Effects Of Task Complexity And L2 Proficiency On EFL Writing Of Chinese Senior High School Students

Since the 1980 s,task-based language teaching(TBLT)has gradually occupied an important position in the field of second language acquisition(SLA),and tasks and task complexity have become one of the research hot issues.The hypotheses about task complexity mainly include the Trade-off Hypothesis and the Cognition Hypothesis.The latter adds two dimensions,resource-directing and resource-dispersing,on the basis of the former.At present,most researchers use one of them to explore the complexity of tasks,but few studies investigate both dimensions simultaneously.To fill the previous research gaps,the current study selects the resource-directing “±reasoning demands” and resource-dispersing “±prior knowledge” in the Cognition Hypothesis as variables to manipulate the task complexity.It then combines task complexity and L2 proficiency for further exploration of the effects on syntactic complexity and lexical accuracy.The participants of the current study are 72 senior high school students,who were divided into two groups based on the scores of two examinations: high-level and low-level.Two groups completed two tasks with two different complexity levels.Task 1is independent narrative narration that was practiced in their daily learning and no reasoning needs for students,so task complexity is low.Task 2 is narrative continuation that students have never been exposed to,which also requires students to reason about the writing promoted and continue to write,so task complexity is comparatively high.The sequence of tasks ranges from simple to complex.The data analysis of the present study includes three steps: lexical errors are identified for the evaluation of lexical accuracy;L2SCA is used to analyze for syntactic complexity quantitatively;the typical writing samples were analyzed through a qualitative way.Based on the above analysis,the following conclusions are drawn: 1)task complexity is positively correlated with syntactic complexity,but it does not affect lexical accuracy;2)L2 proficiency is significantly correlated with syntactic complexity and lexical accuracy;3)task complexity and L2 proficiency have significant effects on syntactic complexity but no effect on lexical accuracy.This study supplements the Cognition Hypothesis,and it comprehensively examines the effects on learner’ writing performance in combination with task complexity and L2 proficiency.It also verifies the learning-promoting effect of continuation and provides a basis for L2 creative writing teaching and related studies.In addition,the current study shed lights on L2 writing teaching.Teachers can design tasks with different complexity according to the different levels of learners,which can effectively improve teaching efficiency and promote the development of learners’ L2 writing and L2 proficiency.