An Empirical Study On Task Types On Syntactic Fluency And Accuracy In English Majors’ Writing

By the middle of 1980 s, some researchers of Second Language Acquisition started to take the “task”as the research object. The results of primary researches have manifested that task is taken as teaching unit,which can achieve better effects in English teaching. Language complexity, accuracy and fluency are the important dimensions which are used to measure the level of second language. Sekhan(1996, 1998)thought that the task should be chosen according to the effects that different task types have on learners’ language production, and researchers should also study how different tasks affect the learners’ language performance.Sekhan’s cognitive methods mainly researched task variables which can make learners easily notice the fluency, accuracy and complexity in language production. The study is based on the Sekhan’s cognitive methods to study the effects of task types on syntactic fluency and syntactic accuracy. In this study, it involves three different task types as argument task, expository task and narrative task. The measurements of syntactic fluency and syntactic accuracy are respective T-unit length, clause length, the number of errors per sentence, grammar errors, lexicon application errors and others(including spelling,punctuation and capitalization).In this study, the subjects are the sophomore students of English majors are the research objects in Business College of Shanxi University. It mainly involves two questions: 1. What effects will different task types have on English majors’ syntactic fluency in writing? 2. What effects will different task types have on English majors’ syntactic accuracy in writing?The results show that different task types have significant effects on the syntactic fluency in the light of T-unit length and clause length and any two task types exit a significant difference. From the data analysis, it can known that students are likely to use long sentence in argument task and expository task,and prone to use short and simple sentence in narrative task. In terms of the number of errors per sentence,the three task types influence the syntactic accuracy. From the data analysis, the students make the most errors in expository task, then is in argument task and the least errors in narrative task. From the error types, any two task types exit a significant difference. Students make more grammar errors and lexicon application errors in expository task and argument task. However, students make the most spelling,punctuation and capitalization in argument then is expository task. No natter which error type, the students make the least errors in narrative.