A Study Of The Influence Of Task Complexity On High School Students’ Continuation Writing Performance

As a new type of writing task,the application value of continuation writing in teaching practice has been paid more and more attention,and the related research has also been enriched,but it is seldom involved in the field of task complexity.Different task complexity may also have an impact on learners’ continuation writing performance,but the specific impact remains to be explored empirically.In addition,according to Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan’s Competition Hypothesis,task complexity will affect learners’ cognitive resource input and allocation in the specific writing process.The effect of different task complexity on the continuation writing performance is also worth further discussion.This study adopts the single-factor experimental design and controls the complexity of the continuation writing task through the [+/-elements] variable,so as to influence the learners’ cognitive resource investment and allocation in the continuation writing task,and explore its influence on high school students’ continuation writing performance,which is specifically reflected in two aspects: the written products and the writing process of continuation writing task,corresponding to the following two research questions respectively:(1)What is the effect of task complexity on the continuation writing marks of high school students?(2)What is the effect of task complexity on the use of continuation writing strategies for high school students?To answer the above questions,this study designed three continuation writing tasks with different complexity according to the number of task elements(+/-elements)based on Robinson’s Triadic Componential Framework.In the lowcomplexity task,students only need to complete the task.In the medium-complexity task,students are required to consider one factor of paragraph preamble.In highcomplexity task,students need to consider both the paragraph preamble and the use of key words or sentences in the text.A total of 90 Grade 11 students from a high school in Guangdong Province participated in the experiment.They were randomly divided into three groups.In the experiment,they were required to complete three continuation writing tasks with different complexity and fill in the continuation writing strategy questionnaire.In order to further understand the specific influence of task complexity on writing performance,two students from each group were randomly invited to participate in a semi-structured interview.The quantitative data collected in the experiment was statistically analyzed by SPSS 26.0 software,and the qualitative data collected in the semi-structured interview was used as a supplement to the quantitative data.The findings are summarized as follows:(1)Task complexity has a significant impact on the continuation writing marks of high school students.Within a certain cognitive limit,the increasing of task complexity contributes to the improvement of writing marks,but a high level of task complexity does not necessarily have a positive effect on the improvement of marks.(2)Task complexity has a significant impact on the use of continuation writing strategies of high school students.The design of continuation writing task in this study has a significant influence on the use of resourcing strategy of high school students,but has no significant influence on the use of other writing strategies.The findings enrich the research results in the field of task complexity and continuation writing,provide empirical evidence for relevant theories,and provide some enlightenment for teachers to improve the design and implementation of continuation writing task according to teaching needs.