This paper reports a replication of part of Tavakoli and Foster’s (2008) investigation into the influence of narrative task design on second language (L2) oral performance. The initial study found in part that narratives with both foreground and background information elicited significantly greater syntactic complexity than those with only foreground information. This close replication adds the variable of literacy, conducting the study with adult refugees to New Zealand with low first language (L1) literacy. Participants narrated two of the four cartoon strips in Tavakoli and Foster (2008). In contrast to the initial study, background information in the narrative tasks had no impact on the syntactic complexity, lexical diversity, or fluency of performances. However, given the tendency of participants to omit background events, this outcome is discussed in terms of visual literacy, and aptness to describe rather than connect the cartoon frames. The implications for the use of narrative tasks with such learners are explored.

中文翻译：

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任务设计、L1 读写能力和第二语言口语


本文报告了 Tavakoli 和 Foster （2008） 对叙事任务设计对第二语言 （L2） 口语表现影响的部分调查的复制。初步研究部分发现，与仅具有前景信息的叙述相比，同时具有前景和背景信息的叙述引起的句法复杂性要高得多。这种紧密的复制增加了识字率的变量，对第一语言 （L1） 识字率较低的新西兰成年难民进行了研究。参与者在 Tavakoli 和 Foster （2008） 中叙述了四幅漫画中的两幅。与最初的研究相比，叙事任务中的背景信息对表演的句法复杂性、词汇多样性或流畅性没有影响。然而，鉴于参与者倾向于省略背景事件，这一结果从视觉素养和描述而不是连接卡通框架的倾向的角度进行了讨论。探讨了对此类学习者使用叙事任务的影响。