The Effects of Increasing Task Complexity on EFL Learners’ Writing Performance

Abstract

This study examined the effects of task complexity on Chinese EFL learners’ argumentative writing performance in terms of complexity, accuracy and fluency. Thirty-one non-English majors in a university are included as participants. They are required to write about two argumentative titles with different complexity. The results reveal that the fluency, accuracy and syntactic complexity reduced as the task complexity increased, while the lexical variety enhanced. Based on the findings, some pedagogical implications for task design and task-based instruction are drawn.