Speaking assessment requires learners to communicate fluently in the second language (L2). Before the actual

assessment, pre-task planning is always preceded, whereas this time is important for students to organise their

structured in linear sequencing (point - example - conclusion) problem - solution or listing format. In addition,

translanguaging strategy or flexible language also may appear, which enhance planning efficiency. However, a

minority of learners provided drafts with unclear structure, which may justify why planning is not always

guaranteed learners to produce good performance in the assessment. This conceptual study discusses on

students’ pre-speaking drafts in preparing for speaking assessments. By understanding this, teachers can decide

whether students genuinely organise their ideas or rely too heavily on notes, thereby providing targeted

intervention for the students.

Learning a second language (L2) is often considered challenging, particularly when it comes to speaking. This

2020; Aaj, Maftoon, &Siyyari, 2023; Yingsheng & Yeung, 2023; Lampropoulou, 2023).

This is because speaking assessments are always preceded by a period of preparation in which students can

plan or draft their ideas before the actual assessment. Although previous research highlights the significance of

planning for accuracy and fluency (Shakbakh & Mardani, 2025), actual planning artifacts—the contents of

learners' drafts or notes— receive less attention. The organisation of the thoughts, which is rarely regarded as

significant data, is just as important as the ideas themselves in these drafts.

Hence, this paper aims to conceptualise students’ pre-speaking drafts as tangible evidence of organisational

strategies. By anchoring the concept of planning quality, it explores recent literature on pre-task planning and

discourse organisation and suggests the use of translanguaging as a draft-centred framework for effective pre-

task planning in L2.

use language meaningfully rather than just practising linguistic forms. TBLT is conceptualised as a process

with three separate stages that each contribute differently to learner output: pre-task planning, task

performance, and post-task reflection. Ellis established pre-task planning as a crucial pedagogical and

theoretical component of L2 learning by demonstrating through this model how it can have a substantial

impact on fluency, complexity, and accuracy. Thus, this work served as a foundation for subsequent research

that examined how students plan and prepare before speaking.

Research generally indicates that pre-task planning enables better L2 performance, particularly in terms of task

complexity, lexical selection, grammatical accuracy and fluency. (Chen, 2020; Park, 2021; Yingsheng &

Yeung, 2023, Aaj, Shakbakh & Mardani, 2025). The time allocated during planning allows for improvised

language production by reducing cognitive overload (Chen, 2020) as learners are not required to pay attention

syntactic complexity.

However, surprisingly, several different studies presented contrasting findings regarding the effects of pre-task

planning on learners. For instance, Kim (2020) found that planning did not always have significant effects on

students’ oral performance. A study on 77 undergraduates investigating the effects of pre-task planning and

task complexity demonstrated that students performed accurately and fluently even without allocated planning

time, and that the use of more complex language was driven primarily by task difficulty rather than by

planning. Another noteworthy finding was presented by Lampropoulou (2023), who stated that the correlation

between pre-task planning and performance can be inconsistent. The study revealed that making notes did not

improve students’ oral performance. It appeared that students primarily used their planning time on generating

main propositions only, rather than preparing for language accuracy and complexity. These findings raise the

involved in an oral assessment and planning is always preceded by a pre-task planning, in which you could

record notes related to the ideas given opportunities to plan ideas with drafts, so they could produce L2 ideas

once they were given the opportunity in an oral assessment. Lambert, Aubrey & Leeming (2021) suggested

that a conceptual precursory option in L2 could be related to successful L2 production because learners had an

opportunity to plan ideas in L2 and going entails reducing some of the burden to monitor their language use in

a conceptual framework.

Although research on drafts has been reviewed extensively in oral assessment, not as much attention has been

given to written drafts preceding the speech. This relates to Park's (2021) assertion that sources of planning

have not been examined sufficiently in task-based language teaching. As drafts were enacted on paper, the

assumption was that listeners would easily follow the content of the drafts. Through the analysis of written

drafts, ideas that are visibly externalised in organisation will be identified as both macro-organisational and

micro-organisational strategies for the specific purpose of aiding a better and more effective L2 production.

they have listed separately "Pros" and "Cons", which all indicate the overall plan for a coherent compare and

contrast discourse structure. In the Pros and Cons columns, the student uses (L1) "kemudahan" (convenience),

in the L2, as a keyword to illustrate their micro-linguistic strategy of translanguaging to capture complex ideas

and easily retrieve that lexical item in the L2 while speaking. This linguistic scaffolding has direct implications

for the execution phase, as the draft enables the learner to now shift to the priority of fluent delivery, and

grammatical monitoring was not on-the-go generative idea development. Thus, rather than peripheral, these

artifacts provide us with valuable insights into how learners are strategically managing their cognitive load,

positively impacting fluency, accuracy, and coherence of their oral performance.

Planning acts as a crucial part prior oral assessment. However, in task-based language teaching, sources of

completed by Liu and Yeung (2023) proposed that by using L1 in pre-speaking drafts, it benefited learners in

terms of syntactic complexity, accuracy and fluency rather than using L2 in planning time. However, the result

related to lexical diversity was not significant. Another study by Luo and Sun (2025) revealed a similar finding

about the positive effect of translanguage on syntactic complexity and idea units. This is because, by switching

to the familiar language, learners may prioritise their language use in the task given and eventually perform

better in oral assessment. These findings are correlated with the claim by Liu and Yeung (2023) that the quality

of the usefulness of the planning depends on the language use either learners employ L1 or L2. This concept of

translanguaging is aligned with the framework by Bachman and Palmer (1996) that learners apply three stages

when using translanguage, namely assessment, planning and execution. During the assessment level, learners

may write L1 keyword like “kelestarian”. Then, in the planning level, they generate the ideas related to the

differences in how pre-task planning conditions are defined and executed. Shakbakh and Mardani (2025), for

example, conducted a study on the effects of different types of planning conditions (guided, unguided, and no

planning) specifically and found that these conditions impacted students' speaking accuracy, which means that

an explicit planning condition was generally more favourable for developing students' language control.

Conversely, Lampropoulou (2023) examined planning in a more open-ended context and found that allowing

students the opportunity to make their own notes did not improve oral performance. The participants focused

more on content production, rather than on developing control of language form and complexity. These

opposing findings indicate that the nature and structure of the planning task itself, which may include the

context of the pre-task planning, time to plan, or provide explicit emphasis on language over content, may be

an important aspect that could help explain deviations in the research on pre-task planning.

procedures, these drafts were gathered with consent and subsequently anonymised for analysis. These samples

offer important insights into how learners at this proficiency level visually structure ideas, sequence content,

and use translanguaging to support oral performance. The discussion focuses on demonstrating observable

planning patterns rather than statistical generalisation.

An array of studies proposed the significant value of planning, which positively affects the speaking

As captured in Figure 1, implementing the point-example-conclusion strategy assists learners in presenting the

ideas well in oral assessment since they have a clear picture of the ideas to be delivered. The coherence of the

ideas, starting with the main idea, is supported by the examples and concluded with the conclusion, allowing

listeners to follow the ideas well.

of bullet points, or a tree diagram of different arguments—those guides students to organise their ideas

logically before speaking. These outlines can have planning templates added, focusing on the sequence of

ideas, important vocabulary, and discourse markers to support students in connecting the content with the

linguistic frame in which they will be speaking. In multilingual contexts, teachers may prefer to allow

translanguaging in the drafts, enabling students to brainstorm ideas in their first language before transforming

their ideas into English. This adds to the depth of content generation and organisation and creates clarity by