Communicating in a Second Language: A Matter of Teaching Communication Strategies (original) (raw)
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Communication strategies, as goal-oriented lines of action to obviate breakdowns in the flow of communication, have been the subject of extensive studies in SLA. While student-employed strategies have been duly investigated in the literature, those employed by teachers in the classroom context continue to be inadequately addressed. Moreover, characterizing functions of communication strategies (CSs) rather than their types as a research interest can offer new insights for research. Accordingly, the present study concentrated on the function of CSs employed by 16 teachers across elementary (8) and advanced levels (8) teaching spoken English in private institutes in Tabriz, Iran. A modified version of Jamshidnejad's (2011) functions of communication strategies was employed as the framework for defining functions. T-test results indicated a significant difference regarding 'maintaining the flow of conversation' between elementary and advanced level teachers. As with other f...
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Teaching Communication Strategies in an EFL Class of Tertiary Level
This article deals with the effects of teaching communication strategies (CSs) on the types of communication strategies used by the students and level of speech comprehensibility. This research is largely experimental involving 23 students. The research isntruments include vocabulary test to identify students' unknown objects, treatment, and observation. Descriptive qualitative analysis was used to analyze the linguistic features, and repeated measure t-test was used to analyze the level of speech comprehensibility. The results reveal that (1) in terms of frequency, there are increases in 4 types CSs, decreases in 7 types of CSs, and a consistancy in one type of CS, (2) there is a significant increase in the level of speech comprehensibility. Therefore, it can be concluded that teaching communication strategies prommote students' communication skills.
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Empirical Studies on L2 Communication Strategies over Four Decades: Looking Back and Ahead
Studies on communication strategies (CSs) have been carried out for nearly four decades and have contributed a lot to the development of such fields as applied linguistics and second language acquisition, but they are still inadequate and there remain controversies over certain issues. Thus, more systematic and rigorous studies are needed to check or confirm the findings of some studies and further CS research from newer and broader perspectives. This paper mainly reviews the existing empirical studies from different perspectives: CS classifications and research methods, factors affecting the choices of CSs, teachablity and teaching of CSs, and effectiveness of CSs. It is aimed to provide a clear picture of research on L2 CSs and offer some suggestions for further research.
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A LITERATURE REVIEW ON COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES IN LANGUAGE LEARNING
Abstract Communicating successfully means to pass on meaningful messages to the listeners. In order to achieve a successful level of communication in situations, where learners face problems when there is a mismatch between their communication goals and their linguistic resources, they tend to use devices to improve their level of communication; these devices are called Communication Strategies. This paper reviews and discusses the theoretical background of the study of Communication strategies in language learning. The first part of the paper presents the most common definitions of the Communication Strategies. The second part attempts to explain the relationship between Communicative Competence and Communication Strategies. The third part describes the types, taxonomies and the origins of the Communication Strategies. The final part sheds the light on a number of empirical studies related to types of Communication Strategies and the relationship between linguistic proficiency and Communication Strategies choice in the learner's first language and his/her second language.
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Communication Strategies: An Overview
This paper examines the role of communication strategies in the maintenance of communication in a classroom. The main goal of learning a foreign language is to be able to communicate for most people. It is through communication that people send and receive messages effectively and negotiate meaning (Rubin & Thompson, 1994). As a result, communication strategies have turned into a major topic for all foreign language learners and teachers. Communication strategies are the steps taken by language learners in order to enhance the effectiveness of their communication (Littlemore, 2003). Several definitions of communication strategies have been proposed since the concept was first introduced by Selinker (1972). One of the definitions most often referred to is the one provided by Tarone (1980), who considers communication strategies to be an interactional phenomenon. In Bialystok’s book Communication Strategies, she cites four definitions relating to the strategies of second-language learners (Bialystok, 1990): (1) a systematic technique employed by a speaker to express his meaning when faced with some difficulty; (Corder, 1977) (2) a mutual attempt of two interlocutors to agree on a meaning in situations where requisite meaning structures are not shared; (Tarone, 1980) (3) potentially conscious plans for solving what to an individual presents itself as a problem in reaching a particular communicative goal; (Faerch & Kasper, 1983) (4) techniques of coping with difficulties in communicating in an imperfectly known second language. (Stern, 1983)
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This study investigated how and when oral communication strategies are used in group discussions by international students at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, a public university in Malaysia. It aims to examine the differences in the use of communication strategies between high and low proficient speakers. The participants were a group of ten low proficient Arabic speakers of English and a group of ten high proficient Chinese and Arabic speakers of English. Data elicited from audio recordings of oral group discussions and a self-report questionnaire was used to identify communication strategies used. The findings showed that the subjects resorted to ten out of the twelve types of communication strategies specified by Tarone (1980), Faerch and Kasper (1983), and Willems (1987). The most frequently employed communication strategy was code switching; an interlingual strategy and the least used strategy was word coinage; an intralingual strategy. Further investigation indicated that different levels of oral proficiency influenced the use of communication strategies from two aspects. They are the frequency of use and the selection of types of communication strategies. This implies that international students studying at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) need to be made aware of the use of communication strategies depending on their level of proficiency and the fact that raising the awareness of both low proficient and also high proficient speakers to strategies that are used by speakers of different proficiency levels may well help ease communication.
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This study investigated how and when oral communication strategies are used in group discussions by international students at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, a public university in Malaysia. It aims to examine the differences in the use of communication strategies between high and low proficient speakers. The participants were a group of ten low proficient Arabic speakers of English and a group of ten high proficient Chinese and Arabic speakers of English. Data elicited from audio recordings of oral group discussions and a self-report questionnaire was used to identify communication strategies used. The findings showed that the subjects resorted to ten out of the twelve types of communication strategies specified by Tarone (1980), Faerch and Kasper (1983), and Willems (1987). The most frequently employed communication strategy was code switching; an interlingual strategy and the least used strategy was word coinage; an intralingual strategy. Further investigation indicated that different levels of oral proficiency influenced the use of communication strategies from two aspects. They are the frequency of use and the selection of types of communication strategies. This implies that international students studying at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) need to be made aware of the use of communication strategies depending on their level of proficiency and the fact that raising the awareness of both low proficient and also high proficient speakers to strategies that are used by speakers of different proficiency levels may well help ease communication.
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This study investigates the use of oral communication strategy instruction on English as a Second Language (ESL) learners' oral communicative performance and their strategic competence. The treatment involved 12 weeks of training using oral communication strategies such as circumlocution, appeal for help, clarification request, fillers, comprehension check, confirmation checks, self-repair and topic avoidance. Strategies were integrated into the learners' Communicative English 2 Course syllabus with Mechanical Engineering content. The study involved two intact control (n=34) and experimental groups (n=54). The control group only received the normal Communicative English course with no explicit focus on communication strategies (CS) while the experimental group received CS training designed with metacognitive strategies. Pre and posttest procedures were used to assess the effectiveness of the training and learners' strategic competence. Five instruments were used to collect the data (oral proficiency test, oral communication test, transcripts of oral communication test, unstructured interview and self-report). The findings revealed that the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group after the training and the learners' self-reports also revealed positive results. The results also revealed that the learners frequently used literal translation from their first language in their communication.
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The present study aimed at investigating the difference between field-dependent (FD) and field-independent (FI) EFL learners' critical thinking and use of communication strategies along with the possible relationship between them. To do this, 160 female and male EFL learners were selected from among a total of 190 based upon their performance on the Group Embedded Figures Test and 80 FD learners and 80 FI learners were chosen with the remaining 30 discarded for having mixed tendencies. The Oral Communication Strategy Inventory and Honey's Critical Thinking questionnaire were also administered. The Pearson Product-Moment correlation, multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA), and linear regression were run to test the 16 hypotheses raised in this study. The results revealed that FD/FI learners significantly varied in their adaptation of communication strategies but the difference between FD/FI learners on critical thinking did not prove to be significant. Moreover, there appeared to be a significant correlation between FD/FI learners' critical thinking and their use of communication strategies. The findings of the study may help material developers and curriculum designers in considering the role of cognitive styles in learning a foreign language. INTRODUCTION The field of second/foreign language learning/teaching has witnessed a novel trend of focus in the last 50 years or so. Accordingly, the recognition of the learner's role, the evidence coming from the social psychological studies of language, and the data on how learners perform differently in different contexts of language use have provided deeper insight into the workings of ELT. To this end, " the goal of every teacher is to develop their students' understanding of the content being taught in the class, as well as to assist them in their development to become independent and thoughtful problem solvers " (Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000, p. 37).
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