Journal of Foreign Languages, Cultures & Civilizations

The Effect of Task Structure on Second Language Learner’s Narrative Writing Performance
Keivan Seyyedi, Shaik Abdul Malik Mohamed Ismail, Abdul Rashid Mohamed

Abstract
Investigating how the narrative structure influence writing performance of second language learners is the main focus of this study. To provide an empirical support to the effect of structured and unstructured narrative tasks, 25 Malaysian English learners enrolled at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) Penang, were asked to write two stories from cartoon scripts that had different degrees of narrative structure (structured and unstructured). The learners’ writing performance was measured for complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF). Paired samples t-test was employed to analyze the collected data. Results indicated that narrative structured task had significant effect on the accuracy and fluency of the learners’ writing performances, but not on the complexity.

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