The Effects Of Task Complexity And Language Anxiety On Senior High School Students' English Reading Comprehension

In the field of task-based language teaching(TBLT),task complexity as one of the important features of the task,has received increasing attention from researchers.In recent years,a large amount of empirical studies have been conducted to explore the effect of task complexity on linguistic performance.However,to date,most of these studies have focused on oral and written production,while the effect of task complexity on receptive language skills,such as reading,has largely been neglected.In addition,little research in the literature appeared to examine whether individual differences play a role in mediating the effectiveness of task complexity,such as language anxiety.Hence,the present study attempted to investigate the effects of task complexity and language anxiety on senior high school students' English reading comprehension.Based on the Robinson's Cognition Hypothesis(2001a,2007,2009,2011),the experiment is conducted over a period of eight weeks,with a sample of 60 senior high school students.The participants are randomly assigned to either simple or complex group,receiving reading tasks differing in task complexity along the dimension of “-/+ reasoning demands”.Meanwhile,in order to measure participants' language anxiety,a language anxiety questionnaire focusing specifically on reading anxiety(FLRAS)is adopted in the study.According to their anxiety level,the participants are divided into the high-anxiety group(HAG)and the low-anxiety group(LAG).The research results indicate that task complexity,as a reading instructional treatment,has a significant positive effect on senior high school students' reading comprehension.To be specific,learners under the complex treatment get much more improvement in reading comprehension than those who receive the simple one.This finding confirms what is predicted in Robinson's Cognition Hypothesis.Secondly,although learners do perceive the complex tasks more stressful and difficult,their interest,motivation,self-confidence and willingness are increased over time.In addition,language anxiety can mediate the effectiveness of task complexity,That is,with an increase in language anxiety,the effectiveness of task complexity on learners' reading comprehension will be decreased correspondingly.However,language anxiety has a limited effect on the effectiveness of task complexity.Besides,to a certain extent,task complexity can alleviate learners' language anxiety.