A Review of the Effect of Task Complexity on Syntactic Complexity in Second Language Writing in China

Abstract

In the 1990s, research on task complexity became prevalent and gradually scholars have investigated how task complexity of writing tasks affects second language learners' writing performance. Skehan synthesized a measure of learners' proficiency in second language writing in terms of complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) of linguistic output. Among them, syntactic complexity, which refers to the range of variation and complexity of the form of linguistic output, has received more and more attention from researchers of second language writing in recent years, and has become one of the hot spots of research in the field of second language acquisition. This paper relies on the CNKI to search for studies on effect of task complexity on syntactic complexity of L2 writing in China, and through summarizing, organizing and analyzing these literatures, it can be found that the theoretical guidance of existing studies is mainly based on the cognitive hypothesis, supplemented by the Limited Attentional capacity Model. Researchers have varied task complexity based on the resource-directing and resource-dispersing to investigate its effect on syntactic complexity, but the findings have not been consistent, which may be due to geographic pedagogical differences or subtle differences in study design.