Effects Of Task Complexity On The Fluency, Complexity And Accuracy In L2Oral Production

Considerable weight has been placed on oral task research in the second languageacquisition field, particularly regarding how manipulating task complexity affectslanguage performance. However, the question of how oral assistance factor (relateddiscourse) influences oral production has yet to be answered given that most task-basedstudies has focused on the planning time factor’s effect on oral production. The presentstudy is intended to investigate the effects of manipulating task complexitysimultaneously along both±pre-task planning time and±related discourse variables onChinese EFL students’ oral production.Fifty-five English juniors from Chongqing University participated in thisexperiment. The participants were divided into four groups of almost equal numbers,completing the instructed tasks of different complexity levels. After the completion oftasks and data collection, separate2×2between-subjects factorial ANOVAs of fivedependent variables were carried out to examine the effect of task complexity onlearners’ fluency, accuracy and complexity. Results showed that, regarding the effects ofincreasing task complexity along resource-dispersing dimension on L2production, theless complex task (+pre-task planning time) produced greater fluency, lexicalcomplexity, and accuracy than the complex tasks (-pre-task planning time), albeit notsignificantly differently; with respect to resource-directing dimension, a complex task(-related discourse) resulted in significantly reduced fluency, lower lexical complexityand greater structural complexity, than a non-complex one. While the accuracy measureexhibited mixed results with improved accuracy under planned condition and decreasedaccuracy under unplanned condition, although no statistically significant difference wasobtained for lexical complexity, structural complexity and accuracy.Finally, the findings were interpreted in terms of previous theories and studies ontask complexity’s effect on language production. In addition, the research limitationsand its implications for task-based teaching were discussed.