Effects Of Task Complexity On English Writing Of Senior High School Students

Task-based Language Teaching has been advocated as the recommended English language teaching method in senior high school by the National English Curriculum Standards for General Senior High School issued in 2017.The key to success to TBLT lies in the proper design of tasks and effective planning of task complexity.Task complexity was defined by Robinson（2001）as the information processing requirements imposed by task framework on learners,including attention,memory and reasoning,which is the basis for teachers to arrange tasks.As a result,task complexity has been the research focus in TBLT and numerous studies have been done on task complexity and abundant results achieved.Two main theoretical frameworks have been advanced on task complexity: Skehan’s Limited Attentional Capacity Model and Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis.Studies based on these two models have been explored the effects of task complexity on L2 learners’ speaking and writing at home and abroad.Literature review reveals that many domestic studies mainly focus on college students and oral output,while little attention has been paid to the English writing of senior school students.Therefore,based on Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis,the study aims to explore the effects of task complexity along resource-directing and resource-dispersing dimensions on English writing of senior school students with hope to provide some suggestions for English writing teaching in senior high school.80 students are selected as subjects from two parallel classes of a senior high school in N city which are randomly divided into four groups and each group is required to complete a writing task of different complexity.Compositions are first evaluated by three researchers.Then the data are analyzed by SPSS 25.The indicators related to lexical diversity,syntactic complexity,and discourse cohesion are analyzed by Coh-Metrix 3.0.This study aims to answer three research questions:（1）What are the effects of task complexity on English writing of senior high school students?（2）What are the effects of task complexity on lexical diversity of writing?（3）What are the effects of task complexity on syntactic complexity of writing?（4）What are the effects of task complexity on discourse cohesion of writing?The results indicated that:（1）Tasks with increased resource-directing and reduced resource-dispersing can effectively improve students’ writing performance（p<.05）.（2）Tasks with increased resource-directing and reduced resource-dispersing will greatly improve students’ lexical diversity.It can be reflected by the indicators related to lexical diversity,LDTTRa,LDMTLD,LDVOCD and LDTTRc,which exist significant differences in groups（p<.05）.（3）Task complexity has no significant effect on syntactic complexity because the indicators related to syntactic complexity,SYNLE,SYNNP,SYNMEDpos,SYNMEDwrd,SYNMEDlem,SYNSTRUTa and SYNSTRUTt have no significant difference in groups（p>.05）;（4）Task complexity has significant effects on discourse cohesion.Except for CRFSO1 and CRFSOa（p>.05）,among the other five related indicators,CRFAO1,CRFAOa,LSASS1,LSASSp and LSAPP1 exist significant differences in groups（p<.05）.The implications generated from the research to the English teaching of writing are as follows: Effective planning on task complexity can promote students’ writing output,which means teachers should pay more attention to the regulation of task complexity along resource-directing and resource-dispersing in the pre-writing stage;When designing tasks,teachers should provide detailed task instruction and relevant information which can activate students’ motivation and enrollment in writing and in turn facilitate them to accomplish the tasks;Before writing,teachers should provide students with pre-task planning,such as carrying out pre-task activities which can reduce the task complexity along resource-dispersing dimension and can improve the lexical diversity and discourse cohesion of students’ writing.