Increasing the reasoning demands of a task and task sequencing on the oral production of Chinese learners of Portuguese as a foreign language
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1590/1678-460X202339456813Keywords:
complexidade cognitiva, sequenciação de tarefas, produção oral, Português como Língua Estrangeira, Hipótese da CogniçãoAbstract
This study had two aims: (i) investigating the impact of increasing the reasoning demands of a
monologic narrative task on the oral performance of Chinese learners of Portuguese as a foreign language (PFL) and (ii) testing the Simplify Stabilize Automatize Restructure Complexify (SSARC) Model of the Cognition Hypothesis (Robinson, 2010, 2011, 2015). Fifty-two university learners of PFL participated in this research. Two comparisons were made: (i) a within subjects comparison in which two tasks (simple vs. complex) were performed in two conditions (simple-complex sequence/ complex-simple sequence) and (ii) a between subjects comparison in which two tasks were performed vs. the individual performance of a task (simple or complex task). Measures of linguistic complexity, accuracy, and fluency were used to quantify learners’ oral production. Robinson’s Cognition Hypothesis was partially confirmed, as results showed that task complexity positively affected accuracy, lexical diversity and the amount of coordinate clauses, but with a negative effect on clause length. Task sequencing had a positive impact on accuracy.
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