The impact of manipulating time-on-task on linguistic complexity, accuracy and fluency in foreign language written production.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was twofold: first, to examine the impact of manipulating the time allowed for the completion of two written tasks on the linguistic complexity, accuracy and fluency of 65 Greek learners of Spanish as a foreign language; and, second, to examine potential differences between native and non-native speakers’ performances in terms of syntactic complexity and fluency. The findings led to the conclusion that providing students with sufficient time to engage in text production can foster syntactic complexity and fluency, but may not be conducive to greater linguistic accuracy. Moreover, it was found that native speakers seem to produce more fluent and syntactically elaborated texts. This result could be partly attributed to the wide range of vocabulary that native speakers have at their disposal, as well as to the implicit knowledge of their mother tongue, which ensure faster and more accurate knowledge access and retrieval processes.