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

  • Jing Yan ORCID logo EMAIL logo and Christine C. M. Goh ORCID logo
Published/Copyright: June 25, 2024
International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching
From the journal International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching Volume 63 Issue 4

Abstract

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.

Keywords: negotiation of meaning; Chinese as a second language; young learners; task type; task complexity
Corresponding author: Jing Yan, Department of Chinese Language Studies, The Education University of Hong Kong, 10, Lo Ping Road, Tai Po, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China, E-mail:

Funding source: Early Career Scheme, Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (Ref. ECS 28607420)

Acknowledgments

We extend our sincere thanks to our research assistant, Guan Jinglin, and the team of student helpers for their invaluable assistance in the collection and processing of the data. We also wish to extend our gratitude to the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong for their financial support. Additionally, we utilised AI tools solely for the purpose of checking the language and grammar in the manuscript.

  1. Research funding: This project has been funded by Early Career Scheme (Ref. 28607420), Research Grants Council, Hong Kong.

  2. Research ethics: The project obtained the Ethical Approval from Human Research Ethics Committee, Research Development Office, The Education University of Hong Kong.

  3. Author contributions: The authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission. The first author was primarily responsible for designing the theoretical framework, monitoring the data collection and analysis processes, and drafting the manuscript. The second author played a crucial role in the interpretation of the data, providing substantial input by drafting and critically revising the work for intellectual content.

  4. Competing interests: We hereby declare that there are no competing interests that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this study.

  5. Data availability: The raw data are not publicly available due to ethical restrictions, but they can be provided based on reasonable request and under conditions that adhere to the ethical standards and guidelines of the institution.

Appendix A:

An example of the spot-the-difference task

An example of the decision-making task

Appendix B:

(.) Short pause
(…) Long pause
(###) Unclear content
(how to say) Guessing content
橙 Stress
↑ Rising intonation
[ ] Overlap
= Interruptions
[/] Full repetition
[//] Partial repetition
[laugh] Non-verbal behaviour

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Received: 2023-12-18
Accepted: 2024-06-05
Published Online: 2024-06-25
Published in Print: 2025-11-25

© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Learning academic vocabulary through reading online news
  4. A Q methodological study into pre-service Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) teachers’ mindsets about teaching competencies
  5. Assessing written production in L2 Mandarin Chinese: fluency and accuracy
  6. Machine translation as a form of feedback on L2 writing
  7. Acquisition of collocations under different glossing modalities and the mediating role of learners’ perceptual learning style
  8. Unpacking changing emotions in multiple contexts: idiodynamic study of college students’ academic emotions
  9. Exploring L2 learners’ processing of unknown words during subtitled viewing through self-reports
  10. Model text as corrective feedback in L2 writing: the role of working memory and vocabulary size
  11. Exploring learner-related variables in child collaborative writing: interaction mindset, willingness to communicate and proficiency
  12. Contributions of significant others to second language teacher well-being: a self-determination theory perspective
  13. The stone left unturned: boredom among young EFL learners
  14. The impact of out-of-school L2 input and interaction on adolescent classroom immersion and community-L2 learners’ L2 vocabulary: opportunities for interaction are key
  15. Promoting interaction and lowering speaking anxiety in an EMI course: a group dynamic assessment approach
  16. Relationship between learner creativity, task planning, and speaking performance in L2 narrative tasks
  17. Influencing factors of L2 writers’ engagement in an assessment as learning-focused context
  18. The cognitive-emotional dialectics in second language development: speech and co-speech gestures of Chinese learners of English
  19. Impact of task type and task complexity on negotiation of meaning in young learners of Chinese as a second language
  20. Effects of working memory and task type on syntactic complexity in EFL learners’ writing
  21. Assessing effects of source text complexity on L2 learners’ interpreting performance: a dependency-based approach
  22. Incidental learning of collocations through reading an academic text
  23. Listenership always matters: active listening ability in L2 business English paired speaking tasks
  24. Enhancing the processing advantage: two psycholinguistic investigations of formulaic expressions in Chinese as a second language
  25. The effect of form presentation mode and language learning aptitude on the learning burden and decay of L2 vocabulary knowledge
  26. Examining the impact of foreign language anxiety and language contact on oral proficiency: a study of Chinese as a second language learners
  27. The dynamics of changes in linguistic complexity and writing scores in timed argumentative writing among beginning-level EFL learners
  28. Perception of English semivowels by Japanese-speaking learners of English
  29. Corrigendum
  30. Corrigendum to: Development and validation of Questionnaire for Self-regulated Learning Writing Strategies (QSRLWS) for EFL learners
https://doi.org/10.1515/iral-2023-0327
Keywords for this article
negotiation of meaning; Chinese as a second language; young learners; task type; task complexity

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Frontmatter
  2. Research Articles
  3. Learning academic vocabulary through reading online news
  4. A Q methodological study into pre-service Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) teachers’ mindsets about teaching competencies
  5. Assessing written production in L2 Mandarin Chinese: fluency and accuracy
  6. Machine translation as a form of feedback on L2 writing
  7. Acquisition of collocations under different glossing modalities and the mediating role of learners’ perceptual learning style
  8. Unpacking changing emotions in multiple contexts: idiodynamic study of college students’ academic emotions
  9. Exploring L2 learners’ processing of unknown words during subtitled viewing through self-reports
  10. Model text as corrective feedback in L2 writing: the role of working memory and vocabulary size
  11. Exploring learner-related variables in child collaborative writing: interaction mindset, willingness to communicate and proficiency
  12. Contributions of significant others to second language teacher well-being: a self-determination theory perspective
  13. The stone left unturned: boredom among young EFL learners
  14. The impact of out-of-school L2 input and interaction on adolescent classroom immersion and community-L2 learners’ L2 vocabulary: opportunities for interaction are key
  15. Promoting interaction and lowering speaking anxiety in an EMI course: a group dynamic assessment approach
  16. Relationship between learner creativity, task planning, and speaking performance in L2 narrative tasks
  17. Influencing factors of L2 writers’ engagement in an assessment as learning-focused context
  18. The cognitive-emotional dialectics in second language development: speech and co-speech gestures of Chinese learners of English
  19. Impact of task type and task complexity on negotiation of meaning in young learners of Chinese as a second language
  20. Effects of working memory and task type on syntactic complexity in EFL learners’ writing
  21. Assessing effects of source text complexity on L2 learners’ interpreting performance: a dependency-based approach
  22. Incidental learning of collocations through reading an academic text
  23. Listenership always matters: active listening ability in L2 business English paired speaking tasks
  24. Enhancing the processing advantage: two psycholinguistic investigations of formulaic expressions in Chinese as a second language
  25. The effect of form presentation mode and language learning aptitude on the learning burden and decay of L2 vocabulary knowledge
  26. Examining the impact of foreign language anxiety and language contact on oral proficiency: a study of Chinese as a second language learners
  27. The dynamics of changes in linguistic complexity and writing scores in timed argumentative writing among beginning-level EFL learners
  28. Perception of English semivowels by Japanese-speaking learners of English
  29. Corrigendum
  30. Corrigendum to: Development and validation of Questionnaire for Self-regulated Learning Writing Strategies (QSRLWS) for EFL learners
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