The effect of graph complexity and planning on graph writing performance and descriptive strategies

Abstract The impact of task complexity on integrated writing performance is under‐researched. This study purports to investigate the effect of graph complexity and planning time on graph writing performance as well as graph description strategies. Ninety‐six EFL learners of English were assigned into three groups to examine the effect of three planning conditions, that is, pretask planning, within‐task planning, and no planning. Moreover, graph complexity, operationalized as the number of visual chunks in a graph, was the within‐subject variable. In general, there were some benefits of graph complexity for syntactic complexity and some planning benefits for fluency, accuracy, and lexical diversity. However, graph complexity had a negative impact on accuracy, and measures of lexical sophistication were not affected in any condition. On the graph description side, pretask planning and graph complexity had a positive impact on graph description strategies. The theoretical and pedagogical implications of these findings are discussed.