The Poster Carousel in the ESL Classroom: What Happens to Learners' L2 Fluency During Same and Parallel‐Task Repetition?

Abstract

AbstractThis paper reports on the impact of an English as a Second Language (ESL) speaking activity—the poster carousel—on English learners' second language (L2) fluency. Two versions of the poster carousel were developed to observe the effect of talking about (a) the same poster three times (same‐task repetition) or (b) three different posters (parallel‐task repetition). 46 ESL learners took part, and their performances were audio‐recorded, transcribed, and analyzed using PRAAT to detail their L2 utterance fluency. The findings suggest that learners were more fluent during repeated performances in the same‐task repetition poster carousel group. No changes in fluency were observed for the parallel‐task repetition poster carousel group. A detailed case study explores these observed fluency increases in the same‐task repetition group and generates further hypotheses for empirical exploration. Some observations are made which relate to the selection of fluency measures in L2 fluency research.