Situation-bound utterances in Chinese as a foreign language: the effectiveness of the identification task

本文探讨了一个词汇学习任务——识别任务在对外汉语中对于情境专用语（situation-bound utterances，简称SBU）记忆的有效性。参加实验的为本科二至三年级的意大利汉语学习者，分为实验组和对照组。目标SBU是通过之前提交给意大利语母语者、汉语母语者及意大利汉语学习者的言谈情境填充问卷 （discourse completion questionnaire）来选取的。在实验处理的过程中，实验组被提供了6个特定情境，并被要求从8个短对话中找出相应的SBU。随后，我们对实验组和对照组都进行了两次后测。测试结果的统计分析表明，无论从即时角度还是从纵向角度来看，该任务对参与者回忆目标SBU的能力都有显著影响。数据也表明，参与者的学习时间长短或目标SBU的语种特殊性 （linguistic specificity）对这一特定词汇学习任务的效力没有显著影响，L1或 L2中某种SBU存在与否，即文化特殊性（cultural specificity），可能才是学习者能够成功地回忆出该SBU的关键因素。

This paper investigates the effectiveness of the identification task on the retention of situation-bound utterances (SBUs) in Chinese as a foreign language (CFL). The participants were Italian CFL learners with different lengths of learning experience, divided into an experimental and a control group. The target SBUs were selected by means of a discourse completion questionnaire previously submitted to Italian and Chinese native speakers and Italian CFL learners. During the treatment, the experimental group was provided with six communicative functions and was asked to identify the corresponding SBUs from eight short dialogues. Subsequently, a posttest was administered to both the experimental and the control groups. Overall, the statistical analysis of the test results suggests a significant effect of the task on the participants’ ability to recall the target SBUs, both from an immediate and a longitudinal perspective. However, the data also suggest that, while the participants’ length of learning experience and minor linguistic or cultural specificities of the target formulae did not significantly influence the effectiveness of this specific vocabulary learning task, the presence vs. absence of the SBUs in either the L1 or the L2 might be a crucial factor for their successful recall.