An Experimental Study On The Effects Of Different Tasks On Meaning Negotiation In Senior High School TBLT English Classroom

As TBLT has been applied in senior high schools widely, learners use the strategiesof meaning negotiation to finish tasks which draw numerous researchers· attention. It isimportant to find out which type of task and what complexity can produce moreopportunities of meaning negotiation, because different types of tasks and complexity oftask have different effects on meaning negotiation. Meaning negotiation mainly includesthree strategies confirmation check, comprehension check, clarification request, and itadopts C-units discourse analysis in this thesis. This thesis is intended to test the effectsof different tasks on meaning negotiation in TBLT English language classroom.Meanwhile, the concrete questions are as following:(1) What effects do different taskshave on meaning negotiation? Which kind of tasks can increase the learners· meaningnegotiation more?(2) Does task complexity affect meaning negotiation? Does the morecomplex task promote more meaning negotiation?The research participants are104the second senior-high-school-students from twoclasses in a Middle School. In this experiment, the author adopted four kinds oftask Jigsaw task, information-gap task, decision-making task and opinion-exchangetask. The opportunities for meaning negotiation students produced in the process of doingtheir tasks are compared to examine whether different types of tasks have effects onmeaning negotiation or not. In the process of doing the four tasks, all their conversationsand discussions were recorded by the recording devices. After finishing the four tasks,questionnaires were distributed to students to complete it within ten minutes. Then, thequestionnaires were transcripted, coded and analyzed into experimental data, to beanalyzed by One-way ANOVA in SPSS17.0.Through the test of one-way ANOVA, the experimental results show that (1) fourdifferent tasks do have effects on the meaning negotiation, and information-gap taskproved to produce more learner-learners· meaning negotiation than the other tasks and,(2)simple tasks and closed tasks (Jigsaw task, information-gap task) promote more meaning negotiation than complex tasks and open tasks (decision-making task andopinion-exchange task).The implications of this study to senior high English teachers are (1) choosing thesimple and closed tasks will be for the great benefit of senior high TBLT Englishclassroom, for example, compared with decision-making task and opinion-exchange task,senior high school English teachers should choose Jigsaw and information-gap task;(2)senior high English teachers should encourage students to use the strategies of meaningnegotiation to overcome communicative breakdowns;(3) how to implement the tasksplays an important role in senior high TBLT English classroom.