Task-Prompted Variability of Narrative Retellings

The aim of this study was to investigate the differential effects of time and length constraints on complexity, accuracy, lexis, and fluency (CALF) of EFL learners¿ narrative retellings. To that end, participants at intermediate proficiency level were selected through a convenient sampling procedure. They had to retell the narrative first with time constraint and then reproduce it with length constraint. Based on Tavakoli (2018), four indices (ratio of subordination, weighted clause ratio, diversity, and speech rate representing CALF respectively) were chosen out of 12 ones. A repeated-measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was run to investigate whether there were statistically significant differences in learners¿ L2 performance in terms of CALF at the two times of data collection. The findings proposed that there was a difference in a linear combination of the four dependent variables of CALF across the two times of performances. It was also concluded that learners' narrative retellings do not demonstrate significant changes, in terms of CALF separately, across time-constrained versus length-constrained reproductions.