Impact of task type and task complexity on negotiation of meaning in young learners of Chinese as a second language

Impact of task type and task complexity on negotiation of meaning in young learners of Chinese as a second language

• Yan, Jing The Education University of Hong Kong
• Goh, Christine C. M. The National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University

IRAL - International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching, 2024

De Gruyter

2024

• F Learning & Teaching
  • FE Medium of Instruction, Language of Teaching, Bi-& Multilingual Education, Problems of Bilingualism, Code-mixing & Code-switching

Negotiation of Meaning Chinese as a Second Language Young Learners Task Type Task Complexity

• Hong Kong

• 1997.7 onwards

• Primary Education

Negotiation of meaning (NoM) has played a facilitative role in second language acquisition. However, the existing studies have primarily focused on adult English language learners. This study investigated the impact of task type and task complexity on NoM strategies among young learners of Chinese as a second language, an underexplored group. The participants were 110 students in Hong Kong aged 10-12, mainly from Pakistan, India, Philippines, and Nepal. They were asked to perform four tasks with different task types and levels of task complexity in Cantonese (the primary Chinese dialect spoken in Hong Kong). In terms of task type, the study found that required information exchange tasks (i.e., information gap tasks) produced significantly more clarification requests, confirmation checks, self-repetitions, and other repetitions in terms of total numbers and numbers per 100 Chinese characters than the optional exchange tasks (i.e., decision-making tasks). Complex tasks, on the other hand, elicited significantly more confirmation checks than simple tasks. These findings provide useful insights for designing tasks that can promote greater use of NoM strategies in classroom practice. Copyright © 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston.

• English

Journal Articles

• 0019042X

• 10.1515/iral-2023-0327

https://bibliography.lib.eduhk.hk/bibs/a64acbd2

2024-12-06