Language-related Episodes Generated by EFL Students

The current study investigates how different linguistic problem-solving tasks are related to students' Language-related Episodes (LREs), that is any part of utterance “where students reflect consciously on the language they are producing" (Swain, 2001, p. 53). The study acknowledges that, despite the increasing interest in the role of LREs in second language learning within the literature, there is little research that explores a relationship between task types and learners’ LREs. Recognising this paucity, a quasi- experimental study was conducted in a Korean EFL tertiary class. Six students were given composition tasks and another six conducted editing tasks. Composition tasks were considered as a less structured type than editing tasks. Students’ dialogue during four task sessions was audio-taped. LREs were identified and transcribed from the dialogue and they were examined Quantitatively and Qualitatively. From the Quantitative analysis, the study indicates a substantial difference in the language foci of LREs between the two tasks types. The qualitative analysis reveals that there are some differences between the natures of interaction emerging from the two tasks: non-collaborative interactional features were more frequently observed in the editing task than in the composition task.