The Effect of Online Planning and Strategic Planning in CALL-Based TBLT on Iranian EFL Learners’ Willingness to Communicate

The current study examined the impact of online planning and strategic planning in the context of task-based computer-assisted language learning (CALL) on Willingness to Communicate (WTC). Initially, the Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was administered to 120 intermediate female English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. Then, based on the OPT scale, 90 learners were chosen and divided into two experimental groups and a control group. The participants in the assigned groups were asked to complete the WTC questionnaire as the pretest. Following that, one of the experimental groups received CALL Online Planning and the other one received CALL Strategic Planning. In the Strategic Planning group, the learners wrote an essay each session on a given topic while being allowed to think of what they were going to write (content), and what language forms (words, grammar, etc.) they wanted to use. In the other experimental group, learners had time to think about the task performance during the task, but were instructed not to write down their plan. Conventional treatment was applied to the participants in the control group. After ten sessions, the learners in the three groups were given the WTC questionnaire as the posttest. The results of ANCOVA indicated that online planning and strategic planning had considerable impact on Iranian EFL learners’ WTC. Moreover, it was revealed that the effect of strategic planning was more significant compared to online planning on Iranian EFL learners’ WTC. The results promise implications for EFL teachers to incorporate online planning and strategic planning in the context of CALL-based TBLT (i.e., Task-Based Language Teaching) to enhance WTC.