When you practice a speech, you often say the same story again and again. Does this help? In one study, 32 Japanese learners of English did the same speaking tasks six times. Over six tries, they spoke more smoothly. Their speed went up until the fifth time.

But another study found a problem. Students who told the same story six times in a row sometimes spoke more slowly with a new story. Taking breaks between practices may be better.

Task repetition means doing the same speaking task more than once. In a study by Lambert and his colleagues, 32 Japanese learners of English repeated three kinds of tasks six times each. Their fluency improved as they repeated the tasks, and their speech rate kept rising until the fifth performance, although the biggest gains came in the first three.

Another study compared different schedules. When learners told the same cartoon story six times in one class, they paused less afterwards, but they also spoke more slowly and repeated words more often when telling a new story. A week later, the differences between schedules had become small. These findings show that becoming fluent on one story is not the same as becoming a fluent speaker in general.

Researchers have studied task repetition, simply performing the same speaking task again, for nearly three decades. In a detailed study, Lambert, Kormos and Minn asked 32 Japanese learners of English at three proficiency levels to perform instruction, narration and opinion tasks six times each. Fluency improved regardless of level or task type.

Speech rate rose most across the first three performances but continued to improve until the fifth, while pauses and self-repairs declined at different points, so different stages of speech production seem to become easier at different times. Scheduling also matters. In one experiment, repeating a picture description after intervals ranging from none to two weeks was beneficial in every case, but speed benefited most from short intervals and complexity from a one-week gap.

Another study found that massed repetition, six performances in a single class, reduced pausing on a new story but slowed articulation and increased verbatim repetition, which is why the authors called it a double-edged sword. A recent scoping review of 74 studies notes that researchers increasingly ask whether repetition builds transferable skills rather than merely improving performance on the same task. Learners can space out repetitions and then test themselves on new topics.