The Impact Of Task Complexity And L2 Proficiency On Students’ L1 Use In EFL Peer Interaction

Task-based Language Teaching has been the focus of second language(shorted as L2 hereafter) teaching and research since 1980 s. Many scholarscarry out studies on task-related factors so as to explore how to design tasks to meet various learning demands. During the task-based interaction, it is inevitable for L2 students to use their first language(mother tongue, shorted as L1 hereafter), which has puzzled many teachers and researchers who argue about how much L1 is used by students and for what functions. Based on shortcomings in previous studies, this research aims to investigate the impact of task complexity and L2 proficiency on students’ L1 use, including its amount and functions. Firstly, based on Robinson’s Triadic Componential Framework, the authormanipulates the task complexity into simple level and complex level along the resource-directing dimension [+/- here-and-now] with 48 freshmen of high and low L2 proficiency as subjects. According to the multi-factor, between-subjects experiment design, learners of the same L2 proficiency are randomly paired to complete two complex and simple picture story tasks. Secondly, based on the 5 kinds of L1 functions classified by Azkarai and Mayo(metacognitive talk, vocabulary talk, grammar talk, off-task talk and phatic talk), the authoruses the Chi-squire statistical method to analyze and compare the difference in the amount of L1 andits functions used by high proficiency and low proficiency students. Finally, in the process of analyzing students’ L1 use, the author divides the L1 turns into predominant L1 turns and minor L1 turns based on the amount of L1 and L2 to judge the nature of students’ L1 turns. The results indicate that all students make modest use of their L1 during the task-based L2 interaction, and low proficiency students tend to make more use of L1 than high proficiency ones. Regarding L1 functions, the most frequent function served by students’ L1 is found to be metacognitive talk, followed by vocabulary talk. Task complexity has an appreciable impact on the L1 used by high proficiency students who employ more L1 for the function of metacognitive talk in completing the complex task than they do in the simple task. Butsuch difference in low proficiency students is insignificant.After a subdivision of metacognitive talk, it is found that high proficiency students employ more L1 for task management, while low proficiency students employ more L1 to discuss the task content/ meaning.