Abstract
This study investigates the effects of cognitive task complexity on EFL learners’ perception of task difficulty. Learners’ perception of task difficulty is measured by a five-item task difficulty questionnaire (as in Robinson, 2001a). The participants were 76 intermediate learners which were divided into two groups. One group performed a simple task (single task) and the other group performed a complex task (dual task). Having performed the tasks, the participants completed the task difficulty questionnaire. In order to see how the participants evaluated task difficulty, their ratings for each question of the questionnaire in the simple and complex tasks was compared using Mann-Whitney U. The results indicate that the complex task significantly affected learners’ perception of task difficulty in three items of difficulty, stress and interest. The results of task difficulty studies can help language educators in designing and employing more effective language teaching materials.
Highlights
For the past 20 years, task-based language teaching (TBLT) has attracted attention of second language acquisition (SLA) researchers (Branden, 2006)
By comparing the mean scores of the first question of the questionnaire, difficulty question, it is obvious that the mean score of the dual task (X = 3.68) is higher than the mean score of the single task (X = 1.95)
This means that the participants rated the dual task more difficult than the single task
Summary
For the past 20 years, task-based language teaching (TBLT) has attracted attention of second language acquisition (SLA) researchers (Branden, 2006). Robinson (2001) believes that attentional resources are not limited and learners can access multiple and non-competing attentional resources He states that complexity and accuracy in a task are correlated since they are each driven by the nature of functional linguistic demands of the task itself. Following Robinson’s cognition hypothesis which claims that tasks should be designed and sequenced on the basis of an increase in their cognitive complexity (Robinson, 2001a), a number of studies have investigated the effects of task complexity, task difficulty, task design, and performance conditions on learners’ performance (Skehan & Foster, 1999; Ellis, 2004; Kuiken & Vedder, 2007, 2008). The present study explores the relationship between task complexity and learners’ ratings of task difficulty
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