Introduction

There are two principal types of planning – pre-task planning and within-task planning. The former consists of rehearsal or task repetition, where the performance of a task at one time serves as a preparation for the performance of the same task later, and strategic planning, where learners are given time to consider what they want to say and how to say it. Within-task planning varies according to whether it is pressured or unpressured, which constitutes a continuum rather than a dichotomy. This taxonomy, which I introduced in Ellis (2005b) needs refining and extending. Bui (2014), for example, pointed out that it might be useful to distinguish ‘rehearsal’ when learners are made aware they will have to repeat the task and ‘repetition’ when there is no such warning. Strategic planning can be guided or unguided and in the case of the former there are a number of possibilities. Finally, if planning is viewed as just one way of preparing learners to perform a task, then it will be helpful to distinguish what Bui called ‘internal readiness’ which arises from topic familiarity, schematic familiarity or task familiarity from ‘external readiness’ involving the various types of planning. In this chapter I will review research that has investigated different types of ‘task preparedness’.

Studies that have investigated preparedness variables have primarily been concerned with the effect that these variables have on how a task is performed. The great majority of these studies have analysed task performance in terms of complexity, accuracy and fluency but some have also used other ways, for example language-related episodes (LREs) (e.g. Kim, 2013) or the use of specific target structures (Van de Guchte et al., 2016). Relatively few studies have investigated what effect preparedness variables have on the language learning that results from performing tasks. This constitutes a major limitation of the research to date. It has led researchers – such as Skehan –to make the link between task performance and learning theoretically.