We explored whether task complexity, operationalized by the two types of writing prompts, affects EFL high school students’ narrative writing in terms of syntactic complexity, lexical complexity, fluency, cohesion, and text quality. 32 intermediate EFL students who were randomly assigned to two prompt groups completed a written narrative task based on a series of sixteen pictures. Task complexity was operationalized as a bare versus frame prompt. The results indicate that the task complexity had an impact on lexical sophistication measures. The students in the framed prompt group were able to include more sophisticated vocabulary in their narratives than those in the bare prompt group. The findings are discussed in terms of the Limited Attentional Capacity Model in that the students in the bare prompt group might have prioritized meaning rather than form in order to ease attentional overload. The findings of our study could assist teachers in selecting writing prompts that have the potential to elicit the targeted features of writing performance.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the causal relationships among factors affecting L2 reading achievement using a structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. A total of 327 Korean EFL high school students completed a questionnaire on L2 reading motivation and strategies. The students’ L2 listening and reading comprehension abilities were measured by scores on the practice test for Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) and self-assessed listening and reading proficiency. The study results showed that the students’ L2 reading efficacy, L2 reading strategy use, and L2 listening skills were significant predictors of their L2 reading achievement, while L2 reading motivation showed no significant relation with reading achievement. The nonsignificant path loading between reading motivation and reading achievement implies that reading motivation alone is not sufficient to promote students’ L2 reading proficiency. The final SEM model indicated a relatively strongest contribution of L2 listening ability over L2 reading efficacy and strategy use to L2 reading achievement. Pedagogical implications based on the findings are discussed.

This study aims at investigating Korean high school students’ reading and writing relations in English with a focus on analysis of effects of reading journal writing which integrates reading and writing. Three groups (reading, writing, reading journal writing) had different treatments for 8 weeks. The results revealed that the reading journal writing group had the highest post-test writing scores compared with the two other groups. This group’s scores were statistically significant different from the reading group’s. The same results were also found in the higher-level group. As for the lower-level group, however, the scores of the writing group were highest. These results support the bidirectional hypothesis with a special emphasis on the interaction of reading and writing. The higher-level and the lower-level reading journal writing group had the highest post-test reading scores; however, no statistical significance was noted among the three groups. The results of the reading test do not seem to be clearly related to any hypothesis of reading-writing relations. The results of the questionnaire survey and interview and of the analysis of reading journal suggest that effects of reading journal writing can vary with reading texts and learners’ language proficiency level.