EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE TASK COMPLEXITY ON L2 WRITTEN OUTPUT

Year 2018, Issue: 1, 171 - 212, 01.10.2018

Mehmet Çelik Suat Çakova

Abstract

The question that which type of writing tasks learners exhibit their skills and improve their language proficiency receives different answers. Whether a language task, which requires attention, memory, reasoning, with low and high levels of syntactic complexity is likely to affect text quality, accuracy, grammar and vocabulary range is debated. The view that higher syntactic complexity for a task is likely to have learners produce more errors Skehan & Foster, 2001 competes with the view that it will result in better, less flawed writing output Robinson, 2001 . To test the claims of the two views, the study reports on an experiment to investigate whether syntactic task complexity in writing performances is a predictor of text accuracy, syntactic complexity, lexical variation, text length and quality. The data were obtained from two homogenous groups, easy and complex, who were assigned easy and complex writing tasks. The findings reveal that manipulating levels of cognitive task complexity does not have overarching effects on the dependent variables investigated. Nonetheless, tasks requiring higher cognitive skills produced better results on the measures of accuracy and text quality

Keywords

cognitive task complexity, writing, accuracy, syntax, lexicon, length, quality

İKİNCİ DİLDE KOMPOZİSYON YAZIMINDA BİLİŞSEL ZORLUĞUN ETKİLERİ

Abstract

İngilizce öğrenenlerin hangi görev tanımlarında yazma becerilerini daha iyi sergiler ve mevcut dil seviyelerini nasıl geliştirirler sorusuna verilen cevaplar farklıdır. Dikkat, hafıza ve mantık yürütme yükünü yani az ve çok düşünmeyi yazıda istenen unsur sayısı gerektiren bir yazma görevinin, yazı kalitesi, hedefe göre yazma, metin uzunluğu, gramerdeki hata sayısı ve kelime yelpazesi hususlarını etkileyip etkilemediği tartışılagelmektedir. Görevi zorlaştırılmasının öğrenciyi daha çok hataya yönelteceği görüşü Skehan & Foster, 2001 ile zorlaştırmanın daha iyi kompozisyon ürünü çıkarabileceğini iddia eden görüş Robinson, 2001b yarışmaktadır. Yazma becerisinin gelişiminde bu iki görüşün hangisinin daha isabetli olduğunu anlamaya çalışan bu araştırma, grameri farklı seviyelerde kompozisyon yazması istenen bir öğrenci kompozisyonunun metin tutarlılığının, gramer seviyesinin, geniş yelpazede kelime kullanımını, metin uzunluğunu ve kalitesini belirleyip belirlemeyeceğini inceler. Veri, birbirine benzer iki gruba verilen kolay ve zor kompozisyon yazma görevinden çıkan yazılardan elde edilmiştir. Bulgular, bilişsel görev zorluğunu bilişsel seviyede azaltıp artırmanın bağımlı değişkenler üzerinde ciddi etkileri olmadığını göstermektedir. Ancak, bilişsel görev zorluğu yüksek görev konuya bağımlı kalarak yazma isabet ve metin kalitesi ölçütlerinde artış gözlenmiştir

Keywords

bilişsel görev zorluğu, yazma, isabet, sözdizimi, kelime haznesi, uzunluk, kalite

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