A Study On The Effects Of Task Complexity And Task Difficulty On Senior High School Students’ Writing Production

Task complexity as an objective factor exerts significant impact on second-language writing production.Tasks of right complexity can effectively improve the quality of students’ writing.However,the relevant researches haven’t reached a consistent result yet.In addition,task difficulty as learners’ subjective perception to the task greatly affects writing quality from five dimensions: difficulty,pressure,ability,interest and motivation.But few researchers have combined task complexity with task difficulty to explore their influence on the high school students’ English writing production.Based on Robinson’s Cognitive Hypothesis and Triadic Componential Framework,this study aims to answer the following three research questions by collecting data from a natural class of grade two in a senior high school of Keyouzhongqi,Hinggan in measures of writing tasks,questionnaire and interview: 1.What effects does task complexity have on senior high school students’ English writing production in terms of complexity,accuracy and fluency? 2.What effects does task difficulty have on senior high school students’ writing production in terms of complexity,accuracy and fluency? 3.Whether task complexity affects senior high school students’ perception of task difficulty on English writing?The results showed that: 1.Task complexity had significant impact on senior high school students’ English writing output.First,language complexity increased with task complexity.Specifically,in terms of syntactic complexity,students’ writing production improved greatly in the indicators of mean length of sentence,mean length of clause,mean length of T-unit,coordinate phrases per clause and complex nominals per clause.In terms of lexical complexity,significant changes appeared across the indicators but each task manifested its vocabulary complexity in different aspects.Second,language accuracy decreased with task complexity.Finally,task complexity had no significant effect on language fluency.2.The results revealed a significant correlation between task difficulty and students’ writing production,namely difficulty and syntactic complexity,stress and syntactic complexity,difficulty and accuracy.That is,the greater the students’ perception of task difficulty and stress were,the more complex but less accurate sentences they produced.However,there was no significant correlation between ability,interest,motivation,and writing output(complexity,accuracy,fluency).3.Task complexity greatly affected students’ perception of task difficulty.That is,task complexity and students’ perception to task difficulty were not consistent and there occurred a significant negative relationship between task complexity and motivation.Besides,it was found that students’ perception of task difficulty was subject to regional teaching factors and students’ individual difference as well.Finally,on the basis of the research results and Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis,the author puts forwards some suggestions for improving English writing production of senior high school students and discusses the limitations of the study and prospects for future research.