Journal of Second Language Teaching and Research. Volume 1 Issue 2 pages 90 – 112 90 HOW DO TEACHERS VIEW STRATEGIC PLANNING AS CONTRIBUTING TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPEAKING IN EFL CLASSES? Colin Thompson, Shimonoseki City University, Japan Abstract This study investigates how teachers view strategic planning as contributing to the development of speaking in EFL classes. The study is based around the following two research questions: How far are teachers aware of strategic planning and its potential function? How do teachers see a task with an internal preparation to production structure as contributing to the development of speaking? To answer these questions, a task was chosen with an internal preparation to production structure so that it represented the theory of strategic planning, and was used as the focal point for data collection. Interviews were conducted with eight teachers to see how they commented on the task‟s internal features and whether they thought the task could develop learners‟ fluency and accuracy skills. The findings showed that the majority of teachers believed the task could improve learners‟ fluency and accuracy, which implies that strategic planning can develop different aspects of learners‟ oral skills. Keywords: task, strategic planning, speaking, fluency, accuracy Introduction The past thirty years has seen an increasing amount of research on the role of tasks and how they can help develop learners‟ second language (L2) oral skills. An aspect of tasks that has received significant attention is task planning. Numerous studies such as Ellis and Yuan (2003), and Sangarun (2005) have confirmed that when learners have the opportunity to plan before they carry out an oral task, they are able to perform at a higher standard, using fewer undue pauses and hesitations, resulting in greater fluency. This type of planning, known as strategic planning (SP), allows learners time to plan what they are going to talk about prior to performance. Learners can also use SP to think about how they are going to speak, by focusing on language form (Ellis and Yuan 2003, p.20). In doing so they can reduce the number of errors they make when speaking and improve their accuracy. However, studies carried out on the effects of SP with learners‟ accuracy are not as convincing. For example, Crookes (1989) concluded that SP has no effect on accuracy, Skehan and Foster (1997) reported that planning only improves accuracy on narrative tasks, whilst Ellis and Yuan (2003) found no gains in accuracy. Consequently, it is left open to debate whether SP can improve all aspects of learners‟ speech.