The Impact Of Task Varieties On College Learner-learner's Meaning Negotiation In A Chinese EFL Context

This thesis mainly explores the impact of task varieties on college learner-learner's meaning negotiation. According to the Interaction Hypothesis, interaction, particularly when it involves negotiation for meaning and feedback, facilitates second language acquitsion (SLA). Since there is a general agreement that conversational interaction can facilitate interlanguage development, much of the research on interaction has been conducted. Questions have been raised about task types and the opportunity for meaning negotiation. The current research compares meaning negotiation in different types of tasks in our country where English is taught as a foreign language. The experiment conducted in this thesis also shows that task type does have influence on learner-learner's meaning negotiation. English teachers may choose the types of tasks in their teaching, which provide more opportunities for their students to negotiate meaning with each other. The present study consists of the following seven chapters:Chapter One briefly introduces the background, purpose, significance and the scope of the present study.Chapter Two reviews some literatures on this topic and some research findings made in the study of task type and learner-learner's meaning negotiations. It expounds the current research situation of this field both at home and abroad.Chapter Three expatiates upon the detailed study of theories in this domain, especially the Interaction Hypothesis. Also the definition of task, different types of tasks and different kinds of meaning negotiation are introduced in this part. Research question and hypotheses are also raised in this part.Chapter Four serves as an introduction and detailed narration of the methods of linguistic data collection, specific processes and the subject matter being explored.The results of the present study lie in Chapter Five, which introduces the results by testing of the three hypotheses.There is a general discussion in Chapter Six, followed by some implications of theresearch to teaching English as a foreign language.Chapter Seven summarizes the thesis, yields some proposals for further study and provides some solutions while pointing out the limitation of the present study.