Grasping the effects of storyline complexity, task structure and proficiency in narrative writing performance

Task complexity has attracted the attention of researchers interested in syllabus design and language pedagogy since the eighties. A scarcely investigated feature is storyline complexity, and its effects on complexity, accuracy and fluency (CAF) in narrative writing. This study examines the effects of storyline complexity in the narratives of 60 low to upper-intermediate Swedish secondary school learners of Spanish as a foreign language. Furthermore, the study addresses the role of proficiency in mediating these effects, as it sets out to ascertain whether storyline complexity affects different dimensions of CAF performance to the same extent at different proficiency levels. To elicit data, two narrative tasks were used. Both of them had a loose structure but differed in their storyline complexity, with the simple task having a single storyline and the complex task a dual storyline. In turn, to assess the learners’ proficiency level, a multiple-choice test was employed. The study used a between-subjects design, and the statistical treatment relied on a two-way analysis of variance (2 storyline complexity conditions x 2 proficiency levels). Complexity and fluency turned out to be higher in the complex condition irrespective of proficiency, whereas mixed results were found for accuracy at different proficiency levels.