Font Size: a A A

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

Posted on:2014-01-28Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:S X WeiFull Text:PDF
GTID:2235330398969119Subject:Foreign Linguistics and Applied Linguistics
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
By means of qualitative and quantitative research, the present paper aims to investigate the effects of task complexity manipulated along the dimensions of+/-prior knowledge on Chinese college learners’argumentative writing in terms of fluency, accuracy, lexical complexity and syntactic complexity.The participants who attended this experiment are2012Freshmen of School of Information Engineering at Lanzhou Commercial College. They are non-English majors and their language proficiency amounts to the same level after the pretest. All60participants were divided into two groups, that is, all60participants were randomly assigned into Group topic, ideas¯o-structure given (GTIM) and Group topic given (GTG), to write an argumentative essay by offering two different writing prompts within30minutes. A questionnaire as to task difficulty was done shortly after all participants finished their writing tasks. The data collected were analyzed by means of SPSS11.5. The results show that fluency, accuracy and syntactic complexity are decreasing with the increase of task complexity. But, lexical complexity is increasing with the increase of task complexity, and there is no significant difference between two groups. Questionnaire shows that task difficulty is negatively correlated with fluency, accuracy and syntactic complexity, that is, fluency, accuracy and syntactic complexity in less complex task are higher than that in more complex one.The results show that there are no competition pools among syntactic complexity, fluency and accuracy for there is not a trade-off effect between them. As a result, the results here are nearly accordant with Robinson’s Hypothesis. English teachers and syllabus designers should take a consideration of the effect of cognitive load on learners so as to single out and design materials to improve the development of Second Language Acquisition.
Keywords/Search Tags:task complexity, task difficulty, Cognition Hypothesis, languageperformance, trade-off effects
PDF Full Text Request
Related items