THE EFFECT OF TASK REPETITION ON THE ACCURACY OF IRANIAN EFL LEARNERS ‘SPEAKING ABILITY

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of Task repetition on accuracy of Iranian EFL learners ’speaking ability. In order to achieve this purpose, a null hypothesis was developed: There is no statistically significant difference between accuracy speaking ability in Iranian EFL learners by use of task repetition. It also seeks to examine the effect of task type on the accuracy gain through task repetition. The subjects consisted of 60 male and female students who were selected from among 88 intermediate EFL learners by applying the proficiency test, and 60 participants that received 73-84 out of 100 were selected. To examine the effect of task repetition and task type on accuracy, the researcher assigned 60 students to 3 groups; the narrative task performers, personal task performers and decision-making task performers. The first production of the subjects was measured for accuracy. Then after a week all the subjects did the same task again, and their second production was also measured for accuracy. The t-test results and the analysis of variance indicated that task repetition, and task type, as well as the interaction between these variables resulted in significant differences in subjects’ speaking ability in term of accuracy. The findings of this research supported Bygate’s (1996, 2001) claim that task repetition may help develop the process of integration of speech capacities. It is argued that integrating processing capacities must be important for language development, and that this can be promoted through the use of task repetition. ANOVA found statistically significant effect for task repetition.