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The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary defines complexity as ‘the state of being formed of many parts’ (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, 2020). The general understanding is that an action or process is complex when it is difficult to understand and requires additional resources that are beyond one’s potentials, as opposed to a simple one that doesn’t. Thornbury (2006) defined complex language in SLA as that which ‘uses structures more typical of advanced learners than of lower level learners’ (p. 40). He listed the use of subordination including complex sentences, pronouns for back references, more lexical verbs than linking verbs, more content words than function words, and conjunctions as factors that determine complexity.
Long (2015) defined task-complexity in TBLT as “inherent, unchanging qualities of a task that make it more or less challenging than another task at a given moment in time” (p. 232). That is, task complexity is not external to task, but is inherent to the task itself. Relative complexity of different tasks or task types is the result of the cognitive demands they make on the language user. Long (2015, p. 227) lists valence, frequency of occurrence, learnability, and complexity and difficulty as criteria to judge the relative task-complexity. Task complexity is understood and manipulated in terms of the cognitive demands tasks make on the language user. Manipulation of task complexity influences the complexity of language output (Thornbury, 2006, p. 40). Assuming that increasing levels of task complexity improves specific characteristics of language output, task complexity can be manipulated to support interlanguage development (Long 2015, p. 231). Task sequencing and grading are used to help develop learners’ interlanguage. Different aspects of task complexity are discussed in the following sections.
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