期刊名称：International Journal of Applied Linguistics and English Literature
印刷版ISSN：2200-3592
电子版ISSN：2200-3452
出版年度：2012
卷号：1
期号：4
页码：53-65
DOI：10.7575/ijalel.v.1n.4p.53
出版社：Australian International Academic Centre PTY. LTD.
摘要：Based on Robinson’s (2003) Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan’s (1998) Limited Attentional Capacity Model, this study explored the effect of task complexity on the fluency and lexical complexity of 60 university EFL students’ argumentative writing. Task complexity was manipulated through applying resource-dispersing factors. All participants were randomly assigned to the one of the three groups: (1) topic, (2) topic idea, (3) topic idea discourse marker group. One-way ANOVA was utilized to detect significant differences among the groups. Results showed that increasing task complexity (1) produced significantly less fluency, and (2) did not lead to differences in lexical complexity (measured by the ratio of lexical words to function words and lexical density), but it did lead to significant differences when mean segmental type-token ratio was used to measure lexical complexity. Further findings and implications are discussed in the paper.
其他摘要：Based on Robinson’s (2003) Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan’s (1998) Limited Attentional Capacity Model, this study explored the effect of task complexity on the fluency and lexical complexity of 60 university EFL students’ argumentative writing. Task complexity was manipulated through applying resource-dispersing factors. All participants were randomly assigned to the one of the three groups: (1) topic, (2) topic + idea, (3) topic + idea + discourse marker group. One-way ANOVA was utilized to detect significant differences among the groups. Results showed that increasing task complexity (1) produced significantly less fluency, and (2) did not lead to differences in lexical complexity (measured by the ratio of lexical words to function words and lexical density), but it did lead to significant differences when mean segmental type-token ratio was used to measure lexical complexity. Further findings and implications are discussed in the paper.
