Effects Of Task Repetition And Task Types On Chinese EFL Learners’ Written Production

Many researchers have investigated how task implementation conditions and task design variables affect learners’ language. However, a majority of the researches focused only on oral production. The few studies related to learners’ written production were limited in the sense that they were concerned only with one time language use. The present study aims at exploring the effects of task repetition and task types (narrative and argumentative) on Chinese EFL learners’written production in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity over an extended period of experiment. On the basis of previous studies and related theoretical framework, this research tries to answer three questions:1. How does task repetition affect learners’written production in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity?2. How do different task types influence learners’written production in terms of fluency, accuracy and complexity?3. Does task-type repetition have any effect on learners’written production when they perform a new writing task of the same type? If it does, what is it?Ninety one non-English major freshmen from two classes in Grade2011in Lanzhou University were involved in the present study. The two classes were not significantly different in their English proficiency and were chosen as Narrative Group and Argumentative Group to complete narrative writing tasks and argumentative writing tasks respectively to examine the effects of different task types. Each group had five writing tasks and participants were asked to write an essay about250words on given tasks every week. The first and the fifth writing tasks were written only once to examine task-type repetition effects. The second, third and fourth tasks, which were called repeated tasks, were performed three times respectively, aiming at investigating task repetition effect. Each participant completed eleven compositions during the eleven weeks’experiment. Then a questionnaire was distributed to the participants to get a general idea of their attitudes towards task repetition and task types. The value of fluency, accuracy and complexity of each participant’s composition was measured. The data collected were analyzed by SPSS11.5. The results show that:1. Task repetition can lead to fluency, accuracy and complexity improvement in both types of tasks although coherence remains the same in narrative group;2. Argumentative tasks result in significantly more fluent and accurate but less complex written production than narrative tasks;3. Working on a certain type of task over an extended period of time (eleven weeks) can lead to more accurate and syntactic complex language production in the performance of a new task of the same type. From the results of the questionnaires, it is found that students hold positive attitudes towards task repetition and they think argumentative tasks are easier to write than the narrative ones.The present study is an attempt in exploring the effects of task repetition and different task types on written production, in the hope to be helpful for foreign language teachers and students to improve English writing ability and provide some insights to future study.