Chapter 6. Cognitive Task Complexity and Linguistic Performance in French L2 Writing

According to Robinson's Cognition Hypothesis of task-based L2 development, cognitively more demanding tasks will lead to the use of lexically and syntactically more complex language (Robinson 2001a, 2001b, in press). A different viewpoint is held by Skehan (1998) and Skehan & Foster (1999, 2001), who hypothesize that the more attention is required for a task because of its cognitive complexity, the less complex will be the linguistic output. The present research focuses on the relationship between taskcomplexity and linguistic performance in L1 and L2 writing. We report on an experiment carried out among 51 Dutch university students of Italian as a second language. The test included two writing tasks, in which cognitive task complexity was manipulated by varying the number of elements to be described and the required reasoning demands. Pre-existing knowledge of Italian was established by means of a pre-test. In the article, the results and theoretical and pedagogical implications of the study are discussed.

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Task complexity and measures of linguistic performance in L2 writing

IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching ◽

10.1515/iral.2007.012 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 45 (3) ◽

Cited By ~ 50

Author(s):

Folkert Kuiken ◽

Ineke Vedder

Keyword(s):

Task Complexity ◽

L2 Writing ◽

Linguistic Performance

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Cognitive task complexity and second language writing performance

EUROSLA Yearbook ◽

10.1075/eurosla.5.10kui ◽

2005 ◽

Vol 5 ◽

pp. 195-222 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Folkert Kuiken ◽

Maria Mos ◽

Ineke Vedder

Keyword(s):

Cognitive Complexity ◽

Second Language Writing ◽

Task Complexity ◽

Cognitive Task ◽

Syntactic Complexity ◽

Partial Support ◽

Linguistic Performance ◽

Lexical Variation ◽

Capacity Model ◽

Language Writing

This paper reports on a study in which two models proposed to explain the influence of cognitive task complexity on linguistic performance in L2 are tested and compared. The two models are Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson 2001a, 2001b) and Skehan and Foster’s Limited Attentional Capacity Model (Skehan 1998, Skehan and Foster 2001). Sixty-two Dutch university students of Italian performed two writing tasks with prompts of differing cognitive complexity. Linguistic performance was operationalized in terms of syntactic complexity, lexical variation and accuracy. The study provides partial support for the Cognition Hypothesis, in so far as the written products of the cognitively more demandings task turned out to be more accurate, with significantly lower error ratios per T-unit than those of the cognitively less demanding task. In addition stronger effects of cognitive task complexity were found for high-proficiency learners than for low-proficiency learners. No effects could be observed on measures of syntactic complexity or lexical variation.

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