| Task and task-based language teaching have been considered as important parts in the second language acquisition research field during recent years.And task complexity is one of the key objectives to be investigated in this area.Suitable task complexity can provide learners with more learning opportunities and make them achieve better language performance.However,it is still a problem for teachers to choose a certain kind of writing task and control the complexity effectively.In the past a few years,the research in this area mainly concentrates on the effects of task complexity on learners’oral production.There is not enough research about the written production.Therefore it is very necessary to investigate more about the effects of task complexity on learners’writing.There are two main theories about task complexity,the Robinson’s Cognition and the Skehan’s Limited Attentional Resource Model.And the Robinson’s Cognition consists of the resource-directing dimension and the resource-dispersing dimension.Based on Robinson’s Cognition,this study intends to investigate the effects of increasing task complexity along the resource-directing dimension and resource-dispersing dimension on students’ writing.To be specific,there are three research questions:1.Does task complexity affect senior high school students’English writing?2.NWhat are the different effects of increasing task complexity along the resource-directing dimension(±few elements)and the resource-dispersing dimension(±planning time)on senior high school students’English writing?3.How does the increase of task complexity affect senior high school students’,English writing?The subjects of this study were 120 senior three students from 4 classes of a senior high school in Shenzhen.They were asked to finish writing tasks with different complexity.In general,the complexity of the writing task consisted of two dimensions.For the first dimension,it was the complexity along the resource-directing dimension.It was measured with the different elements included in the writing task.For the second dimension,it was operated with providing pre-task planning time or not.The specific writing tasks of the four classes were listed as follows.(1)Organizing the voluntary activity with three requirements and no planning time.(2)Organizing the voluntary activity with three requirements and ten minutes pre-task planning time.(3)Organizing the voluntary activity with six requirements and no planning time.(4)Organizing the voluntary activity with six requirements and ten minutes pre-task planning time.After finishing the writing task,five students were chosen from each class and 20 students in all were interviewed by the author.The students’ writing texts were analyzed in terms of fluency,accuracy and complexity after the collection.The following conclusions were drawn from the experiment:1.The increase of task complexity along the resource-directing dimension had positive effect on the writing output.By adding the elements included in the writing task,students’ accuracy of the writing output was significantly increased.The fluency was also increased while the syntactic complexity decreased.2.The increase of task complexity along the resource-dispersing dimension had negative effect on students writing performance.Without pre-task planning time,students’ fluency,accuracy and syntactic complexity of the writing output decreased to some degree.3.Task complexity affected learners’writing by influencing the allocation of learners’ attention and the strategies that learners used during the pre-task planning time.This study testifies the Robinson’s Cognition along the resource-directing dimension and resource-dispersing dimension and it further enriches the theory of task complexity.Also,this study presents that through controlling task complexity along different dimensions,students can achieve better writing performance. |
