The Effect Of Foreign Language Aptitude And Task Types On Task Complexity

Aptitude, recognized as the specific talent for learning foreign languages, exhibits considerable variation between individual learners. It is regarded as the combination of different cognitive abilities. Carroll, Skehan and Robinson are the representatives in this field. Skehan and Robinson have introduced the cognitive linguistics into the aptitude study and therefore have founded the Processing Stage Model of Aptitude and the Aptitude Complex/Ability Differences Hypothesis.Task complexity refers to the cognitive features of a task. And these features are manipulated by increasing or decreasing the cognitive demands when learners are supposed to finish a task. Generally, task complexity is measured through fluency, lexical variety, syntactic complexity and accuracy. Limited Attentional Capacity Model and Cognition Hypothesis are used to explain the allocation of attentional resources.Because of the cognitive nature of task complexity, it is certainly related to certain cognitive abilities when the information is processed. And as the combination of cognitive abilities, aptitude must have an influence on the task performance, and this has been proved by many scholars.The present study measured the relationship between learners’language aptitude and writing task performance and the differences in task complexity.41non-English major students participated in the study. Also the teaching intervention was included to see if the accuracy can be improved after the explicit and noticing teaching method.The quantitative results show a complex interaction between aptitude components and task performance under different task types. Among all the correlations, it can be found the strongest ones are the correlations between accuracy and spelling clues and the number learning. The second finding of the study is that when faced with tasks of higher cognitive demand, students use more complex structures and the accuracy will decease to some degree. This finding can also provide evidence to Skehan’s and Robinson’s theories. The third finding is that after a period of explicit grammar teaching, the accuracy (the ratio of error-free past-tense verbs) can be improved while the noticing-stressed teaching method seems to have no significantly effect on the accuracy in a period of comparatively short time.The study can throw some lights on English teaching. Because students differ in language aptitude and show different task performances in different tasks, teachers should use more varied teaching methods and test standard in their classes. And teachers should also encourage students to explore the suitable learning method based on their performance on the aptitude test.The limitations of the study are:the sample size is small and the teaching intervention lasts for only5-6weeks, which is a bit short. Therefore the effect of noticing teaching is not significantly different. Also the measurements of task complexity especially the lexical variety is not so ideal. So for the future study, these mentioned aspects should be improved.