This project studies the Chinese oral communicative competence of Non-Chinese Speaking (NCS) students by investigating the influences of task characteristics and intersubjectivity on students’ negotiation of meaning.

This project studies the Chinese oral communicative competence of Non-Chinese Speaking (NCS) students by investigating the influences of task characteristics and intersubjectivity on students’ negotiation of meaning. Developing oral communicative competence can enable second language (L2) learners to engage in class discussions, integrate into the local community, and more importantly increase their well-being. However, oral communicative competence of NCS students is under-researched in Hong Kong. Research has demonstrated that task characteristics affect how students negotiated for ambiguous meaning in interaction. This issue is seldom examined in young L2 learners, and little is known about how intersubjectivity affects the relationship between task characteristics and negotiation of meaning. Intersubjectivity refers to children’s ability to use embodied oral discourse and paralinguistic skills to engage in interaction based on their interpretations of the interlocutor’s intentions and beliefs. Therefore, intersubjectivity has been treated as the premise for children’s interaction. This study hypothesises that intersubjectivity moderates the relationship between task characteristics and negotiation of meaning. Contributing to the literature, this study aims to investigate this issue in two participation structures: NCS-NCS students’ interaction and NCS students-Native Speakers’ (NS) interaction for the reason that it is a common practice that NCS students and NS students are learning in the same class in Hong Kong. This study has three objectives:1) to examine the effects of task characteristics on negotiation of meaning; 2) to investigate the interaction effects of task characteristics and intersubjectivity on negotiation of meaning; 3) to investigate the interaction effects of task characteristics and participation structure on negotiation of meaning. This study will recruit 10-year-old NCS students and their native counter partners in Hong Kong to form two groups of dyads: NCS-NCS group and NCS-NS group. With a repeated measure design, all the dyads will be required to perform a total of four tasks that differ in interactional demands and cognitive complexity. The intersubjectivity and negotiation of meaning will be analysed by coding the oral discourse and physical gestures. The results can advance our understanding of the relationship between task characteristics and students’ negotiation of meaning by considering the effects of intersubjectivity. From a practical perspective, the results can generate recommendations for teachers and policy makers concerning principles for designing tasks to develop NCS students’ oral communicative competence. The comparison between NCS-NCS students’ interaction and NCS-NS students’ interaction can provide insights into classroom practice for helping NCS students bridging over to mainstream Chinese language classes.