Read Mohammad Javad Ahmadian’s article titled Task repetition in ELT in ELT journal.
A ‘task’ can be defined as a meaning-focused pedagogic activity in which learners need to rely on their linguistic and non-linguistic resources in order to achieve a communicative outcome (Ellis 2009a). Since the early 1980s, the notion of task has been widely used in ELT circles, and previous Key Concept articles on task (Rubdy 1998) and task-based language teaching (Foster 1999) note that initial debates centred around: (a) providing a working definition for a task, (b) designing classificatory schemes for grading and sequencing tasks, and (c) examining the effects of different types of tasks on L2 development. In addition to these themes, researchers and practitioners have also been concerned with task design and implementation, implementation being considered in terms of pre- and post-task activities. One of the implementation variables that has attracted researchers’ interest is ‘task repetition’.
Task repetition involves asking language learners to repeat the same or slightly altered tasks at intervals of, for example, one or two weeks (Bygate and Samuda 2005: 43). In task repetition, the first performance of the task is regarded as preparation for (or a pre-task activity before) further performances (Ellis 2005).