The effects of integrated writing on linguistic complexity in L2 writing and task-complexity

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on research on task-based L2 teaching and writing, this study examines the effects of integrated writing – as a function of task-complexity – on the quality of written texts produced by intermediate learners of German at a U.S. university. Participants completed six writing tasks over ten weeks: three were based on authentic resources (two multimodal and one print-only texts), while three required learners to describe their own experiences based on textbook prompts (non-content supported tasks). In line with current TBLT research, learners texts were analyzed for syntactic complexity, grammatical accuracy, fluency, lexical accuracy, choice and richness. The results suggest that content provision likely reduced learners’ cognitive processing burden, resulting in improvements on all linguistic features. These findings offer theoretical, methodological and pedagogical insights for investigating integrative writing within TBLT research, especially regarding the use of authentic source texts and the potential benefit of multimodal source texts for promoting L2 writing quality.