The Effects of Task Type on Quantity and Syntactic Complexity of Learner Output in Korean-Japanese Telecollaboration

Abstract

This paper reports on a telecollaboration project between two EFL writing classes of two universities in Korea and Japan over a period of one semester. The study aimed to compare the effects of two task types, information-exchange and opinion-exchange on learner output and syntactic complexity in students' written communications. Twenty-four students collaborated in asynchronous computer-mediated communication (CMC) context to discuss and co-author reactions (i.e., reports and essays) to task prompts. There was no statistically significant difference in total number of words that students produced across two types of tasks. The syntactic complexity, however, was remarkably higher in opinion-exchange tasks than in information-exchange tasks. The result was in contrast of the superiority of information-gap tasks reported in face-to-face settings (e.g., Pica, Kanagy, & Falodun, 1993). The findings of the present study inform that, in CMC, a) opinion-exchange tasks are no less facilitative than information-exchange tasks in promoting learner output, b) opinion-exchange tasks significantly promote syntactically complex constructions, and c) opinion-exchange tasks may offer linguistic and cognitive challenges to students with the potential of stimulating more complex thinking. Based on the findings this paper suggests that opinion-exchange type tasks should be more actively incorporated into the design of asynchronous language learning activity.