Metacognitive Awareness and the Fluency of Task-based Oral Output across Planning Conditions: The Case of Iranian TEFL Students

The present inquiry inspected the impact of metacognitive awareness on the fluency of 114 Iranian TEFL
learners’ task-based oral output. The participants in six intact classes were selected from a population
of 120 English sophomores based on their scores on proficiency pre-test. The classes were randomly
assigned as two tripartite groups of experimental and control participants each embracing three groups
of pre-task planners (PTP), on-line task planners (OLP), and pre and on-line task planners (POLP). The
fifteen-session metacognitive awareness program in the form of a topic-based listening and speaking
course was based on Cotterall's (2000) principles of autonomous learning and three sets of
metacognitive strategies, centering learning, arranging and planning learning and evaluating learning
(Oxford, 1990). Employing a narrative task type, the researcher collected the data using a 2x3 factorial
design with two levels of metacognitive awareness and three levels of planning. It was hypothesized
that fluency would improve through metacognitive awareness under various planning conditions. Twoway
Repeated Measures and One-way ANOVA analyses of the research data revealed significant fluency
gains in all experimental participants compared to the control ones and in the control POLP planners.
The findings have pedagogical implications for educators and teachers and highlight the need for
strategic investment.