The Effects Of Different Types Of Interaction-based Tasks On High School EEL Students’ Oral Linguistic Complexity

Complexity is often employed as one of the major indications to EFL learners’ production and thereby their linguistic proficiency. This study was designed to examine the effects of interaction-based tasks on high school students’ oral linguistic complexity, and to address the three general research questions:(1) What are the learners’ general interactive characteristics represented in different types of designed interaction-based tasks? (2) Does the learners’ oral complexity vary along with the different types of interaction-based tasks? If yes, in what way? (3) To what degree do different types of interaction-based tasks affect the linguistic complexity in the learners’ oral production?The experiment conducted in this study includes the process of pretest, teaching-treatment, and post-test. Participants were 50 senior high school students.whose oral English proficiency was not significantly different based on the results of the pretest. The participants were guided to choose their partners freely and then randomly arranged into five groups. The treatment used in the experiment was five interaction-based tasks accomplished by different groups respectively. The post-test was conducted to see if any changes occurred to each group after the treatment in their oral linguistic complexity. The analysis yielded the following major findings:Firstly, in terms of general interactive characteristics, the learners tended to finish their tasks somehow in a direct way, probably due to the pressure of communication in classroom settings. However, the more talkative and outgoing learners were capable of keeping control of the pace of their interactions. In the case of debating activities, all the participants were able to speak more and longer in their interactions.Secondly, in terms of lexical complexity, the sequence ranged from problem solving, decision making, opinion exchanging, Jigsaw to information gap. In terms of syntactic complexity, on the basis of the mean length of C-unit after pruning (MLCP) and the subordinate clauses per T-unit (SCT), the sequence of MLCP ranged from Jigsaw, problem-solving, decision-making, opinion exchange to information gap, and the sequence of SCT ranged from decision making, problem-solving, opinion exchange, Jigsaw to information gap.Finally, in terms of the degree to which different types of tasks may affect the linguistic complexity, problem solving activities were found to produce the most obvious effect on the linguistic complexity in the learners’ oral production, followed by decision making, Jigsaw, opinion exchanging and information in that sequence.The results generated in the analysis may have some pedagogical implications:The oral complexity may be represented in different types of interactions, and thus the oral interactive activities carefully designed for classroom instruction may to the largest degree elicit the learners’ linguistic complexity in their oral production and thereby promote their speaking proficiency.