An Investigation of the Impact of Task Complexity on ESL Learners’ Spoken Language Performance

Abstract

This study investigates the multiple effects of task complexity on language performance and production in English as a Second Language (ESL) classrooms. Through its qualitative design, the present study aims to gain well-founded insights about the potential influence the degree of task complexity has on actual oral productions by ESL learners. In particular, this study construed how the increasing task complexity affected students’ oral production. Given that ‘oral production’ is a notion that involves an intricate web of variables, the present study sought to come to grips with three major components of oral production, which are fluency, vocabulary and grammar. The researchers used the IELTS speaking band descriptor to benchmark the learners’ productions. In essence, the study sought to answer three research questions: 1) What is the impact of task complexity on the quality of high achievers’ and mid achievers’ speech production?, 2) What is the relationship, if any, between learners’ language proficiency and their performance in monologic and dialogic tasks?, and 3) Does increasing the cognitive complexity of the task impact oral language performance? The findings revealed that high achievers’ grammar, lexical resource and fluency aligned variably with the task complexity, whereas the three elements dropped markedly among mid-achievers.