The Impact of Storyline Complexity on L2 Learners’Written Performance

Task-based Language Teaching(TBLT)research has provided ample evidence that cognitive complexity is an important aspect of task design that influences learner’s performance in terms of fluency,accuracy,and syntactic complexity.Despite the substantial number of empirical investigations into task complexity in journal articles,storyline complexity,one of the features of it,is scarcely investigated.Previous research mainly focused on the impact of storyline complexity on learners’oral performance,but the impact on learners’written performance is less investigated.Thus,this study aims at investigating the effects of narrative complexity of storyline on senior high school students’written performance,as displayed by its complexity,fluency,and accuracy.The present study has important pedagogical implications.That is,task design and assessment should make a distinction between different types of narrative tasks.For example,the task with single or dual storyline.Results on task complexity may contribute to informing the pedagogical choices made by teachers when prioritizing work with a specific linguistic dimension.

L2 Syntactic Alignment in the Reading-Writing Integrated Continuation Task: Evidence From Chinese EFL Learners’ Description of Motion Events

This study investigated how the mode in which the reading-writing integrated continuation task was conducted modulates the effects of second language(L2) syntactic alignment, through the English motion event construction with manner verbs. Ninety Chinese students were assigned to either of the two experimental groups or a control group, and they all experienced a pretest, an alignment phase and a posttest. In the alignment phase, the two experimental groups completed a reading-writing integrated continuation task but in different modes. For the multi-turn mode,participants reconstructed a picture story by continuing the episodes extracted from the story with one episode presented and continued at a time;for the single-turn mode, the first half of the same picture story was presented as a chunk, and then participants read and continued it. Results show that L2 learners aligned with the target structure in completing the story, and the alignment effect was retained in the posttest conducted after a delay of two weeks. Moreover, syntactic alignment was modulated by task mode with the multi-turn group exhibiting stronger immediate and longterm alignment effects. We conclude that the continuation task is a fruitful context for L2 structural alignment, and the magnitude of alignment effect hinges on interactive intensity.

Effects of the Continuation Task on L2 Writing

The Continuation Task is the integration of input and output language knowledge that generates a bidirectional alignment effect.When teachers apply Continuation-task Teaching Method,writing quality of students can be improved effectively.This paper makes a systematic study on the relationship between Continuation Task and L2 Writing from the perspective of theoretical basis and necessity.

Task Repetition and the Development of L2 Oral Production

The paper reports the developmental trajectory of Chinese EFL( English as a foreign language) learners’ oral performance in terms of their speech quantity and quality in repeated topic-based tasks. It has been a concerned issue in the theoretical and pedagogical interests that how L2 learners can enhance their oral proficiency. However,as pointed in[22],there are few studies focused particularly on the L2 speakers’ performance change,while more studies are devoted to the performance status. The current research presents a case study of six Chinese students’ English oral development addressing to the issue of learners’ dynamic change. By investigating each speaker’s variation in the speech quantity( the total amount of produced speech) and speech quality( indicated by fluency,accuracy and complexity) during the three-week intervals,we find that task repetition can positively affect the speakers’ oral production.