Effects of Task Type on Linguistic Complexity of Chinese EFL Undergraduates: A Functional Linguistics Perspective

Abstract

Although numerous studies have explored the relationship between linguistic complexity and L2 writing quality, most have focused on argumentative or persuasive writing, leaving uncertainties about the potential genre effects on linguistic complexity variation. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate how different task types, based on a functional linguistics taxonomy, influence linguistic complexity. Intermediate-to-high proficiency EFL university students (N = 144) completed argumentative, descriptive, interactive, and narrative essays. The results revealed that students performed best on argumentative tasks, with significant differences observed in lexical complexity between argumentative and descriptive essays, and in syntactic complexity between argumentative/descriptive and interactive/narrative essays. Lexical complexity emerged as the strongest predictor of writing scores across all four task types. Pedagogical implications are discussed.