The effect of task complexity on the quality of EFL learners’ argumentative writing

Based on Robinson’s (2005) Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan and Foster’s (2001) Limited AttentionalCapacity Model, the current study attempted to investigate the effect of manipulating task complexityon argumentative writing quality in terms of lexical complexity, fluency, grammatical accuracy, andsyntactic complexity. Task complexity was manipulated through applying resource-dispersingdimensions. All 60 participants who were university students were randomly assigned into one of thethree groups: (a) topic; (b) topic + idea; and (c) topic + idea + discourse marker group. A series of onewayANOVAs was utilized to detect significant differences among the groups. Results showed thatincreasing task complexity: 1. did not lead to differences in lexical complexity (measured by the ratioof lexical words to function words and lexical density), but it did lead to significant differences whenmean segmental type-token ratio was used to measure lexical complexity; 2. produced significantlyless fluent language; 3. resulted in more grammatically accurate language in the least complex task;and 4. did demonstrate significant difference in syntactic complexity (when it was measured by theratio of dependent clauses to total clauses). Further findings and implications are discussed in thepaper.

کلیدواژه ها:

task complexity ، lexical complexity ، fluency ، grammatical accuracy ، syntactic complexity ، argumentative writing