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The impact of task structure on the use of vague expressions by EFL learners
journal contribution
posted on 2023-07-26, 13:58 authored by Vahid Parvaresh, Mohammad J. AhmadianThe 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.
History
Refereed
- Yes
Volume
44Issue number
4Page range
436-450Publication title
Language Learning JournalISSN
1753-2167External DOI
Publisher
Taylor & FrancisLanguage
- other
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Legacy posted date
2016-11-07Legacy creation date
2016-11-04Legacy Faculty/School/Department
ARCHIVED Faculty of Arts, Law & Social Sciences (until September 2018)Note
AAM copy deposited in White Rose Repository: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/94977/Usage metrics
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