A Study On The Effect Of Task Type On Lexical Richness In Senior High School Students’ English Writing

As one of the indicators of second language writing,lexical richness has attracted many scholars’ attention.Over the past decades,the researches on lexical richness have been focused on the relationship between lexical richness and writing quality as well as the factors affecting lexical richness.Previous studies have shown that teaching methods,language proficiency,and task types have affected the lexical richness in L2 writing.However,in the previous research on the effect of task type on lexical richness in English writing,picture writing task and summary writing task have rarely been studied.Therefore,the study explores the effect of the two task types,picture writing and summary writing,on lexical richness in second language writing.The study aims to explore the following two questions:(1)Does task type have a significant effect on lexical richness in senior high school students’ English writing?(2)What is the interactive effect of task type and students’ proficiency level on lexical richness in senior high school students’ English writing?Ninety-eight participants from a senior high school were recruited for the study.Of all the participants,50 were low-proficiency students of senior middle school,and48 were high-proficiency students.25 low-proficiency students and 24high-proficiency students in high school completed picture writing,and the remaining49 students completed summary writing task.Participants’ written productions were assessed in terms of lexical sophistication,lexical diversity,and lexical density.Range software,Antconc software,and Treetagger software were used to calculate the writing texts’ lexical richness.The Independent t-test,Mann-Whitney U test and one-way ANOVA analysis were used to analyze and compare the effect of task type and participants’ writing proficiency on the lexical richness in L2 writing.The findings of this study are as follows:(1)Task types have inconsistent effects on the three dimensions of lexical richness: picture writing tasks are more conducive to improving students’ lexical diversity,while summary writing is more effective in improving students’ lexical sophistication,but the two task types have no significant difference in terms of lexical density.(2)High proficiency students perform better in terms of the three dimensions of lexical richness than low proficiency students(3)Low proficiency students have better lexical richness in the task of picture writing than in summary writing task.Based on the research conclusions,the researcher put forward the following teaching enlightenment.Teachers should improve students’ awareness of the lexical richness and increase lexical richness training in writing practice.Secondly,as one of the lexical richness measurements,lexical diversity can be improved by applying the picture writing task in writing training.Moreover,if teachers aim to increase students’ lexical sophistication in writing,a summary writing task can be assigned.Finally,teachers should consider the students’ second language proficiency when choosing materials for writing training.