Complexity in Student Writing: The Relationship Between the Task and Vocabulary Uptake

Cognitive flexibility theory posits that some tasks or cognitive activities resist oversimplification, a lens through which the present study is cast. High school writing tasks that promote complex thinking may also promote increased uptake of academic vocabulary. The study described in this article demonstrates how essential questions and other tasks that ask students to draw on multiple sources of information and high-order thinking may encourage increasingly precise vocabulary use by student writers. Those writing tasks that called for complex cognitive work tended to promote precision in use of language.