than those of any other studies
investigating the effects of planning time. This includes Wigglesworth’s (1997)
adult ESL low-proficiency examinees (who scored below the vocational Level 2
of The Interagency Language Roundtable Foreign Service Institute scale), the
pre-second STEP (or 400-TOEFL scoring band) level EFL college learners

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 30

30 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

studied by Kawauchi (2005) in Japan, and the second-year EFL high school stu-
dents investigated by Sangarun (2005) in Thailand (it will be remembered the
present participants were in their first year of high school). The levels of
linguistic complexity attested in the present sample are clearly indicative of only
incipient L2 proficiency. The 56 speakers, regardless of condition, produced
rather basic oral narratives that were on average 64.09 words long (sd  23.69,
maximum  124, minimum  27) and lasted on average 1.21 minutes (sd 
0.49, maximum  2.83, minimum  0.47). The mean length of T-unit was 8.68
words (sd  1.92). Indeed, the challenge posed by the use of relative clauses in
oral production turned out to be even more pronounced for these learners than
we had anticipated: the average score for the quality of the relative clause
production for the full sample was 13.00, well below half the maximum possible
35 points (sd  8.92, maximum  33.5, minimum  2.5). Taking their rather
limited knowledge of the target language into consideration, these Japanese high
school EFL learners may not have acquired much complex language yet. It is no
wonder, then, that even when given planning time, their performances could not
become much more linguistically complex.
Our discussion points at several limitations that need to be acknowledged.
First, by providing all groups with an L2 version of the story, the no-planning
condition may have inadvertently turned from a baseline into a memory aid
condition. In terms of pedagogy, the use of an L2 aural stimulus may be an
advisable element in its own right to support and promote more output (and
this, it will be remembered, was part of our rationale for having the aural
stimulus in the L2). In the context of this experimental study, however, it may
have resulted in an attenuation of the effects observed for the two planning
conditions. Second, we encountered limited success in our efforts to make the
story-telling design task essential, lending some weight to Loschky and Bley-
Vroman’s (1993, p. 140) warning that task essentialness may be an unattain-
able goal when designing production tasks. We would note, in addition, that
task essentialness seems to be more a matter of degree than an absolute qual-
ity. It is nevertheless important to strive for this ideal, not only because
Loschky and Bley-Vroman’s theoretical rationale is sound, but also in view
of Keck et al.’s (2006) meta-analytic findings. A third, important caution is
that the nature of what students do when they plan remained a black box in this
study, due to our inexperience in designing paper-and-pencil questions that
would encourage teenage students to engage in metacognitive and metalinguistic
introspection. The documentation of strategic behavior during planning of
teenage students and at only incipient levels of proficiency is an important miss-
ing piece of the puzzle which demands introspective investigation in the future.
Finally, as with so many other task-based investigations, in our study we only
focused on the immediate effects of planning on subsequent performance and
thus we are only ‘extrapolating from performance to acquisition’ (R. Ellis,
2005a, p. 17). This focus eschews the issue of long-term interlanguage develop-
ment, which is so central to educational concerns in real classrooms.

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 31

Mochizuki and Ortega 31

IX Conclusion
The results of the present study clearly indicate that the guided-planning con-
dition promoted better productive use of relativization in English than the
unguided-planning and the no-planning condition. When learners were pro-
vided with external guidance to consider how grammar can help in planning
for an oral task in which the target form was essential, or at least useful, to task
completion, their attention during planning as well as during performance
appears to have been oriented towards that L2 form. The relativization bene-
fits came at no particular cost for the complexity or fluency of these beginning
speakers’ oral performance. The finding that unguided planning did not afford
benefits in relativization highlights the desirability of providing linguistic
assistance during planning time when proficiency is only incipient. We argue
that, for learners at beginning levels of proficiency, just providing planning
time is not enough to drive their focus to the use of a particular linguistic fea-
ture during oral performance. With the addition of a written grammar explan-
ation to aid the planning, however, favorable conditions for the promotion of
accuracy may be achieved.
The study findings support active roles for teachers who wish to explore task-
based language teaching options in FL classrooms in Japan and elsewhere. If
learners’ interlanguage development can be fostered when their attention to a
particular linguistic feature is heightened through communicative use, then it
follows that teachers can orchestrate opportunities to guide learners’ attention
to focus on a particular language feature in the context of meaningful L2 use.
Under teacher discretion are the design of appropriate tasks, the choice of
attainable L2 targets, and the pedagogically sound formulation of self-accessible
grammatical explanations to be used in conjunction with learner-driven pre-task
planning. We believe that a pedagogical focus on communication, meaning
making, and collaboration should certainly not be embraced slavishly or with-
out acknowledging and respecting the contextual complexities encountered in
the multiple and diverse formal education contexts in which L2 learning needs
to happen. Nevertheless, we hope to have shown that the provision of guided
planning prior to oral communication tasks can be an optimal instructional
choice, and one that may work successfully in beginning-level foreign language
classrooms.

Acknowledgements
This study was undertaken by the first author in partial fulfillment of the require-
ments for the master’s degree in second language studies at the University of
Hawai’i at Ma–noa. We are grateful to the reviewers and the editor of Language
Teaching Research for very useful comments; to J. D. Brown and John Norris
for their statistical advice; to Satoko Miyata for creating the pictures used in the
narrative task; and to Aya Takeda for her help with the interlanguage codings.
Sang-Ki Lee, Treela Mckamey, Munehiko Miyata, and Yukiko Watanabe offered

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 32

32 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

helpful comments and support. Finally, our deepest gratitude goes to the stu-
dents, teachers, and administrators who kindly allowed us to conduct this
research at their school.

X References
Bygate, M. (Convener). (2007). Towards an educational agenda for research into task-
based language teaching. Colloquium, Conference on Social and Cognitive
Aspects of Second Language Learning and Teaching, University of Auckland,
New Zealand, 12–14 April.
Browne, C., & Wada, M. (1998). Current issues in high school English teaching in
Japan: An exploratory study. Language, Culture, and Curriculum, 11: 97–112.
Cohen, J. (1988). Statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences (2nd Ed.).
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Comrie, B. (2002). Typology and language acquisition: The case of relative clauses. In
A. Giaconale Ramat (Ed.), Typology and second language acquisition
(pp. 19–37). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Crookes, G. (1989). Planning and interlanguage variation. Studies in Second Language
Acquisition, 11, 367–383.
Doughty, C., & Williams, J. (1998). Pedagogical choices in focus on form. In C. Doughty
and J. Williams (Eds.), Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition
(pp. 197–261). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Ellis, R. (1987). Interlanguage variability in narrative discourse: Style shifting in the
use of the past tense. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 9, 1–20.
Ellis, R. (2003). Task-based language learning and teaching. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Ellis, R. (2005a). Planning and task-based performance: Theory and research. In
R. Ellis (Ed.), Planning and task performance in a second language (pp. 3–34).
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ellis, R. (Ed.). (2005b). Planning and task performance in a second language.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Foster, P., & Skehan, P. (1996). The influence of planning and task type on second lan-
guage performance. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 18, 299–323.
Foster, P., & Skehan, P. (1999). The influence of source of planning and focus of plan-
ning on task-based performance. Language Teaching Research, 3, 215–247.
Foster, P., Tonkyn, A., & Wigglesworth, G. (1998). Measuring spoken language: A
unit for all reasons. Applied Linguistics, 21, 354–375.
Fotos, S. (2002). Structure-based interactive tasks for the EFL grammar learner. In
E. Hinkel and S. Fotos (Eds.), New perspectives on grammar teaching in second
language classrooms (pp. 135–154). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Gass, S. M. (1979). Language transfer and universal grammatical relations. Language
Learning, 29, 327–345.
Hakuta, K. (1981). Grammatical description versus configurational arrangement in lan-
guage acquisition: The case of relative clauses in Japanese. Cognition, 9, 197–236.

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 33

Mochizuki and Ortega 33

Izumi, S. (2003). Processing difficulty in comprehension and production of relative

clauses by learners of English as a second language. Language Learning, 53:
285–323.
Kawauchi, C. (2005). The effects of strategic planning on the oral narratives of learners
with low and high intermediate l2 proficiency. In R. Ellis (Ed.), Planning and task
performance in a second language (pp. 143–164). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Keck, C. M., Iberri-Shea, G., Tracy-Ventura, N., & Wa-Mbaleka, S. (2006). Investigating
the empirical link between task-based interaction and acquisition: A meta-analysis.
In J. M. Norris and L. Ortega (Eds.), Synthesizing research on language learn-
ing and teaching (pp. 91–131). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Kramer, S. H., & Rosenthal, R. (1999). Effect sizes and significance levels in small-
sample research. In R. H. Hoyle (Ed.), Statistical strategies for small sample
research (pp. 59–79). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Lennon, P. (1990). Investigating fluency in EFL: A quantitative approach. Language
Learning, 40, 387–417.
Long, M. H. (1996). The role of the linguistic environment in second language acqui-
sition. In W. Ritchie and T. Bhatia (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisi-
tion (pp. 413–468). New York: Academic Press.
Loschky, L., & Bley-Vroman, R. (1993). Grammar and task-based methodology.
In G. Crookes and S. M. Gass (Eds.), Tasks and language learning: Integrating
theory and practice (pp. 123–167). Philadelphia, PA: Multilingual Matters.
Mehnert, U. (1998). The effects of different lengths of time for planning on second
language performance. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20, 83–108.
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) (2003).
Regarding the establishment of an action plan to cultivate “Japanese with
English abilities.” Retrieved 1 May 2007 from: http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/
houdou/15/03/03033101/001.pdf
Nunan, D. (1993). Task-based syllabus design: Selecting, grading, and sequencing tasks.
In G. Crookes and S. M. Gass (Eds.), Tasks in a pedagogical context: Integrating
theory and practice (pp. 55–68). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
O’Donnell, K. (2005). Japanese secondary English teachers: Negotiation of educa-
tional roles in the face of curricular reform. Language, Culture, and Curriculum,
18, 300–315.
Ortega, L. (1999). Planning and focus on form in L2 oral performance. Studies in
Second Language Acquisition, 21, 109–148.
Ortega, L. (2005). What do learners plan? Learner-driven attention to form during
pre-task planning. In R. Ellis (Ed.), Planning and task performance in a second
language (pp. 77–109). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Ortega, L. (2007). Meaningful L2 practice in foreign language classrooms: A cognitive-
interactionist SLA perspective. In R. DeKeyser (Ed.), Practicing in a second
language: Perspectives from applied linguistics and cognitive psychology
(pp. 180–207). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Pavesi, M. (1986). Markedness, discoursal modes, and relative clause formation in a
formal and an informal context. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 8, 38–55.

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 34

34 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

Robinson, P. (2007). Criteria for classifying and sequencing pedagogic tasks. In García-
Mayo, M.D.P. (Ed.), Investigating tasks in formal language learning (p. 7–27).
Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
Sakui, K. (2004). Wearing two pairs of shoes: Language teaching in Japan. ELT Journal,
58(2), 155–163.
Sangarun, J. (2005). The effects of focusing on meaning and form in strategic plan-
ning. In R. Ellis (Ed.), Planning and task performance in a second language
(pp. 111–141). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Schachter, J. (1974). An error in error analysis. Language Learning, 24: 205–214.
Schmidt, R. (1995). Consciousness and foreign language learning: A tutorial on the role
of attention and awareness in learning. In R. Schmidt (Ed.), Attention and aware-
ness in foreign language learning (Technical Report no. 9) (pp. 1–63). Honolulu,
HI: University of Hawai‘i, Second Language Teaching and Curriculum Center.
Shirai,Y., & Ozeki, H. (Eds.). (2007). Special issue: The L2 acquisition of relative clauses
in East Asian languages. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 29, 155–374.
Skehan, P. (1996). A framework for the implementation of task-based instruction.
Applied Linguistics, 17, 38–62.
Skehan, P. (2003). Task based instruction. Language Teaching, 36, 1–14.
Skehan, P., & Foster, P. (2001). Cognition and tasks. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and
second language instruction (pp. 183–205). New York: Cambridge University
Press.
Spada, N. (1997). Form-focussed instruction and second language acquisition: A review
of classroom and laboratory research. Language Teaching, 29, 1–15.
Swain, M. (1998). Focus on form through conscious reflection. In C. Doughty and
J. Williams (Eds.), Focus on form in classroom second language acquisition
(pp. 64–81). New York: Cambridge University Press.
Thompson, B. (2006). Foundations of behavioral statistics: An insight-based approach.
New York: Guilford.
TOFL Seminar. (2005). TOEIC, TOEFL Test no kousei to eikenhikaku deita [Data of
Comparison among TOEIC, TOEFL and STEP test]. Retrieved 1 May 2007
from http://www.tofl.jp/tsec/hikaku.html
Wendel, J. N. (1997). Planning and second-language narrative production. Unpublished
doctoral dissertation, Temple University.
Wilkinson, L., and the Task Force on Statistical Inference. (1999). Statistical methods
in psychology journals: Guidelines and explanations. American Psychologist,
54(8), 594–604.
Wigglesworth, G. (1997). An investigation of planning time and proficiency level on
oral test discourse. Language Testing, 14, 85–106.
Yuan, F., & Ellis, R. (2003). The effects of pre-task planning and on-line planning on
fluency, complexity and accuracy in L2 monologic oral production. Applied
Linguistics, 24, 1–27.

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 35

Mochizuki and Ortega 35

Appendix A: Transcript of the L2 taped stimulus seeded with seven

relative clauses
Kanako, her brother Ken, and their mother are at a pet shop. They are going to buy a dog today. Now
they are looking at many kinds of dogs. The mother says, ‘I like the dog which has long ears.’ ‘Which
one?’ Ken asks. ‘I want the dog which the little girl has in her arms,’ the mother answers. Ken says,
‘I like the dog which has long hair.’ ‘Which one?’ the mother asks. ‘I want the dog which many people
are watching,’ Ken answers. The mother and Ken ask Kanako, ‘What do you think, Kanako?’ Kanako
says, ‘I can’t decide! The dog which has long ears looks friendly. The dog which has long hair is beau-
tiful.’ Then Kanako looks around and finds another dog and shouts, ‘I want the dog which has long
ears and long hair!’

Context 1 (OS): I like the dog which has long ears

Context 2 (OO): I want the dog which the little girl has in her arms
Context 3 (OS): I like the dog which has long hair
Context 4 (OO): I want the dog which many people are watching
Context 5 (SS): The dog which has long ears looks friendly
Context 6 (SS): The dog which has long hair is beautiful
Context 7 (OO): I want the dog which has long ears and long hair

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 36

36 Balancing communication and grammar in beginning-level

Appendix B: Pictures for speakers

(reprinted with permission of the artist © Satoko Miyata 2006)

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013

084492_LTR_11-38.qxd 12/12/07 10:19 AM Page 37

Mochizuki and Ortega 37

Appendix C: Grammar explanation sheet for the guided planning

condition
ৡ䀲˄՟߃߫Njdoll Ҏᔶnj˅߇ǃߤࠎߥ߽ߩ߆䁇ߒߊ䂀ᯢߔࠆߣ߈ߦǃ䭶֖ҷৡ䀲ࠍߟ߆
ߞߡǃߘߩৡ䀲ߩᕠࠈ߆ࠄ䂀ᯢࠍࡴ߃ࠆߎߣ߇ߢ߈߹ߔDŽ

NjҎᔶnj→Nj㤊㡆޿ⳂࠍߒߚҎᔶnj
That doll is cute. ˄޽ߩҎᔶߪ߆ࠊ޿޿˅
That doll which has brown eyes is cute. ˄㤊㡆޿Ⳃࠍߒߚ޽ߩҎᔶߪ߆ࠊ޿޿˅

I want that doll. ˄޽ߩҎᔶ߇℆ߒ޿˅

I want that doll which has big eyes. ˄㤊㡆޿Ⳃࠍߒߚ޽ߩҎᔶ߇℆ߒ޿˅

NjҎᔶnj→Nj⾕ߩྜྷ߇԰ߞߚҎᔶnj
I like that doll. ˄޽ߩҎᔶ߇ད߈ߛ˅
I like that doll which my sister made. ˄⾕ߩྜྷ߇԰ߞߚҎᔶ߇ད߈ߛ˅

˄⊼˅䭶֖ҷৡ䀲˄which˅ߪǃⳈࠡߩৡ䀲(that doll)ߩҷࠊࠅߥߩߢǃdollࠍ㑄ࠅ䖨ߒߡ㿔
ߞߡߒ߹ࠊߥ޿ࠃ߁ߦߒ߹ߒࠂ߁DŽ
hI want that doll which my sister made that doll.
( that doll)

Downloaded from ltr.sagepub.com at SEIR on March 6, 2013