The effects of planning time on English language learners' complexity, accuracy, and fluency in writing

Abstract

The aim of study is to find out if elementary level English as a foreign language students` written accuracy, fluency, and syntactic complexity levels are affected by planning condition of a task. Secondarily, the relationship between writing anxiety and the three language dimensions is examined. The results of study are reported by following two influential task complexity hypotheses: the Cognition and the Limited Attentional Capacity. The former claims that increasing complexity level of a task leads to an increase in accuracy and complexity thanks to multiple attentional capacity of human brain. The latter supports limited attentional capacity models and states that paying simultaneous attention to both accuracy and syntactic complexity is not probable. In the study, twenty university students studying English produced two different narratives based on two sets of pictures under two different task conditions: pre-task planning (PTP) and no pre-task planning (NP). Accuracy of written language production was measured by ratio of errors per T-unit and errors per 100 words. On the other hand, written fluency was measured by counting words and syllables per minute. Syntactic complexity was measured by mean length of T-units and clauses per T-units. Moreover, writing anxiety was measured by Second Language Writing Apprehension Inventory. As a result of the analysis, it was found out that students produced more error free narratives under simpler task condition (PTP) but the planning type did not impact either fluency or syntactic complexity levels. Regarding writing anxiety, correlation was only found with accuracy.