Language Production and Communication Strategy Use during the Performance of Language Tasks

Abstract

Using three communicative language tasks designed based on Ellis’ (2009a) task characteristics, this study looks at how language production and communication strategy use will vary with a change in task material types and lexical concreteness of vocabulary items. Korean university students worked in speaker-listener pairs to describe and identify three sets of words. Each task used different types of materials for the listener (pictures, words, and no materials). Language production was analyzed through the identification of AS‐units and compensatory strategy use. There was a clear increase in language produced for the third task (no materials). The participants used a very restricted number of strategies, mainly analytic conceptual compensatory strategies. The implications include the need for instructors to use more output-prompting tasks, and to introduce learners to more communication strategies.