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Abstract: Nowadays, along with the rapid development of globalization and communication among all countries in the world, almost all trades and professions demand people who are able to use a foreign language effectively as an essential tool for meaningful communication, which raises practical requirement for foreign language education and research around the world. CS has gained increasing attentions in the field of applied linguistics particularly since the late 70s. It is necessary to analyze the factors influencing the use of CSs in oral tasks in order to enhance the learners’ communicative competence.
Key words: factors, communication strategies, oral tasks
According to observation and analysis of recorded oral tasks, possible factors are found to affect the use of CSs in oral tasks. They are proficiency level, communicative context, the specific nature of the problem, the students’ attitudes towards CS use, personality and interlocutor. The following part discusses these factors in detail.
1. Students’ Proficiency Level
The proficiency level of the learners influences his choice of strategy (Ellis 1985: 183). Language proficiency level exerts great influence on the learners’ employment of reduction strategies, L1-based strategies, L2-based strategies and stalling strategies in the oral tasks. The learners of high proficiency group use significantly less reduction strategies, L1-based strategies, and stalling strategies in the oral task. On the contrary, the learners of low proficiency group use significantly less L2-based strategies in the oral tasks. Through the author’s observation and the subjects’ retrospective comments, almost all the learners of high proficiency group directly contended that when coming to a deadlock that they really can not express clearly because of their deficiency in linguistic knowledge, they would like to cope with communicative difficulties by using L2-based strategies. As far as they are concerned, when an English major communicates with other people in English, he/she must forget his/her mother tongue, that is to say, bearing the English logic thinking habit in mind. Although the learners of low proficiency group acknowledged it was no good utilizing reduction strategies, L1-based strategies, and stalling strategies, they could not avoid using them owing to their linguistic deficiency.
2. Context for Communication
Communication which is a dynamic process happens in a certain context or situation. What’s more, it determines the mode of behavior and the choice of CSs. In this study, context for communication refers to be either in class or out of class. Ellis (1985) concludes that learners’ use of CSs is affected by the situation of use. For instance, learners may use fewer strategies in a classroom environment than in a natural environment, particularly if the pedagogic focus is on correct L2 use, rather than on fluent communication. The situation may also influence the type of strategies used. By means of the author’s observation both in daily teaching class as an English teacher and in the oral tasks as a researcher, the students would like to choose less CSs in class than out of class and moreover tend to employ distinct types of CSs as communicative context changes. They are inclined to employ more reduction strategies in class than out of class. On the contrary, they tend towards L1-based strategies, L2-based strategies and relatively paralinguistic strategies in a natural environment. Although English majors bear in mind that speaking English as much as possible is beneficial to their language study, in class and out of class are quite different situations. The reasons of that should be: 1) Owing to the limited class time, they use reduction strategies than L2-based strategies more often than not mainly when encounter communicative problems in class. 2) Although sometimes they want to use posture, facial expression etc. to denote the vocabulary that they intend to say, they think that such behavior in class is considered a breach of etiquette. When it comes to L1-based strategies, it is forbidden by the teacher in class. The students tend to employ stalling strategies, L2-based strategies very often in the oral tasks, namely, out of class. It is obvious that the learners frequently employ pause fillers like “erm, eh, uhm” when they feel that they need time to think about what to say next during the time of encountering the specific problems in oral communication, the phenomenon of which maybe attributes to their attempt to transfer the features of using mother tongue to the foreign language when speaking English. The learners have a partiality for repetition, which explains that the students’ learning situation exerts great influence on the choice of strategic types. In our country, the learners mainly study English in the classroom learning situation with the help of English teachers and under the circumstances the teaching and studying center on correct use of English but not fluent communication with the others. Consequently the English learners in China emphasize the importance of correctness in oral communication. When they encounter the items that they do not know how to express, they can only choose the so-called “right expressions” firmly believed by the learners. In order to avoid making mistakes and meanwhile achieve the communicative goal, it is the only way open to the learners to repeat what has been said to show that they have the ability to communicate in English, which also explains the use of pause. The learners’ low employment of more complicated pause fillers like “well, you know, you see, to be quite honest, as a matter of fact, how shall I put it” shows that they are insufficient to make good use of such kind fillers: one reason is that although they have kept these terms in mind, they are not conscious of employing them to gain time when communicating with others; the other is because of their lack of linguistic knowledge.
3. Problems Students Encountered in Communication
Ellis (1985) describes that there is less evidence to demonstrate that strategy choice is influenced by the specific nature of the problem, but this would seem likely. Tarone (1977) notes that code-switching is more likely when the first and second languages have close cognates. Hamayan and Tucker (1980) find that the extent to which L2 child learners displayed avoidance depended on the grammatical structures involved. The problem-source, namely, the specific nature of the problem and strategy employment have a certain relationship with each other. When the learners communicate in target language, undoubtedly they are confronted with different kinds of problems. In accordance with the specific problem-source or the nature of concept types, namely abstract concepts and concrete concepts, the learners chose the corresponding CSs. During the process of accomplishing their oral tasks, the learners of high proficiency group and low proficiency group determined the choice of CSs according to different nature of the concept types. When it comes to abstract concepts, they were inclined to use linguistic-related strategies. That is to say, they exploited the semantic features of concepts by making full use of the linguistic knowledge of target language, such as metalanguage, synonym, antonym and the like. The employment of meta-linguistic strategies is a typical one relatively frequently used in the oral tasks by normal university English majors, the reason of which maybe is that the students are emphatically instructed in the knowledge of meta-language through daily teaching and learning because as a qualified English teacher, the sufficient knowledge of meta-language is absolutely necessary. In addition to that, they try their best to describe abstract concepts. When it comes to concrete concepts, the learners tended to use L2-based strategies, paralinguistic strategies. Confronting with concrete concepts that they did not know how to say directly, they utilized their social knowledge to describe or exemplify them. 4. Students’ Attitudes towards CS Use
The students’ attitudes towards CS use have certain influence on their actual use of CSs. In this study, the most obvious influence of attitudes is on the actual use of paralinguistic strategies. Most of the students have little tendency of using such a strategy while they conduct the oral tasks. PS seems to be the most easily ignored strategies in the students’ attitudes. And the high proficiency group and the low proficiency group do not show significant difference on the ignorance of PS. Therefore teachers should raise students’ awareness of using CSs, particularly for that of often ignored ones.
5. Personality
Tarone (1977) observes definite differences in her learners’ overall approach to story telling. One learner spoke quickly and provided little detail in either L1 or L2 performance, whereas another elaborated and frequently appealed for assistance. She suggests that personality factors may correlate highly with strategy preference.
In this study, the learners’ personality of high proficiency group and low proficiency group influences the employment of paralinguistic strategies. In order to derive the general principles from particular facts or instances, the researcher have conducted simple interviews with the intensive English teachers who teach the subjects and the students who study with them in the same class. The interview question focuses on: what do you think the personality of…? After sorting out the information obtained from the interview, the result has confirmed that the learners utilizing paralinguistic strategies are optimistic, humorous and the like by and large, especially the learners employing mime.
6. Interlocutor
The Chinese foreign language learners mainly speak English with other Chinese teachers and classmates, except a small number of courses taught by the native English speakers, so the learners have not much opportunity for communicating with foreigners. Therefore, appealing for assistance in Chinese strategy above all is employed by the learners and on the contrary, appealing for assistance in English strategy is not utilized in this study. Obviously, the intention appealing for assistance in Chinese are not successful and furthermore the subject had to employ the indirect appeal strategy—a rising intonation, which indicates that the interlocutor exerts certain influence on the performance in oral communication.
Generally speaking, the learners not often employ co-operative strategies, which maybe attributes to the classroom conditions provided to the learners by the teachers.
Bibliography:
【1】Ellis, R. 1985. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
【2】Tarone, E. 1981. Some thoughts on the notion of communication strategy [J]. TESOL Quarterly 15.
【3】Hamayan, E. & G. Tucker. 1980. Language input in the bilingual classroom and its relationship to second language achievement. TESOL Quarterly 14.
Key words: factors, communication strategies, oral tasks
According to observation and analysis of recorded oral tasks, possible factors are found to affect the use of CSs in oral tasks. They are proficiency level, communicative context, the specific nature of the problem, the students’ attitudes towards CS use, personality and interlocutor. The following part discusses these factors in detail.
1. Students’ Proficiency Level
The proficiency level of the learners influences his choice of strategy (Ellis 1985: 183). Language proficiency level exerts great influence on the learners’ employment of reduction strategies, L1-based strategies, L2-based strategies and stalling strategies in the oral tasks. The learners of high proficiency group use significantly less reduction strategies, L1-based strategies, and stalling strategies in the oral task. On the contrary, the learners of low proficiency group use significantly less L2-based strategies in the oral tasks. Through the author’s observation and the subjects’ retrospective comments, almost all the learners of high proficiency group directly contended that when coming to a deadlock that they really can not express clearly because of their deficiency in linguistic knowledge, they would like to cope with communicative difficulties by using L2-based strategies. As far as they are concerned, when an English major communicates with other people in English, he/she must forget his/her mother tongue, that is to say, bearing the English logic thinking habit in mind. Although the learners of low proficiency group acknowledged it was no good utilizing reduction strategies, L1-based strategies, and stalling strategies, they could not avoid using them owing to their linguistic deficiency.
2. Context for Communication
Communication which is a dynamic process happens in a certain context or situation. What’s more, it determines the mode of behavior and the choice of CSs. In this study, context for communication refers to be either in class or out of class. Ellis (1985) concludes that learners’ use of CSs is affected by the situation of use. For instance, learners may use fewer strategies in a classroom environment than in a natural environment, particularly if the pedagogic focus is on correct L2 use, rather than on fluent communication. The situation may also influence the type of strategies used. By means of the author’s observation both in daily teaching class as an English teacher and in the oral tasks as a researcher, the students would like to choose less CSs in class than out of class and moreover tend to employ distinct types of CSs as communicative context changes. They are inclined to employ more reduction strategies in class than out of class. On the contrary, they tend towards L1-based strategies, L2-based strategies and relatively paralinguistic strategies in a natural environment. Although English majors bear in mind that speaking English as much as possible is beneficial to their language study, in class and out of class are quite different situations. The reasons of that should be: 1) Owing to the limited class time, they use reduction strategies than L2-based strategies more often than not mainly when encounter communicative problems in class. 2) Although sometimes they want to use posture, facial expression etc. to denote the vocabulary that they intend to say, they think that such behavior in class is considered a breach of etiquette. When it comes to L1-based strategies, it is forbidden by the teacher in class. The students tend to employ stalling strategies, L2-based strategies very often in the oral tasks, namely, out of class. It is obvious that the learners frequently employ pause fillers like “erm, eh, uhm” when they feel that they need time to think about what to say next during the time of encountering the specific problems in oral communication, the phenomenon of which maybe attributes to their attempt to transfer the features of using mother tongue to the foreign language when speaking English. The learners have a partiality for repetition, which explains that the students’ learning situation exerts great influence on the choice of strategic types. In our country, the learners mainly study English in the classroom learning situation with the help of English teachers and under the circumstances the teaching and studying center on correct use of English but not fluent communication with the others. Consequently the English learners in China emphasize the importance of correctness in oral communication. When they encounter the items that they do not know how to express, they can only choose the so-called “right expressions” firmly believed by the learners. In order to avoid making mistakes and meanwhile achieve the communicative goal, it is the only way open to the learners to repeat what has been said to show that they have the ability to communicate in English, which also explains the use of pause. The learners’ low employment of more complicated pause fillers like “well, you know, you see, to be quite honest, as a matter of fact, how shall I put it” shows that they are insufficient to make good use of such kind fillers: one reason is that although they have kept these terms in mind, they are not conscious of employing them to gain time when communicating with others; the other is because of their lack of linguistic knowledge.
3. Problems Students Encountered in Communication
Ellis (1985) describes that there is less evidence to demonstrate that strategy choice is influenced by the specific nature of the problem, but this would seem likely. Tarone (1977) notes that code-switching is more likely when the first and second languages have close cognates. Hamayan and Tucker (1980) find that the extent to which L2 child learners displayed avoidance depended on the grammatical structures involved. The problem-source, namely, the specific nature of the problem and strategy employment have a certain relationship with each other. When the learners communicate in target language, undoubtedly they are confronted with different kinds of problems. In accordance with the specific problem-source or the nature of concept types, namely abstract concepts and concrete concepts, the learners chose the corresponding CSs. During the process of accomplishing their oral tasks, the learners of high proficiency group and low proficiency group determined the choice of CSs according to different nature of the concept types. When it comes to abstract concepts, they were inclined to use linguistic-related strategies. That is to say, they exploited the semantic features of concepts by making full use of the linguistic knowledge of target language, such as metalanguage, synonym, antonym and the like. The employment of meta-linguistic strategies is a typical one relatively frequently used in the oral tasks by normal university English majors, the reason of which maybe is that the students are emphatically instructed in the knowledge of meta-language through daily teaching and learning because as a qualified English teacher, the sufficient knowledge of meta-language is absolutely necessary. In addition to that, they try their best to describe abstract concepts. When it comes to concrete concepts, the learners tended to use L2-based strategies, paralinguistic strategies. Confronting with concrete concepts that they did not know how to say directly, they utilized their social knowledge to describe or exemplify them. 4. Students’ Attitudes towards CS Use
The students’ attitudes towards CS use have certain influence on their actual use of CSs. In this study, the most obvious influence of attitudes is on the actual use of paralinguistic strategies. Most of the students have little tendency of using such a strategy while they conduct the oral tasks. PS seems to be the most easily ignored strategies in the students’ attitudes. And the high proficiency group and the low proficiency group do not show significant difference on the ignorance of PS. Therefore teachers should raise students’ awareness of using CSs, particularly for that of often ignored ones.
5. Personality
Tarone (1977) observes definite differences in her learners’ overall approach to story telling. One learner spoke quickly and provided little detail in either L1 or L2 performance, whereas another elaborated and frequently appealed for assistance. She suggests that personality factors may correlate highly with strategy preference.
In this study, the learners’ personality of high proficiency group and low proficiency group influences the employment of paralinguistic strategies. In order to derive the general principles from particular facts or instances, the researcher have conducted simple interviews with the intensive English teachers who teach the subjects and the students who study with them in the same class. The interview question focuses on: what do you think the personality of…? After sorting out the information obtained from the interview, the result has confirmed that the learners utilizing paralinguistic strategies are optimistic, humorous and the like by and large, especially the learners employing mime.
6. Interlocutor
The Chinese foreign language learners mainly speak English with other Chinese teachers and classmates, except a small number of courses taught by the native English speakers, so the learners have not much opportunity for communicating with foreigners. Therefore, appealing for assistance in Chinese strategy above all is employed by the learners and on the contrary, appealing for assistance in English strategy is not utilized in this study. Obviously, the intention appealing for assistance in Chinese are not successful and furthermore the subject had to employ the indirect appeal strategy—a rising intonation, which indicates that the interlocutor exerts certain influence on the performance in oral communication.
Generally speaking, the learners not often employ co-operative strategies, which maybe attributes to the classroom conditions provided to the learners by the teachers.
Bibliography:
【1】Ellis, R. 1985. Understanding Second Language Acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
【2】Tarone, E. 1981. Some thoughts on the notion of communication strategy [J]. TESOL Quarterly 15.
【3】Hamayan, E. & G. Tucker. 1980. Language input in the bilingual classroom and its relationship to second language achievement. TESOL Quarterly 14.