Effects Of Task Complexity On The Writing Performance In Chinese College EFL Learners’ Argumentative Writing

Based on Robinson’s Cognitive Hypothesis and Skehan and Foster’s Limited Attentional Capacity Model, the present study is designed to explore the effects of manipulating task complexity along±planning time and±prior knowledge on Chinese EFL learners’writing performance.One hundred and forty sophomores of Lanzhou University are chosen to be the participants of the study. Then they are divided into four parallel experimental groups. A pretest has been conducted to guarantee that all participants in the four groups have an equivalent writing performance in terms of accuracy, fluency, syntactic complexity and lexical complexity. However, in the post test, they are not given the same pre-task planning time or the same amount of writing assistance. In Group1and Group2.20minutes of planning time are provided:while in Group3and Group4, participants only have10minutes for planning. Besides, the writing assistance are only provided in Group2and Group4. According to the theories mentioned above, the complexity of tasks with less planning time is greater than those with more, and the complexity of tasks without prior knowledge is also greater than those with prior knowledge. The researcher adopts the ratio of error-free clause, words per T-unit. word types per square root of two times the words, clause per T-unit to measure accuracy, fluency, lexical complexity and syntactic complexity. Additionally, the questionnaires are conducted to get more information of the participants about their strategies of allocating attentional resources and their attitudes towards the tasks. After all the procedures have been done, the data are analyzed by SPSS17.0. The results show that accuracy, fluency and syntactic complexity are rising significantly in groups with writing assistant. Although the mean scores of lexical complexity in Group2and Group4is higher than those of Group1and Group3. they do not reach a significant level. Moreover, more planning time does not show significant effects on Chinese EFL learners’ argumentations in any aspect of writing performance.The results partly lend support to Robinson’s Cognitive Hypothesis, and since the fluenc\and lexical variation of learners’writing don’t grow simultaneously, the results also partly give support to Skehan and Foster’s Limited Attentional Capacity Model. Teachers and syllabus designers could take considerations of cognitive load and design tasks in a rational sequence as the developing of task complexity. Hopefully, this study could provide inspirations with researches for further study.