An Empirical Study on Task Complexity and Task Difficulty in L2 English Writing Production

Abstract

The current study explores how the two dimensions-task complexity and task difficulty, affect the writing production of Chinese high school students in the EFL classroom and what kind of implication the findings have for writing teaching. The study was done in a high school in Jiangsu province, Mainland China and ten students were selected. The data were generated by collecting writing production, questionnaire and interview. Through quantitative and qualitative analysis, the results revealed that the genre of the writing task affected the writing production, while the effect of task complexity on the writing production was less obvious among the ten participants. The study also demonstrated the mismatch between task complexity and task difficulty in the small sample, suggesting the importance of students’ feelings about the writing task.