Investigating The Effects Of Task Repetition On Linguistic Complexity Of Argumentative Writings

Based on the Trade-off Hypothesis and the Cognition Hypothesis,this study examined the linguistic complexity of two drafts of argumentative essays written by 205 non-English majors(altogether 410 essays)in a northeastern university by applying L2 SCA,LCA,and Coh-Metrix analyzers.The present research was aimed at investigating the effects of task repetition on syntactic complexity and lexical complexity of argumentative writings and the characteristics of the correlation between the indices of linguistic complexity through task repetition.The research results are as follows:(1)Task repetition generally improved the syntactic complexity.Among the seven indices of syntactic complexity,five of them demonstrated significant differences.Specifically,length of production,the use of coordinate structures and sophisticated phrases were significantly improved;the mean value of subordination increased in the second draft,but it did not show a significant difference.(2)In terms of lexical complexity,two of the three indices measuring lexical complexity revealed significant differences.Particularly,lexical density and lexical sophistication presented significant improvements through task repetition.The mean value of lexical variation increased in the second draft,yet it did not show significant difference between the two drafts.(3)The use of subordinate clauses was negatively correlated with that of coordinate structures and sophisticated phrases respectively,and the coefficients became higher in the second draft.Lexical sophistication was positively correlated with lexical variation,suggesting the stronger correlation between the two through task repetition.Subordination had a significantly negative correlation with lexical sophistication in the first draft,and in the second draft,they were negatively correlated but the correlation was not significant.Theoretically,this study reveals that task repetition are effective on improving linguistic complexity of L2 writing and enriches the findings of writing task repetition instructional research.Meanwhile,it offers empirical data for the Trade-off Hypothesis and the Cognition Hypothesis.Pedagogically,the findings of the current study can help university English teachers design writing teaching tasks and teaching process more professionally.Furthermore,teachers can help students to allocate their limited attentional resources to various linguistic complexity dimensions in executing multiple tasks,thereby improving all the dimensions of linguistic complexity and in turn learners’ writing quality.