Investigating the effects of task repetition on fluency and accuracy in English oral performance of low level adult students: A case study at Vietnam air defence and air force academy

n, 
the students are more likely to be able to notice, 
remember, and produce reprocessed forms 
highlighted in the feedback (p.312). This visible 
form of speech was obviously crucial for the 
participants to analyse not just the use of language 
forms, but the pronunciation of words as well. 
Accordingly, the use of and changes in students’ 
interlanguage may be easier to be evaluated. 
Videotapes was a dual-purpose tool because they 
provided audio source for the transcribing as well 
as the analysing of sounds, while it was hoped to 
better the researcher’s verification of the changes 
in students’ affective variables. The reason for the 
use of videotape is that the researcher could obtain 
supplementary information on body language 
and facial expressions from this source (Hinchey, 
2008, p.85), though at some surface level. The 
last method of data collection, which is semi-
structured interviewing, is significantly beneficial 
to the research aims. One of the rationales for this 
method lies in the fact that qualitative interviews 
can provide rich and in-depth information about 
the experiences of individuals, as concluded by 
Dicicco-Bloom and Crabtree (2006). By means 
of talking face-to-face to the researcher, the 
participants have a chance to provide the most direct, 
relevant, and hopefully reliable information about 
the issues being studied (Hinchey, 2008, p.81). 
2.3. Procedures and data collection
The research site was an ordinary classroom at 
VADAFA with pleasantly quiet surroundings. The 
stages of the two-week research are as follows:
Stage 1: On the 18th February 2013, each of 
the three students (whose pseudonymous names 
are Minh, Thanh, and Hieu) was given a topic 
in which they had to narrate their last holiday in 
about five minutes. Narrating has been a common 
activity in this course, yet they were not told about 
this specific topic until the first stage took place. 
They had five minutes to prepare for the speaking, 
and could make some notes on a piece of paper.
Stage 2: The students spoke without scripts in 
front of the researcher and other two participants. 
Their performance was videotaped.
Stage 3: At home, the students watched and 
listened to their performance again using their 
personal computer, and handwrote their entire 
speech verbatim with double-spacing. They then 
tried to correct any mistakes by themselves in red 
pen, before doing peer correction with another 
participant. (Transcript 1). 
Stage 4: Four days after stage 3, the students 
gave transcript 1 to the teacher, who then indicated 
further corrections and feedback on what the 
students had missed. (Transcript 2). 
Stage 5: One day later, the researcher returned 
transcript 2 to its original writer. At this stage, 
the participants re-read their transcript, and they 
could ask about any points they were unclear in 
the feedback. On the same day, she spent forty five 
minutes to revise some of the basic linguistic points 
that the students had trouble with, and about one 
hour to drill pronunciation of the words that they 
failed to utter in their speech. Also, the researcher 
introduced some supplementary materials for self-
study, and had them practise pronunciation with 
the Pronunciation Power software at home. 
30 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY 
Stage 6: The second trial speaking was 
videorecorded on the tenth day of the study. This 
time the transcribing was done by the researcher. 
Stage 7: On the 4th March 2013, the students 
were invited to take part in an individual indepth 
interview, with the questions being sent to them in 
advance so that they could have time to consider 
their answers to those questions. The interviews 
lasted about twenty minutes each, and were 
taperecorded. This final stage aimed to delve into 
the learners’ views on their own English speaking 
problems, their understandings of the innovation 
process, and most crucially, their appraisal of the 
research as a whole in regards to their learning 
style and context. 
Basically, the case study followed Mennim 
(2003) and some of the aforementioned scholars’ 
procedures, yet it was different from the previous 
research in some fundamental points. First of all, 
most of these studies were done within classroom 
hours, and covered a fairly long time span, which 
is up to three months, whereas this two-week 
project took place after class hours, in students’ self 
study time. This is because the three participants 
had to attend normal lessons in the morning 
with the rest of the class. However, in the self-
study session, they also need to be present in the 
classroom for two hours in the afternoon, without 
teacher’s monitoring. In addition, the very busy 
working schedules of both the researcher and the 
participants restricted the length of time allocated 
for the research, so the researcher had the learners 
complete stage three at home in their own time. 
The second difference is that while the subjects 
in previous studies were mainly at intermediate 
English proficiency level, all of the participants in 
this study were at low level when they started to 
take part in the research. Taking these contextual 
features into great account, the speaking time for 
the topic was restricted to as short as five minutes, 
and only a limited number of basic linguistic 
features was measured. That is to say the term 
“accuracy” in my research question limits itself 
to the ability to build simple sentences using 
appropriate verb forms, subject-verb agreement, 
and correct forms of plural nouns. Accuracy here 
also means producing understandable segmental 
aspects of pronunciation, which are individual 
sounds. Evidence of increased fluency may take 
various forms, yet due to the small scope of the 
present study, the amount of pausing and self-
repair was taken into account in order to examine 
the effects of increasing task familiarity. According 
to Bygate and Porter (1991), pausing is taken as 
an indication of the number of selection or access 
problems engaged by the speaker, and includes 
individual filled and unfilled pauses (p.42). Repairs 
are considered as false starts, repetitions of words 
or utterances, incomplete fragments, redundant 
repeated words, which indicates the speaker’s 
hesitation about lexical decision (Bygate & Porter, 
1991, p.42).
As far as the project was carried on, there 
appeared a few practical ethical issues that are 
worth reporting. The first constraint was again 
related to the time arranged for the stages. As two 
of the participants often had unexpected personal 
business to do during the research process, the 
researcher had to rearrange stage 6 and stage 7 
twice so that every subject could manage to be 
ready for the activity. Given the fact that people 
are not always willing to speak truthfully during 
interviews (Hinchey, 2008, p.81), on the one 
hand, the researcher clearly advised them of the 
protection of the learners’ anonymity and the 
confidentiality of their information, and she tried to 
develop a rapport with these learners on the other 
hand. Dicicco-Bloom and Crabtree (2006) argue 
that rapport, which includes trust and respect for 
the interviewee and the information s/he shares, 
plays a vital role in the interview (p.316). By setting 
up a secure and comfortable environment for the 
videoing as well as interviewing, this positive 
relationship was successfully created during this 
entire research process, particularly during the 
interviewing time. Besides, it seems that as the 
31KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
 LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY v
subjects are all adults, they were free from any fears 
of telling the truth of their speaking shortcomings 
and the reasons behind that. Another potential 
issue was the English translation of the interviews. 
As all of the students were low-level English 
speakers, the interviews were done in Vietnamese, 
which might result in the unreliable translation 
into English as well as misrepresentation. The 
researcher therefore asked the participants to 
check the interview’s transcripts for clarification 
and admendment if needed. After that, she invited 
another competent colleague to read the translation 
and gave feedback on unclear points. Furthermore, 
while analysing the interviews, she relistened to 
the original recording so as to ensure the nature 
of the learner’s intonation, pauses, and hesitations. 
3. DATA ANALYSIS
The data will be presented on a theme-by-theme 
basis, using qualitative content analysis approach, 
yet including some quantitative summary. The 
researcher compared the rehearsed transcription 
with the final one to evaluate the changes to 
students’ use of verb forms, subject-verb agreement, 
and plural forms of nouns. Also, the changes to 
the pronunciation as well as the level of fluency 
were investigated through both the transcripts and 
videorecordings. Changes to levels of anxiety was 
evidenced mostly from the interview, and some 
from the videos. Surprisingly, some changes in 
content will be discussed here, though they are not 
the original focus of the research. It is important 
to note that the students were supposed to speak 
in five minutes, but on both occasions they spoke 
for less than the allowed time, maybe due to their 
inadequate interlanguage. This results in the 
amount of evidence exemplified hereafter.
3.1. Verb forms
In general, the group successfully modified their 
use of verb forms after reviewing their rehearsed 
transcripts. On the first artifacts, the total number 
of mistakes spotted by both the students and the 
researcher is 11, and about half of them were 
successfully repaired in the second trial speaking. 
Table 1. Response to feedback: Verb forms
Student Number of 
suggested 
repairs 
on 1st 
transcript
Targetlike 
repairs in final 
presentation
Structure left 
out in final 
presentation
Minh 3 2 1
Thanh 6 3 2
Hieu 2 1 1
Hieu made the fewest mistakes of verb forms, 
but he did not repeat one of them in his final 
speech. Thanh reused more than half of the verbs, 
he left one highlighted verb unrepaired: 
Rehearsal Final Performance
We get up early and ... walking We got up early and...and...
walk...and walking
Thanh showed his confusion about the form 
of the verb “walk”, which might be explained by 
the fact that he had had little practice on using 
simple sentences with compound predicates. This 
is coupled with his opinion in the interview about 
his English speaking weaknesses:
“...One of the most serious difficulties I have 
been facing in speaking English was the insufficient 
knowledge of grammar...,... while the teachers have 
not created regular speaking practice activities”. 
Both Minh and Thanh replaced their suggested 
repairs with more familiar verb forms.
Student Rehearsal Final Performance
Minh We enjoy it so much. We loved the holiday so much.
Thanh I like saw the fields. I liked the fields. 
Basically, the students were able to make their 
own alternations to the use of most verb forms in 
the final speaking, yet to some extent, they seemed 
to be afraid of repeating the same mistakes, even 
32 KHOA HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ QUÂN SỰNo. 19 (5/2019)
v LANGUAGE TEACHING METHODOLOGY 
when those mistakes had been already corrected 
by the teacher on the first transcript.
3.2. Subject-verb agreement
As the student narrated a past event, the instances 
of subject-verb agreement were not frequently 
observed. Totally, 4 errors were noted on the 
rehearsals. 
Table 2. Response to feedback: Subject-verb 
agreement
Student Suggested 
repairs on 1st 
transcript
Targetlike 
repairs in final 
presentation
Structure left 
out in final 
presentation
Minh - It were next 
to...
- It look like a...
- It was next to...
- Ø
1
Thanh - She live with ... - She lives with ... 0
Hieu - Its were in June. - It was in June. 0
Unsurprisingly, all the examples of this type of 
fallacies lie in the third person singular subject-verb 
agreement, which is a very common trouble when 
the VADAFA students use present simple verbs. 
Three of the errors were noticed and successfully 
modified by the students themselves as they 
worked with their peer before the researcher made 
the final feedback. 
3.3. Plural forms of nouns
The amount of suggested corrections of this 
category vary greatly across the subjects. The 
largest number of mistakes was found in Minh’s 
speech, and he responded very well to five out of 
six spotted occasions. Besides, he was the only one 
who misused two new plural nouns in the second 
presentation. This may mean that Minh needs 
more time to practise this specific linguistic area. 
Thanh made the most mistakes on verb forms, 
but he showed a good grasp of plural forms of 
nouns, though he used only 3 plural nouns in his 
first speech. Also, very few plural nouns were 
observed in Hieu’s first transcript, and he included 
changes to both instances in the final performance 
as a result of collaborating with one of his partners. 
It is worth noting that both Minh and Hieu left out 
the final letter “s” in all the 8 nouns highlighted 
in the first transcripts. This can be explained by 
that they did not know when to use a plural noun, 
or that they understood the rules of using plural 
nouns, but failed to utter them. The former could 
be a more reasonable explanation because at the 
time the study was implemented, they learners 
had merely had some practice on spelling rules 
of plural nouns without being provided with the 
clarification of their use. However, Thanh was an 
exception because before this course, as he stated 
in the interview, he had learnt English for longer 
time than the other two participants and might 
have practised using plural nouns more often. 
3.4. Pronunciation of sounds 
The most frequently occurring inaccuracies noted 
in the students’ rehearsal presentations belong 
to this theme. Totally, 27 mispronounced words 
were highlighted, yet only about half of them were 
correctly altered by the students. It seems that most 
of the recalled words sound more similar to some 
of Vietnamese sounds such as also, ice creams, 
holiday, rice, as crowded as.
In addition, all the participants had difficulty 
pronouncing newly-added words in their second 
speaking, with Hieu facing the most challenges. 
Table 3. Response to feedback: Plural forms of 
nouns
Student Number of 
suggested 
repairs on 1st 
transcript
Targetlike 
repairs 
in final 
presentation
Nouns left 
out in final 
presentation
New 
suggested 
repairs 
in final 
presentation
Minh 6 5 1 2
Thanh 0 0 0 0
Hieu 2 2 0 0