6354

6354

The Effect of Task Complexity and Language Proficiency

كارشناسي ارشد

October 2010

October 2010

Dr. E. Abdollahzadeh

Dr. S. Vaezi

The present study examined the effect of task complexity and language proficiency on 64 written narrative outputs produced by Iranian EFL learners. Task complexity was manipulated along task complexity dimension of Here-and-Now (HN) (simple) versus Thereand- Then (TT) (complex) proposed by Robinson (2001a, 2006). Language proficiency was defined as scores on the TOEFL proficiency test (2004). After administering TOEFL proficiency test (2004), sixty eight participants out of one hundred seven were selected from seven intact classes, studying at three different levels at the Kish Language Institute in Kashan. Then the 32 participants in the high-proficiency (HP) group with scores of one standard deviation above the mean, and thirty six participants in the low-proficiency (LP) group with scores of one standard deviation below the mean were randomly divided into two groups to form two groups of 16, and two groups of 18. In the next phase of the study, participants were required to write a narrative account by means of a picture story. Of the whole 68 participants, due to absence of three participants in the writing session, thirty three participants from two groups of high and low proficiency performed a simple narrativewriting task, and thirty two participants from two groups of high and low proficiency performed a complex narrative-writing task. Finally, due to incompleteness of one of the writings in TT condition, 64 participants remained for data analysis to have four groups of: G1) HP-HN: 16, G2) HP-TT: 14, G3) LP-HN: 17, and G4) LP-TT: 17. In order to investigate the effect of task complexity and language proficiency, three specific measures of production were employed as dependent variables: complexity, accuracy, and fluency. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) was the statistical procedure which was used for data analysis in the present study. The findings of this study indicated that more complexity and accuracy were found in the complex task on one hand, and with high-proficiency learners on the other hand. No significant effect of task complexity and language proficiency on fluency vi was found. Moreover, the results showed that no significant interaction between the two independent variables of task complexity, and language proficiency was observed. On the basis of these findings and with regard to the operationalization of task complexity, a number of pedagogical implications and suggestions for further research will be presented and discussed.