Publication ｜Sophia Linguistica
Renka Zen
The Impact of Task Complexity on L2 Japanese Learners’language Usage from the Perspective of Complexity, Accuracy, Fluency
Task based language teaching (TBLT) has gained enormous popularity for the last 30 years. Unlike the traditional methodology which exclusively focuses on language forms, tasks are designed to make learners comprehend the content and simultaneously pay attention to language forms. Thus, what kind of tasks can help learners to perform well has become an important issue. In task-based research, tasks should be designed based on cognitive complexity. This paper examined how task complexity would influence learners’ task performance. Twenty five Chinese learners studying Japanese in Japan participated in this study. The students’ output was analyzed, through measures of linguistic complexity, accuracy, and fluency. The results showed that increasing task complexity led to increased linguistic complexity and accuracy with decreased fluency.
