EFFECTS OF COGNITIVE COMPLEXITY ON UNDERGRADUATE EFL LEARNERS’ ENGLISH WRITING PERFORMANCE

This study aimed to investigate the effects of cognitive complexity along +/-reasoning demands dimension on EFL students‟ English writing performance in terms of accuracy and complexity. The study was motivated by Robinson‟s Cognition Hypothesis (CH) as well as previous studies investigating the relationships between task complexity and second language production. The participants of the study were 32 Undergraduate students in an English language education program at University of Muhammadiyah Jember, chosen from the 6th and 8th semesters. Each student received all the levels of cognitive complexity (+/- reasoning demands) of the tasks. The -reasoning demand was operationalized through description task and +reasoning
demand was operationalized through interpretation task. It is basically students were asked to describe and interpret the same picture. The results showed that there is a significant effect of cognitive complexity on students‟ English writing performance. Moreover, cognitive complexity in terms of +reasoning demand pushed students to greater complexity.