To Assign a Topic or Not: Observing Fluency and Complexity in Intermediate Foreign Language Writing

Abstract:The present study examines the written products of third‐semester German students' written productions during a timed, in‐class writing activity. Topic selection control was modulated from instructor to student during eight 10‐minute sessions. To account for order of treatment, two of the four groups were counterbalanced with the other two. Each written product was textually analyzed and categorized into a general fluency index and an overall grammatical complexity score, both of which were correlated and statistically analyzed (ANOVA). ANOVA results indicate that topic control did influence participants' written fluency but not grammatical complexity (though mean scores for complexity were higher during self‐selected topic writing). Participants' overall level of fluency was significantly higher when they selected their own topics.