The Effect Of Task Complexity On High School Students' English Writing Output

In recent years,task-based language teaching(TBLT)has attracted extensive attention of second language(L2)researchers and education practitioners,with the impact of “task” on L2 output gradually becoming one of the research foci.In the field of L2 teaching,a number of domestic and foreign scholars have been involved in the study of task complexity.Compared with the task complexity research on oral dimension,the research on writing is underexplored in terms of the number and the quality.Therefore,it is very necessary for modern investigators to change their eyes from oral to writing.Further studies need to be done to find out the effect of task complexity on L2 writing output.There are mainly two influential theories about the relationship between task complexity and L2 output.Skehan & Foster(1997,1999,2001)put forward one of them,that is “Competition Hypothesis”.The other is the “Cognition Hypothesis”proposed by Robinson(2001,2003,2007).On the basis of Robinson's theory,this study chose “+/-few elements” along resource-directing dimension and “+/-planning time” along resource-dispersing dimension to explore how task complexity influence L2 writing output.Research questions are as follows: 1)What are the effects of “+/-few elements” along the resource-directing dimension on accuracy,fluency and complexity of senior high school students' English writing? 2)What are the effects of“+/-planning time” along the resource-dispersing dimension on accuracy,fluency and complexity of senior high school students' English writing? In order to investigate the effects of task complexity on senior high school students' English writing,this paper selected 60 students from a senior high school in Jining and divided them into three groups to complete three writing tasks different in complexity,and then collected and analyzed data by means of SPSS26.0.The major findings are as follows:(1)the increase in the number of elements can significantly improve the accuracy,fluency and lexical complexity but can't influence their syntactic complexity significantly;(2)having no planning time will significantly reduce the fluency,lexical complexity and syntactic complexity of senior high school students' English writing output,but it has no significant impact on their accuracy.This study on the one hand confirms Robinson's “Cognition Hypothesis”,on the other hand,it also questions some of his claims made in the hypothesis.Hence,this study is valuable to enrich the theory of the relationship between task complexity and L2 writing.Besides,this study can also help foreign language education practitioners design appropriate writing tasks and method in accordance with students' L2 language level so as to improve English writing teaching in senior high schools.