Do it again

What happens if you get a learner to do the same task twice? Will he do better or worse or the same? This was tested in an illuminating experiment in which a learner was asked, without any previous preparation, to retell a story she had seen on a video, an extract from a Tom and Jerry video. The learner did what she had been asked to do and her account was recorded. On the following day, without any previous warning, she was asked to do the same task again. Surprisingly, the learner did better on almost all accounts. Though the content was basically the same, she added two utterances which made the motives and circumstances of the action clearer. She again used and a lot – a feature of authentic speech – and there were hesitations, repetitions and self-corrections, but rather fewer than on the previous day. Her language had become more fluent. In addition, her language had also become more accurate. Her vocabulary was more target-language like. She still had difficulty with put up and take down but her adverbials were more correct, and her collocations more appropriate. Even her grammar got closer to the target language. The general implication is that we can learn through communication simply by being challenged to try to do the same thing on more than one occasion. This experiment reminds of a personal experience I have on an almost daily basis: I read a text and, on the following day, read it again, and I always understand more on the second day, without having looked up a single word. (Bygate, Martin: “TESOL and linguistics”, in: Culpeper, Jonathan, Katamba, Francis, et. al. (eds): English Language. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009: 648-654)