ABSTRACT
This chapter reports an empirical study that explored children’s strategy use and perceptions of picture-based speaking tasks. Thirty-one primary school students in Hong Kong participated in the study. The students were fourth to sixth graders and bilinguals in Cantonese and English. The participants responded to three computerized speaking tasks: one four-picture description task, one storytelling task based on a short animation, and one six-picture narration task. The researchers interviewed the students immediately after they responded to each task to explore their strategic behaviors and perceptions of the tasks. The interview transcripts, students’ responses to the tasks, and interview observation notes were used as data for analysis. The students reported using a range of organizational and elaboration strategies and perceived the difficulty level of the tasks as being similar to that of the typical picture description or storytelling activities they engaged with in their EFL classes. The results revealed some differences in the types of strategies used by children across different grade levels. Older children appeared to use a wider range of strategies to organize their thoughts compared to the younger ones. Implications for strategy instruction and the use of picture-based speaking tasks are discussed.
