Teaching Communication Strategies in an EFL Class of Tertiary Level (original) (raw)
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Applied Linguistics, 2009
Communication strategies (CSs) are systematic attempts by language learners to encode or decode meaning in a target language in situations where the appropriate target language rules have not been formed. Based on this view, communication strategies can be seen as compensatory means for making up for linguistic deficiencies of second or foreign language learners. Within the conceptual framework outlined, this paper is a report on a research conducted at Azarbaijan Teachers Education University on the students majoring in English Language and Literature. The main aim was to seek a relationship between the subjects’ use of communication strategies in solving communication problems and their proficiency levels in English as a foreign language. The data was collected by means of one-to-one interviews with the participants, and were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. The results indicated that the frequency of communication strategies applied by the participants varied accor...
Communication Strategies Used by Efl Students in Improving Speaking Skill
IJET (Indonesian Journal of English Teaching), 2018
This study aimed to investigate communication strategies (CSs) used by EFL students in improving speaking English. Methods employed were questionnaire, observation, and interview. Findings showed that students have improvement in speaking when they used communication strategies (CSs). The strategies used by the students such as non-linguistic means, appeal for help, and fillers or hesitation device, message abandonment, non-linguistic means, literal translation, code switching, appeal for help, and fillers or hesitation device. The study suggests that EFL practitioners pay attention to communication strategies (CSs) aspect to obtain the optimum results of teaching-learning processes.
A STUDY OF EFL STUDENTS' ORAL COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES IN DISCUSSIONS
In the process of communication, EFL students frequently experience problem in saying what they want to say in English. Oral Communication Strategies (OCS) surface as the students needs to solve problems of expressing their intended meaning. This descriptive qualitative study intended to analyze (1) types of OCS used by students while conducting discussion, and (2) the students' reasons for using certain types of OCS. The participants of this study were a group discussion consisting of five EFL students of English Education Department in the University of Kuningan. The data in this study were gained from observation and interview which were then transcribed. The data were analyzed qualitatively by using Dornyei's (1995) taxonomy of OCS. The results revealed that students participated in this study tended to use achievement strategies (73.07%) more frequently than avoidance strategies (26.92%). Specifically, students used nine out of twelve communication strategy types, and the most frequent strategy used by students while conducting discussion was the use of fillers strategy (51.28%). Then, the students' reasons for using fillers strategy in their communication were basically because of their lack of English vocabulary knowledge and content knowledge of topics which were being discussed. Thus, students encounter communication problems as the results of target linguistic inadequacy. Hence, further study might yield different result if the topics chosen for discussion were desired topics among students. Keywords: EFL (English as a foreign language), oral communication strategies, discussion
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.
This study examines the effect of communication strategy instruction on EFL students’ oral communicative ability and their strategic competence. In a 14-week English as a Foreign Language (EFL) course (English Use II) based on Communicative Language Teaching approach, 80 learners were divided into to groups. The strategy training group (n = 44) received CS training based on a training program designed for the purpose of the present research,whereas the control group (n = 36) received only the normal communicative course using Click On 3, with no explicit focus on CSs. The communication strategies targeted in the training program included circumlocution (paraphrase), appeal for help, asking for repetition, clarification request, confirmation request, self-repair, and guessing. Pre- and posttest procedures were used to find out the effect of strategy training on language proficiency and CS use. The effect of the training was assessed by three types of data collection: the participants’ pre- and post-IELTS speaking test scores, transcription data from the speaking IELTS test, and ‘Click On’ Exit Test scores. The findings revealed that participants in the strategy training group significantly outperformed the control group in their IELTS speaking test scores. The results of the post-test transcription data also confirmed that the participants in the strategy training group used more CSs, which could be attributed to the CS training program. The findings of the present research have implications for language teachers, and syllabus designers.
Proficiency Level and Choice of Communication Strategies: A Case of Iranian EFL Learners
2015
The main concern of this study was communication strategies (CSs) which are used to compensate for communication breakdown. The goals of this study were to examine whether proficiency level of Iranian students had any relationship with their choice of CSs. This research was descriptive in nature. The participants were 15 pre-intermediate and 14 intermediate EFL learners between 16 to 21years old in a Language School in Shahrekord, Iran. 48 sessions was recorded and eight sessions of each level were randomly selected, transcribed and then coded. The coding categories included 22 types of CSs based on integrated model of taxonomies presented by Dornyei and Scott (1997),Tarone’s (1980), Faerch and Kasper’s (1983) taxonomies. In order to examine the relationship between learner’s proficiency level and the choice of CSs, a chi-square test was conducted. The significance level of .297 (p > 0.05) indicated that there was no significant relationship between the use of CSs and the profici...