The Effects Of Task Complexity And Task Difficulty On Learners' EFL Writing Production

In recent years, with the upsurge of task-based instruction and the exploration of the means to achieve the balanced development of linguistic forms and meaning, the field of Second Language Acquisition has been witnessing the emergence of a new focus-the research of task itself. The researches concerning tasks are concentrated on three aspects: first, the study of the effects of task variables on learners' language production; second, the application of tasks in actual classroom; third, the employment of tasks to realize certain pedagogical goal. However, the premise of implementing tasks in the actual classroom and using tasks to achieve the pedagogical goal is to construct a theoretical framework of task variables and investigate the effects of tasks variables, which is a fertile but underexplored area. In addition, writing, as a kind of language production, is often neglected in the past task researches. This thesis aims to investigate the effects of writing tasks of different cognitive complexity on learners' language production, in the hope that the scope of task researches can be widened. Therefore, the present study has the significances for syllabus and material design, for teaching method and for scoring standard.Based on the information-processing theory and Robinson's model of task complexity and task difficulty, the thesis is intended to examine the following three questions: (1) Does task complexity have effects on learners' writing production in terms of fluency, complexity, or accuracy? (2) Is learners' writing production correlated to task difficulty? (3) Are learners' ratings of difficulty affected by task complexity? The three writing tasks are: personal task, topic task and summary task.The major findings emerging from the results of the investigation are: (1) Task complexity affects learners' writing production. Task complexity has significant effects on the complexity of the language in the three tasks, on the fluency both between personal task and summary task, and between topic task and summary task, and on the accuracy of the language both between personal task and topic task, and between topic task and summary task. The less complex the task is, the more fluent the language production is, and the less complex the language production is; The more complex the task is, the less fluent the language production is, and the more complex the language production is. These results illustrate that the competition for the limited attentional resources exists between the fluency and the complexity of language.(2) Task difficulty and learners' writing production are partly correlated. The findings suggest that only perceived difficulty, stress, and confidence in ability are related to the fluency and the complexity of language; there is no evidence for the correlation of task difficulty and the accuracy. Perceived difficulty and stress are negatively related to the fluency in learners' language production, but positively related to the complexity in learners' language production; confidence is positively related to the fluency in learners' language production,but negatively related to the complexity in learners' language production. The more difficult the learner feels the task, and the more stress the learner has while doing the task, the less fluent the language production is, and the more complex the language production is. The less difficult the learner feels the task, and the less stress the learner has while doing the task, the more fluent the language production is, and the less complex the language production is. The more confidence the learner has in the ability to do the task, the more fluent the language production is, and the less complex the language production is.(3) Task complexity affects learners' ratings of difficulty. Task complexity significantly affects ratings of overall perception of difficulty, stress, and confidence in the ability. The lower degree of complexity the task has, the less difficult the learner feels the task, and the less stress the learner has, but the more confidence...