A re-analysis of Foster and Skehan (2013)
This presentation will use the same dataset as Foster and Skehan (2013), but explore it more thoroughly.

Foster and Skehan (2013) reported on a study of the effects of a post-task activity on the performance of earlier decision-making and narrative tasks.
They hypothesised that anticipation of the post-task activity would lead participants to direct attention to avoiding error in their task performance, i.e. to achieve greater accuracy. This hypothesis was partially confirmed – more strongly with the decision-making task and less strongly with the narrative. This presentation will use the same dataset, but explore it more thoroughly, in three major ways.
First, regarding research design, the re-analysis will explore in greater depth the comparative effects of the two experimental conditions, as well as the effects of practice and experience, to explore whether performance levels changed over the two weeks of the study, since the narrative and decision-making tasks were counterbalanced.
Second, additional measures of accuracy will be used to explore whether:
- some are more sensitive than others to experimental differences, and
- different sub-dimensions of accuracy (clause-based; length-oriented; gravity-based) yield different results.
Thirdly, the two tasks, decision-making (interactive) and narrative (monologic) will be compared for the patterns of error typical of each. The various findings will be related to a range of other studies which have explored accuracy measurement in second language task-based performance, with a view to discussing possible generalisations about such measurement. Findings have implications for task theory, performance measurement, and pedagogy.
This event will be particularly useful for researchers.
Related links
- Centre for Applied Linguistics Research Seminars Series
- Centre for Applied Linguistics
- Culture, Communication and Media
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Mary Hinkley for UCL Creative Media Services.
He has taught at the same institution, as well as at universities in the UK, Hong Kong, and New Zealand. He is interested in task-based instruction and research, language testing, and foreign language aptitude.