Language Output, Communication Strategies, And Communicative Tasks — In The Chinese Context

Lee (linguistics, Hong Kong Baptist U., Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong) explores how Chinese tertiary learners of English acquire the target language through learner-learner interaction in tasks, and how they benefit from task-based learning, particularly in examination-oriented and teacher-dominated English classrooms in Hong Kong. The text is based on a study of five female and five male first-year business students enrolled in a university in Hong Kong, working in five mixed- gender pairs on two types of communicative tasks chosen for the research. The subjects' discourse was recorded, transcribed, and analyzed to determine the relationship between communicative tasks and their discourse structures, the relationship between communicative tasks and strategy use, and how strategy use contributes to the acquisition of the target language. Annotation c2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Cynthia Lee is Assistant Professor in the Language Centre at Hong Kong Baptist University. Lee holds a Ph.D. in Language in Education from the University of London.