comparing the effect of individual and group pre-task planning on efl learners’ accuracy and complexity in speaking

the present study was conducted to compare the effect of individual and group pre-task planning on efl learners’ accuracy and complexity in speaking. to fulfill the purpose of the study, 60 intermediate female learners at the first grade of high school were chosen by means of a sample preliminary english test (pet) and randomly divided into two experimental groups of 30 students; the individual and the group pre-task planning groups which were provided with 15 tasks (personal, decision-making, and narrative tasks) over 16 sessions with the last one devoted to the posttest. the students in both classes were given the same planning time (two, three, and five minutes depending on the task complexity) but in one group, the participants carried out the task individually and in the other, they performed in groups of five. after the treatment, the two groups were given a posttest on a narrative task. after the planning time, all students were asked to discuss the task and the accuracy and complexity of their speech were measured. the results of the mann-whitney test indicated that as the individual planning group outperformed the group planning group in terms of speaking accuracy, the group planning learners performed significantly better than the individual planners in terms of complexity.