Effects of Task Complexity on Text Easibility and Coherence of EFL Learners’ Narrative Writing

Abstract

This study was carried out to examine the effects of task complexity on text easibility and coherence in narrative writing of EFL learners. Data were collected from 41 Turkish EFL learners during a writing course. Task complexity was operationalized at two levels as a complex and simple task based on the resource-dispersing variables of Robinson’s the Triadic Componential Framework, +/- task structure. Accordingly, a colorful picture was first illustrated on the board, and students were asked to examine the picture for five minutes (complex task /-TS). They were then asked to write a story based on the picture they had seen (simple task /+TS). Two weeks later, they were given a sheet involving 16 pictures designed in an order and asked to narrate a story based on these pictures. Their essays were analyzed by the researcher and another rater in terms of coherence through an analytic rubric. An automated program was used to evaluate the essays for text easibility indices involving the indices of narrativity, syntactic simplicity, word concreteness, referential cohesion, and deep cohesion. The results analyzed with a Wilcoxon signed-rank test showed that complexity of the task had a statistically significant effect on some indices of text easibility such as word concreteness, and referential cohesion, whereas other indices, narrativity, syntactic simplicity, and deep cohesion, and coherence in their writing production were not affected by the complexity of the task at a significant level. However, it can be concluded that students’ texts produced in simple tasks are easier to comprehend.