L2 writing development through two types of writing task repetition

Abstract

This study investigated whether any remarkable effects emerge in terms of overall complexity, complexity by subordination, accuracy, and fluency in two types of writing task repetition during a single academic semester (16 weeks). The Cognition Hypothesis states that tasks involving different cognitive demands will lead to different L2 output. Thus, this study explored whether any significant differences existed between two task types: descriptive and argumentative essays. The results revealed different patterns in the two types of writing tasks. For the descriptive essays, despite the improvements in overall complexity, complexity by subordination, and fluency with a large effect size, no significant findings were confirmed for accuracy. In contrast, in the argumentative essays, the learners improved all the linguistic aspects, but with a medium effect size. This study also unraveled developmental trajectories to demonstrate how different variables interacted in the two different types of writing tasks throughout the measurement period.

Modeling the Effects of Task Repetition in L2 Writing: Examining Inter-and Intra-individual Variability

“…In some studies, task repetition has been shown to benefit all aspects of linguistic performance (Larsen-Freeman, 2012;Lambert et al, 2017). Studies have explored the effects of task repetition in L2 writing using diverse tasks such as picture cued-narrative tasks (Amiryousefi, 2016;Carver & Kim, 2020), argumentative and descriptive tasks (Fukunaga, 2023), essay tasks (Kim et al, 2022), collaborative writing tasks (Carver & Kim, 2020;Hidalgo & Garcia Mayo, 2021), decision-making tasks (Sanchez et al, 2020) and timed writing tasks (Khezrlou, 2021;Nitta & Baba, 2014). Here, we briefly review several notable studies that provide evidence for the specific effects of repeated performance in L2 writing tasks (see also , Fogal, 2022).…”