Publications

Questioning the effectiveness of procedural repetition: The case of Spanish EFL Primary School learners

Authors
Amparo Lázaro-Ibarrola, Izaskun Villarreal.
Year
2019
Journal
Porta Linguarum
DOI
ISSN

It has been claimed that the repetition of the same task type with differentcontent, known as procedural repetition (PR), seems to offer opportunities to focus on formand develop syntactic complexity. At the same time, PR is common and deemed appropriatefor the language classroom. This quasi-experimental study explores the effects of PR on theoverall production of 5 pairs of young Spanish EFL (age 11) learners in a school context witha beginner level of English. The pairs co-constructed and narrated three stories following thesame procedure at three testing times over a three-week period. The analysis of the complexity, accuracy, and fluency of their narratives shows that, unlike previous studies, PR does nothave any significant impact on the students’ performance, except for lexical density, whichincreases in the third attempt. In light of these results, the validity of PR for child populationsis discussed.