Impact Of Task Complexity On Syntactic Complexity,Accuracy,and Lexical Complexity Of L2 Written Production In High-Stakes English Tests

Writing helps to promote the automation of language use and language acquisition,and is an effective “comprehensible output”.Task complexity adds to the cognitive demand on L2 learners,and will influence their written production.However,few research has explored how task complexity of different writing tasks affects the quality of L2 written production.The high-stakes English test is related to the vital interests of the test takers,and the study of different task types has great practical significance.This thesis takes the writing task types in the most important high-stakes English test – Gaokao,the college entrance examination of China,as an example,and studies the three writing task types after its reform: practical writing,continuation writing and summary writing.Under the guidance of the cognition hypothesis,this paper distinguishes the task complexity of three writing task types,and measures its influence on the L2 written production from the perspective of syntactic complexity,accuracy and lexical complexity.Participants in this study are students from three Grade-10 classes and three Grade-12 classes in a high school at a Gaokao-reforming province.By analyzing the L2 written production of each 90 students respectively in the high-level group and the low-level group,this study finds: 1)the scores of writing task types with a high task complexity can best reflect the true language proficiency of the test takers.The scores of continuation writing are most relevant to the test takers’ language proficiency and the scores of practical writing are moderately related to the test takers’ true language proficiency;2)the syntax of the writing task types with a high task complexity is more complex,and the subordinate structure of continuation writing is more complex,while the summary writing has more coordinate structures and complex nominals;3)in terms of accuracy,the correct rate of L2 written production in continuation writing is the highest both in the high-and low-level groups,and the L2 written production of practical writing is the second;4)in terms of lexical complexity,continuation writing can motivate test takers to use sophisticated vocabulary,and there is also more abundant use of verbs,nouns,and adverbs;5)the high-level and low-level test takers have no significant difference in the syntactic complexity and accuracy of the three writing task types;6)the differences in lexical complexity between the high-level and low-level test takers are significant,mainly in the lexical richness.This research partially supports the cognition hypothesis.According to the findings,tasks with high task complexity can better improve the learning effect,test takers’ writing abilities and provide positive guidance for Gaokao reform and pedagogy.