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Article published In: Acquisition of Chinese: Bilingualism and Multilingualism
Edited by Boping Yuan and Yanyu Guo
[Journal of Second Language Studies 3:2] 2020
► pp. 157–179

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Effects of task type on L2 Mandarin fluency development

 | University of Leeds
Published online: 5 February 2021
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jsls.00010.wri
Abstract
This study explores task effects on fluency development in second language (L2) Mandarin during study abroad (SA) in China, given linguistic and pedagogic challenges facing western learners of Mandarin (Zhao, Y. (2011). Review article: A tree in the wood: A review of research on L2 Chinese acquisition. Second Language Research, 271, 559–572. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Data from 10 adult English learners of Mandarin were compared pre/post 10 months’ SA in China. Performance was measured in 4 tasks with different task loads (rehearsed vs. spontaneous speech, in monologic and dialogic mode). Significant differences between the rehearsed monologue and other tasks found pre-SA were generally not found after SA. Some differences remained between monologues and dialogues, suggesting that task load effects may override SA impact. Claims about the impact of SA on L2 oral development should take more account of different task demands, to help further illuminate our understanding of how SA may benefit L2 fluency.
Article outline
  • Literature review
    • Task effects on fluency development
    • Fluency during SA
    • L2 Mandarin fluency research in SA
  • Study rationale and research questions
  • Method
    • Participants
    • Task design
    • Variable measurement
  • Results
    • Time and task effects
    • Differences in performance by task
    • Individual variation
    • Does baseline performative fluency bootstrap fluency development?
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
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