A Survey Of The Relationship Between Writing Task Types And Vocabulary Output Of Intermediate Chinese Learners

In second language learning,writing output is a necessary skill,and it is also a difficult point.Vocabulary production ability is an important predictor of second language learners’ language proficiency.Based on the theoretical framework proposed by Laufer(1991),Engber(1995)and Read(2000),this paper examines the relationship between the three writing task types of practical writing,expository writing and argumentative writing and the four dimensions of vocabulary production ability from the four dimensions of vocabulary diversity,vocabulary complexity,vocabulary density and vocabulary accuracy with a quantitative research method.This study selected 19 American college students with intermediate Chinese level in the cooperative teaching program of Shanghai Foreign Studies University as the subjects,and examined 114 compositions produced by 19 subjects under three task types.With the help of online word segmentation software of corpus,the corpus is labeled,sorted out and the relationship between writing task types and vocabulary production ability is investigated.The study found that practical writing has the best overall performance in terms of vocabulary production,expository writing takes second place,and argumentative writing has a slightly worse overall performance.In terms of vocabulary diversity,practical writing is the best,followed by expository writing and argumentative writing.In terms of lexical complexity,the average value of argumentation is the highest,followed by practical writing,and finally by expository writing.In terms of vocabulary density,there was no significant difference among the three task types.In terms of vocabulary accuracy,the three task types have good performance.The vocabulary accuracy of practical writing is relatively high,followed by expository writing and argumentative writing.Based on the analysis of the three task types,there is only a positive correlation between lexical diversity and lexical complexity,and no correlation between the other dimensions.The results of this study are helpful to reveal the vocabulary production ability of intermediate level Chinese second language learners under different writing task types,which has certain practical significance in second language writing.It is helpful to design the relationship between learners’ writing task types and vocabulary production ability in terms of task sequencing and task content selection in writing teaching,so as to effectively improve students’ vocabulary production ability and promote the balanced development of students’ language.