Learning from the transcripts of an oral communication task

This article reports a study of two English for Academic Purposes (EAP) classes who used different forms of transcript of their performances on a role-play speaking task as the basis for reprocessing and improving their output. One class used transcripts produced by the learners themselves, and the other used extracts transcribed by the teacher. Analysis of two subsequent performances on the same task—the second after two days and the third four weeks later—showed that both procedures were manageable under normal classroom conditions, and suggests that the self-transcribing procedure was more effective in helping the learners to maintain higher rates of accuracy in the forms highlighted during the reprocessing activities.