Cognitive Task Complexity and L2 Narrative Writing Performance

The present study was an attempt to chart the effects of two task design features, namely pre-task planning time and immediacy on written narrative performance.This is of pronounced importance since the synergistic effects of these two task features have gone largely unheeded in task-based research except for a smattering of studies (e.g., Gilabert, 2007).Accordingly, 123 participants were assigned to one of the 4 groups in the study, i.e., No planning & Here-and-Now, No planning & There-and-Then, Planning & Here-and-Now, and Planning & There-and-Then to write out a narrative task based on a series of pictures.The participants' output was coded and measured for grammatical accuracy, syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, and fluency.Results showed that only pre-task planning time significantly promoted grammatical accuracy albeit with a small effect size.Pre-task planners complexified their discourse more than no-planners.In addition, displacedness of time and space coupled with pre-task planning led to significantly higher gains in syntactic complexity.However, lexical complexity measures did not yield any significant results across the groups of participants.Finally, both provision of pre-task planning time and immediacy of time and space led to significantly more fluent production.