The effects of task complexity on Chinese learners’ language production: A synthesis and meta-analysis

Abstract

The present meta-analysis was conducted to provide a quantitative measure of the <br />overall effects of task complexity on Chinese EFL learners' language production. Based on the <br />strict inclusion criteria, 12 primary studies were synthesized according to key features. Eleven of <br />them were meta-analyzed to investigate effects of raising the resource-directing task complexity. <br />Results revealed that (a) there was an assortment of treatments and measures, (b) there was a small <br />to medium positive effect for syntactic complexity (d=0.64) and small effect for lexical complexity <br />(d=0.20), which lends support to the Cognition Hypothesis; there was a small negative effect for <br />accuracy (-0.18) and a close to negative effect (0.01) for fluency in writing, which partly confirms <br />Skehan's Trade-off effects, and (c) task modality (oral or written) did not make a significant <br />difference on the overall effects on complexity and accuracy, while make a significant difference <br />on fluency.