Abstract-The survey was conducted on 96 engineering sophomores in a northwest university in MainlandChina with the purpose to investigate their favorite communicative tasks, their perceptions on their task performance as well as their opinions on the teacher role in the classroom. Besides, the study also tries to explore the correlations between different variables like scores of national College English Test Band 4 scores 1 , participation frequency, and self-evaluation of personal performance. The results reveal a panorama of a Chinese task-based English class. First and foremost, the students' preferred tasks are mostly two-way divergent group tasks. In addition, most students reported that participating in the tasks was very "exciting" and "beneficial", while over a quarter students reported that they were somewhat disappointed at their own task performances. Thirdly, they perceived the college English teacher as a facilitator and tutor in learning strategies. Finally, the results show that the more frequent the students participate in different tasks, the better they evaluate their own performance. Besides, the higher the band 4 scores are, the more frequent they are willing to participate. This study sheds lights on the important issues for task-based instruction and helps English teachers and curriculum designers to address the students' needs from the learner's perspectives. Implications for the implementation of task-based language teaching are discussed.

Purpose This study investigated the effect of cognitive load (CL) on the categorical perception (CP) of Mandarin lexical tones to discuss the application of the generalized pulse-skipping hypothesis. This hypothesis assumes that listeners might miss/skip temporal pulses and lose essential speech information due to CL, which consequently affects both the temporal and spectral dimensions of speech perception. Should CL decrease listeners' pitch sensitivity and impair the distinction of tone categories, this study would support the generalized pulse-skipping hypothesis. Method Twenty-four native Mandarin-speaking listeners were recruited to complete a dual-task experiment where they were required to identify or discriminate tone stimuli while concurrently memorizing six Chinese characters or graphic symbols. A no-load condition without a memory recall task was also included as a baseline condition. The position of categorical boundary, identification slope, between- and within-category discrimination, and discrimination peakedness were compared across the three conditions to measure the impact of CL on tone perception. The recall accuracy of Chinese characters and graphic symbols was used to assess the difficulty of memory recall. Results Compared with the no-load condition, both load conditions showed a boundary shift to Tone 3, shallower identification slope, poorer between-category discrimination, and lower discrimination peakedness. Within-category discrimination was negatively affected by CL in the graphic symbol condition only, not in the Chinese character condition. Conclusions CL degraded listeners' sensitivity to subtle fundamental frequency changes and impaired CP of Mandarin lexical tones. This provides support for the generalized pulse-skipping hypothesis. Besides, the involvement of lexical information modulated the effect of CL.

Purpose: This study investigated the categorical perception of Mandarin tones and consonant aspiration contrasts in babble noise among adults and adolescents aged 12–14 years, and explored the association between working memory and categorical perception. Method: Twenty-four adults and 20 adolescents with Mandarin as their native language were recruited. Their performances of phonemic identification and discrimination in babble noise and quiet conditions, digit span tasks, and nonword repetition were assessed. Results: Results indicated that, firstly, in the noise condition, both adults and adolescents showed wider boundary widths and lower between-category accuracies when perceiving aspiration of consonants than in the quiet condition, and the categorical boundary of tone perception in adolescents showed a transitional tendency toward Tone 1. Secondly, discrimination of consonant aspiration in adolescents needed to be further developed. Lastly, the accuracy of nonword repetition in adolescents was lower than that in adults, and adults with better auditory verbal working memory had better performance on tone perception. Conclusions: Our results provided evidence that tone perception is acquired easier than consonant aspiration perception, and tone perception is more robust and less susceptible to noise interference. Categorical perception performance relates to the capacity and utilization of auditory verbal working memory in some ways.