Effects Of Task Complexity And Task Sequencing On The Acquisition Of Request-making Expressions By Chinese EFL Learners

To date,in the field of task-based language teaching,few studies have addressed pragmatics as the target area of learning,and a very limited number of studies have probed into task sequencing issues.In order to fill these gaps,the current study brings together two lines to examine the effects of task complexity and sequencing on learning the request-making expressions by adopting Robinson's Cognition Hypothesis and SSARC model for pedagogic task sequencing.Experiments are designed to address the following research questions:(1)What are the effects of task complexity on Chinese EFL learners' interaction-driven learning opportunities and written task performance in learning request-making expressions?(2)What are the effects of task sequencing on Chinese EFL learners' interaction-driven learning opportunities,written task performance and learning outcome in learning request-making expressions?(3)Are there any interaction effects between task complexity and task sequencing on the written task performance?To answer these questions,this study employed a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest research design.66 first grade high school students from two natural classes were divided into two experimental groups with different task sequences.English proficiency was ensured to be at the elementary level for all the participants and they were required to complete three collaborative dialogue writing tasks with different task complexity,which was manipulated by [+/-prior knowledge] and [+/-reasoning demands].Participants' oral discussions during tasks were recorded,transcribed and analyzed by the number of pragmatic-related episodes(PREs),which were further used to examine the learning opportunities in paired interactions.The written performance was realized by the scores of request head act forms in collaborative written tasks,and learners' learning outcome was measured by discourse completion tests(DCTs).The PREs,head act scores and DCT scores were then analyzed in SPSS by adopting Friedman test,oneway ANOVA,Mann-Whitney U test and independent t-test respectively.Moreover,a repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to detect the interaction effects between task complexity and task sequencing.The results revealed that:(1)increasing task complexity promoted interactions and learning opportunities in dyads,to be specific,there were more PREs targeting context and modifications in more complex tasks,while no difference was found among PREs focusing on head acts,grounders and amplifiers,neither on students' written performance;(2)task sequencing exerted no significant effect on learning opportunities,but some effects on written task performance with Sequence 2(S2: complex-to-simple)outperforming Sequence 1(S1: simple-to-complex),and a positive long-term effect on learning outcome that S1 maintained request-making expressions better than S2 in the delayed posttest;(3)significant interaction effect was found between task complexity and task sequencing when investigating the written task performance.Particularly,S2 outperformed S1 the most significantly at complexity level 3,and in S1,task complexity had no effect on written performance,but in S2,task complexity yielded a positive effect that students got higher scores in level 3 task than in level 1 task.These results supported Robinson's Cognition Hypothesis in terms of interactions and partially verified the SSARC model for task sequencing,which shed some new light on task complexity and sequencing in task-based language learning and teaching by targeting the acquisition of pragmatic knowledge.It could also be referred to for task and syllabus design as well as teaching pragmatics in classroom contexts.