On the afternoon of December 5, 2020, the 18th of “International Distinguished Lecture Series” in 2020 was held by School of Foreign Languages. Professor Lawrence Jun Zhang was invited to give an online lecture entitled “Researching Task Complexity: Dimensions, Methodologies, and Pedagogical Implication” via VooV. Lawrence Jun Zhang is a professor of Linguistics-in-Education (Applied Linguistics/TESOL), PhD supervisor and Associate Dean of Faculty of Education, University of Auckland, New Zealand. Nearly 300 teachers and students from Henan University and other universities attended the lecture.

Before the lecture, Professor Yang Chaojun, Dean of School of Foreign Languages, extended a warm welcome to Prof. Zhang and introduced his research interest and academic achievements to the participants. The lecture was hosted by Associate Professor Ding Lan.

At the beginning of the lecture, Prof. Zhang used Campell's viewpoint to explain the task complexity from three aspects: (a) primarily a psychological experience, (b) an interaction task and person characteristics, and (c) a function of objective task characteristics. Then, Prof. Zhang used the Citespace to analyze the task complexity research over the past four decades and said that the study of the influence of task difficulty/task complexity on language performance has become one of the hot topics in the forefront of research on second language acquisition, typically within cognitive frameworks.

Prof. Zhang also pointed out that although most researchers agreed that lexical complexity should be taken into account in investigating task performance, they differed in whether lexis should be considered as a separate area or included within the category or aspect of linguistic complexity.

Finally, Prof. Zhang said, compared to the relatively larger number of quantitative studies on task difficulty in the field of second language research, more qualitative analyses were needed to gain insights into learners’ cognitive processes for completing various tasks.

After the lecture, Prof. Zhang shared a lot of academic materials with the participants. The 18th lecture helped participants deepen their understanding of task complexity and broaden their horizon in second language learning and teaching.

Author: Sun Mengwen