the effects of planning on accuracy and complexity of iranian efl students’ written narrative task performance

this study compared the different effects of form-focused guided planning vs. meaning-focused guided planning on iranian pre-intermediate students’ task performance. the study lasted for three weeks and concentrated on eight english structures. forty five pre-intermediate iranian students were randomly assigned to three groups of guided planning focus-on-form group (gpfg), guided planning focus-on-meaning group (gpmg) and unguided planning group (ugp) which was the control group. the gpfg received focus-on-form activities and the gpmg received focus-on-meaning activities before both of the groups were asked to engage in narrating a story. the ugp did not receive any of these activities. then all groups were given ten minutes to plan their discourse before their final narrations. at the end of the study, the written narrations of all groups were put into close analysis and comparison. gpfg outperformed gpmg in terms of the accuracy and complexity of their narrations. although gpmg performed well in terms of accuracy but did not make considerable gains regarding the complexity of their written production. therefore, these results suggested that focus on meaning planning is of limited pedagogical value in terms of promoting the complexity of the students’ written language production, whereas focus on form planning is beneficial in improving both the accuracy and complexity of the students’ written narrations.