the effect of length constraint on task-based l2 narrative retellings: a study of efl learners’ calf performance

Task as a promising area of study has contributed to a wealth of the literature in the field of english as a foreign language (efl) over the years. length constraint as task demand is one of the under-investigated areas of task performance. it refers to the restriction placed on the amount of spoken content, encouraging brevity and conciseness. for the purpose of the study, 23 efl university students (10 male and 13 female) participated in the study. adopting a within-subjects design, an oral reproduction text was chosen as an instrument in the form of a narrative retelling task to compare the participants task-prompted complexity, accuracy, lexis and fluency across length-constrained and non-length-constraint performances. manova results revealed that length constraint as the independent variable influenced efl learners’ narrative retellings when the four dependent variables of complexity, accuracy, lexis and fluency were taken together. however, length constraint was shown to have variable effect on the aspects of retelling performance. positive significant differences were obtained regarding promoting accuracy and fluency, but not about complexity and lexis. implications of the study are discussed in the light of theoretical and empirical claims in the literature.