Cognitive Task Complexity and Learner Engagement: Evidence From Direction-Giving Map Tasks

Task-based language teaching (TBLT), a pedagogy focused on learner needs and communicative abilities, influences language education in many locales. TBLT researchers have independently pursued, and yielded valuable insights concerning, the roles of cognitive task complexity (CTC) and learner engagement, although less work has been carried out to weave these strands together. Based on a thorough review of the literature, this study aimed to contribute to work on CTC and engagement by hypothesizing that differences in learner engagement across simpler versus more complex tasks should be clearer on measures of cognitive engagement than on those of affective engagement. To test this hypothesis, a study was conducted with learners of English as an additional language in Japan who performed a series of direction-giving map tasks. The analyses leveraged robust statistics appropriate to the dataset to uncover larger effect sizes for behavioral and cognitive measures of engagement than for affective measures. These findings are discussed in terms of the intersection of CTC and engagement. The article concludes with a discussion of pedagogical implications, noting, as well, the limitations of the study.