Effects of task complexity on the learning of genre specific rhetorical moves and linguistic forms
The case of contrast and argumentative essays
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21332949 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maria Pia Gomez Laich (Department of English , Carnegie Mellon University - Qatar Campus , Education City, P.O. Box 24866 , Doha , Qatar, corresponding author), Naoko Taguchi (0000-0002-4099-9678, Northern Arizona University) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 61 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 571-599 |
| Publication date | 2023-06-27 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0019-042X • E-ISSN: 1613-4141 |
| Publisher | Walter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1515/iral-2021-0111 |
| OpenAlex | W3180007954 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 31 |
This study investigates whether task complexity improves L2 English learners’ ability to write contrast and argumentative essays as measured by the use of rhetorical moves and linguistic forms characteristic of these essays. The participants were 62 students in an undergraduate-level composition class in a private university in the U.S. The study involved a first phase that targeted contrast writing and a second phase that targeted argumentative writing. In both phases, students were assigned randomly to a simple or complex task group and wrote an essay in dyads. In terms of rhetorical moves, the complex task group outperformed the simple task group in the immediate and delayed post-test of contrast essays. For argumentative essays, this superiority of the complex group was only found in the immediate post-test. As per linguistic forms, the complex task group outperformed the simple task group in the immediate and delayed post-test of both contrast and argumentative essays
Argumentative · Class (philosophy) · Contrast (vision) · Epistemology · Linguistics · Rhetorical question · Simple (philosophy) · Task (project management) · Test (biology) · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Discourse Analysis in Language Studies · EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning · Philosophy · Psychology · Second Language Acquisition and Learning
Collaborative Writing in L2 Classrooms
Second Language Task Complexity
Genre and Second Language Writing
Cognitive task complexity and written output in Italian and French as a foreign language
Task complexity, cognitive resources, and syllabus design
Task complexity and linguistic and discourse features of narrative writing performance
Cognitive task complexity and L2 written syntactic complexity, accuracy, lexical complexity, and fluency
Genre and language learning
Task complexity, task difficulty, and task production
Task‐Based Language Learning
The Effects of Mode and Task Complexity on Second Language Production
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |