The distributed practice effects of speaking task repetition

This study examined the distributed practice effects on L2 speaking task repetition (TR). Previous research indicated that speaking TR has beneficial effects on learners’ later speech. To examine the distributed practice effects on learners’ second repetition and post‐repetition speech, 38 university students were engaged in cartoon narrations. The procedure included: a pre‐test, two repetition tasks with a 1‐week intersession interval (spaced practice group) or without an interval (massed practice group), and a post‐test. The grammatical complexity, grammatical accuracy, fluency, and lexical variety of learners’ performances were examined using ANCOVA. The lexical variety scores increased more in the spaced practice group than the massed practice group in the pre‐ and post‐test comparisons, indicating that spaced TR may induce lexical variety in post‐repetition speech.