The interplay of task complexity (± Here-and-Now) and proficiency in shaping written narratives in Spanish as a foreign language

Abstract

Research on task complexity focuses on the influence of different task features on language learners' production in terms of linguistic complexity, accuracy, fluency and lexis. Within this field, a line of investigation that has attracted much attention is the influence of resource-directing and resource-dispersing features of cognitive task complexity. Notwithstanding, the evidence assembled to date has yielded contradictory results that are not consistent across task type, proficiency level, and task modality. The study attempts to shed some light by examining the role of task complexity along the [± Here-and-Now] dimension in written production, and whether the effects of task complexity are the same at different proficiency levels. To this aim, data were elicited from Swedish high school learners of Spanish as a FL (n = 67) using two different versions of a narrative task. In turn, the participants' proficiency was assessed using a multiple-choice test. The results suggest that task complexity had a statistically significant effect on the four areas of language production. On the other hand, when splitting the sample into proficiency groups, differences across task conditions were found, but only in the higher proficiency group. These results are interpreted in light of Robinson's Cognition Hypothesis and Skehan's Trade-Off Model.