Rod Ellis and Fangyuan Yuan
University of Auckland / University of Pennsylvania
Introduction
This chapter differs from the other chapters in the book in two principal ways.
First, it focuses on within-task planning rather than strategic planning. Second, it examines the effects of planning on written as well as oral performance.
As we saw in Chapter 1, within-task planning refers to the planning that takes place on-line, during as opposed to before the performance of the task.
Within-task planning can be ‘careful’ in the sense that performers of the task have ample opportunity to plan their productions and make use of this op- portunity to attend to the content and/or expression of their performance.
Alternatively, it can be ‘pressured’ in the sense that performers are required to produce text rapidly and thus have limited opportunity to attend closely to content and/or expression as they perform the task. Because short-term memory is of limited capacity (Baddeley 1986), the extent to which on-line planning is pressured will influence the nature of the planning processes that take place during performance. When pressured, performers are likely to need to prioritise some planning processes over others. In the case of careful within- task planning, however, they will be better able to attend to the full range of processes, including those that are more demanding on working memory. For these reasons, the nature of the on-line planning is hypothesized to affect the quantity and quality of the texts produced.
As we will see the planning processes involved in speaking and writing are very similar (Kellog 1996). However, there are also differences. In particular, writing, by its very nature, provides greater opportunity for careful within- task planning because writers have more time for text production and thereby
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greater control over the processes involved. Thus, it remains an empirical ques- tion as to whether the on-line planning processes involved in speaking and writing result in similar or different textual outcomes. It is this question that this chapter seeks to address.
An early study
The present study was motivated in part by an earlier study. Ellis (1987) investi- gated L2 learners’ performance of written and oral narratives. In one condition they were given a picture composition and asked to write the story. They were given ample time (approximately one hour) to complete this task but were asked to start writing straight away. Thus, this condition can be characterized as ‘writing/careful within-task planning’. In another condition, the learners were given a different picture composition and asked to tell the story orally after just two minutes to prepare it. This task might be characterized as ‘speak- ing/pressured within-task planning’ [1]. The written and oral narratives were scored for accurate use of three English past tense forms (regular past, irregular past and past copula). Table 1 presents the results. Clearly, all three past tense forms were performed more accurately in the written task than the oral task.
However, as has been pointed out by Crookes (1989), these results are not easy to interpret as the study conflates planning conditions and modality. That is, it is not possible to tell whether the greater accuracy evident in the written task reflects the fact that it involved writing or the opportunity for careful on- line planning. The purpose of the study reported below is to disentangle these two variables.
Also, Ellis’ study only investigated accuracy, narrowly measured in terms of past tense forms. As we have seen in the earlier chapters reporting studies of strategic planning, subsequent research has incorporated criterion measures relating to broader measures of accuracy (e.g. percentage of error-free clauses) and measures of two other aspects of performance – fluency and complexity.
In line with this research, the study reported here will also include measures of a wider range of textual variables.
Table 1. Accuracy of three past tense morphemes on two tasks (% correct)
Task Regular Past Irregular Past Past Copula
Written 77 60 76
Oral 43 55 60
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Other studies of on-line planning
Whereas there are a number of studies that have investigated the effects of strategic planning on oral task performance (e,g. Crookes 1989; Foster & Ske- han 1996; Ortega 1999; Wendel 1997; see also the chapters in Section 3 of this book) there has been surprisingly little attention paid to within-task planning.
Indeed, the studies of strategic planning listed above made no attempt to con- trol for on-line planning; that is, they did not regulate whether the participants engaged in pressured or careful within-task planning. This may be one reason why these studies have produced varying results regarding the effect of strate- gic planning on linguistic accuracy, as the extent to which learners’ productions are accurate may well depend on whether or not they engage in careful on-line planning rather than have opportunity for strategic planning (Wendel 1997;
Yuan & Ellis 2003).
Variability studies are indicative of the kind of effect that careful planning can have on accuracy. Tarone (1982) proposes that L2 learners possess a contin- uum of styles, ranging from the ‘careful’ to the ‘vernacular’ (see Chapter 1). The former is operationalized in terms of whether the learner has time to attend to form, while the latter becomes evident in spontaneous natural language use, when learners are typically required to perform under pressure. This distinc- tion corresponds closely to Och’s (1979) ‘planned’ and ‘unplanned language use. Ochs argues that, in the latter, learners have the opportunity to search their linguistic resources for grammatical information whereas in the former the lack of processing-time leads to speakers prioritising the search for lexical resources. From this point of view, then, it can be hypothesized that care- ful/planned speech is likely to be more accurate than vernacular/unplanned speech but not necessarily more lexically rich. While a number of studies (e.g.
Dickerson 1975) have lent support to the hypothesis that careful speech is more accurate, other studies have shown that it is not quite so simple. Tarone (1985) has shown that whereas some grammatical structures (e.g. 3rd person -s) are performed more accurately in a careful style, other structures (e.g. articles and direct object pronouns) are more target-like in the vernacular style. A likely explanation for this is that the functional demands of a task may cause learn- ers to attend to specific features even though these are difficult to process. Of course, these studies compared performance in different tasks; it is possible that if learners were asked to perform the same or a similar task under pressured and careful conditions, they would manifest accuracy in line with our hypothe- sis. Other, more recent studies (e.g. Bayley 1996; Regan 1996) demonstrate the ubiquity of ‘style-shifting’, dependent on learners’ opportunity to plan care-
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fully as they perform a task [2]. It is likely, however, that the degree of variation will still vary from structure to structure, depending, in particular, on whether learners have access to a simple and portable explicit rule (e.g. the rule for 3rd person -s). Ellis’ (1987) study referred to above, for example, found a greater effect on regular past tense than on irregular past tense.
Another study of L2 variability helps to pinpoint the mechanism responsi- ble for the linguistic variation that results from within-task planning. Hulstijn and Hulstijn (1984) investigated the effects of time pressure, focus of atten- tion (i.e. whether on form or meaning) and metalingual knowledge on the accuracy of two Dutch word order rules in an oral story-retelling task. Inter- estingly, neither time pressure nor metalingual knowledge had any effect by themselves, whereas focusing attention on form increased the accuracy of both structures. This study suggests that careful within-task planning only enhances linguistic accuracy if it is used to attend to form. If it is used for some other purpose (e.g. to attend to propositional content of the message) no increase in accuracy occurs.
The effects of careful within-task planning on other aspects of oral L2 production have not been systematically investigated. In the case of fluency, increasing the opportunity for within-task planning can be hypothesized to differentially affect temporal aspects of production and hesitation phenom- ena. Thus, when there is opportunity to plan carefully, learners are likely to speak more slowly (e.g. pause longer and produce fewer syllables per minute) but may become less disfluent (e.g. make fewer filled pauses, repetitions and corrections) because they have more time to access their linguistic resources, including those that are not yet fully automatised. For the same reason, it also seems likely that increasing planning time will enhance the complexity of learners’ productions (e.g. result in more subordination).
The within-task planning processes involved in writing have been more extensively researched, using think-aloud tasks. Hayes and Gradwohl Nash (1996), in a survey of planning research, note that planning and action are often interweaved in writing. This serves to both provide feedback on the effec- tiveness of the planning and to overcome memory limitations. They report that writers typically plan no more than 6–10 words before writing them down. In evaluating studies that have investigated the effects of planning on the quality of text production, they conclude ‘text quality is strongly and positively related to time-on-task’ (p. 53). In other words, the greater opportunity there is to plan carefully on-line, the better the written product.
Whereas Hayes and Gradwohl Nash considered only studies of L1 writing, other researchers have examined within-task planning in L2 writing. In a study
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very relevant to our own research, de Larios, Marin & Murphy (2001) point out the importance of studying the allocation of ‘processing time’ when L2 learners write. They suggest that ‘writers will differ in the way they adapt their time allocation to formulation processes as a result of task conditions’ (p. 503).
Using think-aloud protocols, they analysed the time that Spanish writers of L2 English allocated to three aspects of the writing process; planning (i.e. the retrieval and/or development of ideas), formulation (i.e. the production of pre- texts and texts) and revision (i.e. the changes made to written text). They found that, in general, the writers prioritised formulation but those with greater L2 proficiency were more likely to share composing time with the other processes.
This study suggests that when L2 writers’ working memories are under pressure (as is the case when proficiency is limited) they will concentrate on getting the message down but when their working memories are less taxed they will be able to attend to other aspects of the composing process. As Kellog (1996) notes, revision in particular makes heavy demands on the central executive of working memory with the result that it will be neglected when formulation demands are heavy. Whereas de Larios et al examined the role of L2 proficiency in on-line processing, the study below will consider time-on-task. We anticipate that this will have a similar effect (i.e. giving learners time to plan on-line will enable them to maximise their L2 proficiency).
Other studies of L2 writing have focussed on what aspects of text construc- tion L2 writers attend to during composing. Whalen and Menard (1995) found that when writers were engaged in writing in their L2 they were more likely to attend to the linguistic level than in their L1 writing. They concluded that ‘lin- guistic processing in L2 writing apparently inhibits more global processing at the textual and pragmatic levels’ (p. 391). In other words, in comparison to L1 writers, L2 writers are more likely to focus on form to the detriment of organization and content.
These (and many other) studies provide some valuable insights into the nature of the on-line planning processes involved in L2 writing that are sugges- tive of how the opportunity to plan carefully on-line might influence output.
However, they do not shed direct light on the effects of planning time on the quality of the texts produced. Furthermore, process-product studies of writ- ing have relied on holistic or analytic ratings of text quality rather than the more precise discourse measures used by task-based researchers such as Ske- han (1998a) and Robinson (2001c). In the study reported below we seek to examine how time-on-task effects the quality of written productions when this is measured in terms of fluency, complexity and accuracy. First, however, we will briefly examine the planning processes involved in speaking and writing
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from a theoretical perspective as a basis for hypothesizing how time-on-task might affect production differentially in the two modalities.
Modelling the planning processes in speaking and writing 1. Speaking
The most influential model of speaking in studies of planning is Levelt’s (1989) speech production model. As this has been described in some detail in previous chapters (see in particular Chapter 1), we will restrict ourselves to a broad out- line of the model here, highlighting those aspects of it that we see as important for careful within-task planning.
The model identifies three key production processes. The conceptualizer establishes the intentions (goals) of the speaker and selects and orders the rel- evant information for achieving them. Its output is a ‘pre-verbal message’ (i.e.
it is propositional in nature, not linguistic). This process involves both macro- planning, where the focus is on the goals, and micro-planning, which concerns the selection and organisation of the content needed to realise the goals. The formulator converts the pre-verbal message into a speech plan. This is achieved by identifying lemmas in the speaker’s mental lexicon that match the proposi- tional content of the pre-verbal message. The speaker selects lemmas for their meaning, which in turn activates lexical form. Lemma selection also provides the learner with the syntactic information needed to construct the surface structure of the message. While this is taking place morpho-phonological in- formation relating to the lemmas is also activated and incorporated into the surface structure. The outcome of this process is a phonetic plan. The artic- ulator then converts the phonetic plan into actual speech. Finally, there is a monitor. This works when the phonetic plan (from the formulator) and ac- tual speech (from the articulator) is fed into the speech-comprehension system, which interacts with the production process to identify any mistakes that may have arisen. The model allows for parallel processing such that the output from one process can be fed into another process even if this is incomplete. That is, the processes occur simultaneously and dynamically.
As we noted in Chapter 1, Levelt’s model was developed to account for speech production in the first language (L1) and may need to be adapted to account for speaking in an L2. De Bot (1992) suggests that in the case of the conceptualizer, macro-planning is not language specific but micro-planning is (i.e. the pre-verbal message specifies which language (or languages) are to be used to encode the message). De Bot argues that there are separate systems for the L1 and L2 as far as the processing components of the formulator are con-
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cerned although the two systems are likely to be connected in at least some areas. In contrast, given the cross-linguistic influences evident in L2 pronunci- ation, he considers the existence of two separate systems for articulation ‘very improbable’ (p. 17). We might also note that whereas L1 speakers are generally able to carry out the processes involved in formulation and articulation (but not conceptualisation) without attention, L2 learners (especially those with limited L2 proficiency) are more likely to need to activate and execute their linguistic knowledge through controlled processing (McLaughlin 1987). Thus, they are likely to experience problems during the formulation and articulation stages, as these processes are demanding on working memory.
What differences can we expect in the operation of such a model depend- ing on whether there is time for careful within-task planning or not? In careful within-task planning we would expect to find attention paid to all aspects of processing – conceptualising, formulation, articulation and monitoring. In pressured within-task planning, in contrast, we would expect attention to be paid to the three central processes (conceptualisation, formulation and articu- lation) as these are necessary for the production of speech but learners may have inadequate time to process the phonetic plan and to articulate speech through the speech-comprehension system, thus limiting their ability to mon- itor. We also suggest that limitations in working memory may inhibit the for- mulation process when speech is pressured. In such a situation, while learners may still be able to activate the lemmas and associated syntactic information needed to construct a surface structure for the message, they may lack the time they need to access the required morpho-phonological information from their lexicons. If this thinking is right, we would expect careful planning to result in speech production that is more accurate.
We also hypothesize that careful within-task planning will promote com- plexity as learners may use the time at their disposal to engage in more extensive micro-planning of the pre-verbal message. In this respect, careful within-task planning may work similarly to strategic planning. Finally, learn- ers’ production is likely to become less fluent if they spend time on controlled processing during formulation and monitoring. In short, we anticipate that differences between careful and pressured within-task processing will be evi- dent in all three aspects of language production.
2. Writing
As we noted in Chapter 1, there is no single model for writing that has the same status as Levelt’s model of speech production. The model that best suits our purposes here is Kellog’s (1996) model. This model explicitly relates processing
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Phonological Loop
Monitoring Reading Editing
Visuo-spatial Sketchpad
Central Executive Planning Translating Programming Executing
Formulation Execution
Figure 1. Kellog’s model of writing processes (Kellog 1996: 59)
components to Baddeley’s theory of working memory. The model, which was described in some detail in Chapter 1, is shown diagrammatically in Figure 1. It distinguishes four basic systems involved in written text production (‘formu- lation’, ‘translation’, ‘execution’ and ‘monitoring’) with each system involving two principal components or processes. It should be noted that Kellog’s terms do not entirely match those of Levelt. Thus, for example, ‘formulation’, which involves ‘planning’ and ‘translating’, incorporates elements of Levelt’s ‘concep- tualisation’ and ‘formulation’. As we also saw in Chapter 1, Kellogg suggests how the different components of the model relate to different components of working memory, emphasising the role played by the limited capacity of the central executive in the writer to make decisions about which writing pro- cess to prioritise when under pressure to produce text rapidly. Kellog suggests that formulation demands are critical and will take priority over execution and monitoring when trade-offs are needed.
The similarity between Levelt’s model of speech production and Kellog’s model of writing is striking. Both models posit an initial process where the goals and content of the message are established. Both incorporate a stage where the preverbal message is first lexicalised and then given a surface struc- ture. Both include an articulation stage. And both recognize that language production can involve monitoring of the pre-production message and the articulated message. Furthermore, both models emphasise the continuous, overlapping nature of the processes involved. In what respects, then, are the processes of speaking and writing different? Arguably the differences are quan- titative rather than qualitative in nature. That is, the pressure exerted on work- ing memory is likely to be greater in speaking than in writing for, whereas the former occurs in real-time and is generally intolerant of significant pauses, the