French Learners' Past-Tense Development through Collaborative Writing Tasks: The Role of Procedural and Content Repetition

Abstract

The majority of task repetition studies have focused on learners' oral production, but whether task repetition can promote learning in other skill areas such as writing remains to be seen. The current study compared the effect of procedural and content repetition on French learners' accurate production of the passe compose during collaborative writing tasks. The study included 42 beginning-intermediate learners from two intact university French classes. Each class participated in pre- and post-tests, three collaborative writing tasks, and a demographic questionnaire over a four-week period. The procedural repetition group completed three information-exchange tasks with a different list of verbs each time. The content repetition group completed three different task types with the same content (i.e., same list of verbs). Learners' written products for the collaborative writing tasks and pre- and post-tests were analyzed for target-form production (i.e., suppliance) and the accuracy of production. Results indicated that during task performance, the content repetition group supplied the target feature more frequently and accurately than the procedural repetition group. The findings further suggest that although no differences were found between the two groups, both groups improved significantly from the pre-test to the post-test. Implications for pedagogy and research on various task repetition features are discussed.