Task difficulty and self‐repair behavior in second language oral production

This study investigated how the degree of task difficulty, operationalized as the existence of a loose or tight storyline structure, affects self‐repair behavior in L2 oral speech. Thirty Iranian female lower‐intermediate EFL learners performed two oral narrative tasks, with loose and tight storyline structures. Then, they listened to the audio‐tapes of their own performances and were asked to report their thoughts at the time they were performing the task, retrospectively. Results of the analyses revealed that there is a relationship between task difficulty and self‐repair behavior such that with the difficult task, participants mostly effectuated appropriacy and different‐information repairs. However the participants who performed the less difficult task were predominantly concerned with rectifying their ungrammatical or lexically inappropriate utterances and therefore executed error‐repairs more frequently.