ASSESSING FOREIGN LANGUAGE PERFORMANCE OF SPANISH STUDENTS UNDER ONLINE PLANNING IN TESTING AND LABORATORY SETTINGS

Abstract

Research in the differential effects of manipulating task planning conditions on the performance of EFL learners has flourished in the past several decades. However, most of the studies have been carried out in a laboratory setting. This study aims to add to the available body of findings by focusing on the testing setting too. 24 intermediate learners of EFL enrolled in the Faculty of Education at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria were divided into two groups. They each completed a narrative tight structured task based on a picture composition. Participants in the laboratory and the testing setting were required to carry out the task after seeing the pictures for up to 50 seconds, and they were given unlimited time to enable them to formulate and monitor their speech plans as they performed the task. The oral productions were audio recorded and transcribed, coded and segmented. Then they were scored by two raters and subjected to the discourse analytic performance measures of complexity, accuracy,lexis and fluency (CALF). The results of Students' Ttests revealed differences between the two groups, being the testing setting more beneficial for participants' performance than the laboratory setting in terms of complexity, accuracy and lexis, but not of fluency. However, none of these differences were statistically significant. These findings may be due to a variety of reasons, the most probable one being the fact that final test scores were at stake. Given that the two settings have typically been examined separately, and that studies on the effect of careful online planning in a testing setting have been quite limited, this study addresses an important research gap. Furthermore, language testing research has mainly relied on raters' assessment summative scores, and not on discourse analytic dimensions.