The impact of task structure on the use of vague expressions by EFL learners

The present study sets out to examine whether and how task structure affects the number and type of vague expressions used by a group of higher intermediate EFL learners. The participants were 50 Iranian EFL learners from 6 intact classes, all native speakers of Persian with limited opportunity to c...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Language learning journal 2016-10, Vol.44 (4), p.436-450
Main Authors: Parvaresh, Vahid, Ahmadian, Mohammad Javad
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Ambiguity
EFL
English (Second Language)
English as a second language instruction
English as a second language learning
Foreign Countries
Illustrations
Iran
Language Usage
Persian language
Quantifiers
Second Language Instruction
Second Language Learning
Semantics
Statistical Analysis
structured task
Task
Task Analysis
Teacher education
unstructured task
vague language
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Summary:The present study sets out to examine whether and how task structure affects the number and type of vague expressions used by a group of higher intermediate EFL learners. The participants were 50 Iranian EFL learners from 6 intact classes, all native speakers of Persian with limited opportunity to communicate with native speakers of English, and no experience in English-speaking countries. To elicit data, two picture description tasks were used. These picture-stories possessed the defining characteristics of structured and unstructured narrative tasks, respectively. Results revealed that (a) unstructured tasks were associated with the production of significantly more vague expressions and (b) the most notable differences between performances on the two task types concerned 'vague nouns', 'vague quantifiers', 'vague deintensifiers' and 'vague subjectivisers'. The results of the study have implications for both teachers and teacher educators in that they may help identify the kinds of tasks which induce language learners to use vague expressions more frequently.
ISSN:0957-1736
1753-2167
DOI:10.1080/09571736.2016.1204108