LINH - Communication Strategies

COMMUNICATION StraTEGIES

Interlanguage

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

the fourth source of learner error.

including processes of interlingual and intralingual transfer and the context of learning.

pertaining to the conscious employment of verbal or non-verbal mechanisms for communicating an idea when precise linguistic forms are for some reason not available to the learner at that point in communication.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

Definition

Communication strategies are “potentially conscious plans for solving what to an individual presents itself as a problem in reaching a particular communicative goal”

Faerch and Kasper (1983a:36)

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

Types of strategyEmpirical studies on communication strategies have

defined a number of interesting types of strategy: Cohen and Aphek (1981): “good” and “bad”

- “Good” communication strategies : + word association + generating students’ own rules (students

generate new forms of language by inference)

- “Bad” communication strategies: failing to produce grammatical markers carefully

- “Neutral” communication strategies:

+ creating forms through guessing+ preparing phrases or utterances

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

Chesterfield and Chesterfield (1985): 12 language learning strategies (Table 9-2,

p.181)1. Repetition2. Memorization3. Formulaic expression4. Verbal attention getter5. Answer in unison6. Talk to self7. Elaboration8. Anticipatory answer9. Monitoring10. Appeal for assistance11. Request for clarification12. Role-play

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

Taron (1981:286): - Paraphrase

+ Approximation + Word coinage+ Circumlocution

- Borrowing+ Literal translation+ Language switch

- Appeal for assistance - Mime - Avoidance

+ Topic avoidance+ Message abandonment

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

Four broad strategies

1. Avoidance- Syntactic or lexical avoidance

within a semantic category

E.g. L : I lost my road NS: You lost your road ? L : Uh,…I lost. I lost. I got lost.

The learner avoided the lexical item road entirely, not being able to come up with the word way at that point.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

1. Avoidance Syntactic or lexical avoidance

within a semantic category

Phonological avoidanceE.g. A Vietnamese learner of English wanted to say “I’d like to introduce my father”. But with difficulty of the sound /ð / in English, he said “I’d like to introduce my dad” instead .

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

1. Avoidance- Syntactic or lexical avoidance within a semantic category- Phonological avoidance

- Topic avoidance: A whole topic of conversation might be avoided entirely.

E.g. A student avoids mentioning what happened yesterday if he isn’t familiar with the past tense

Methods of topic avoidance: changing the subject, pretending not to understand, not responding at all or abandoning a message.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

1. Avoidance

2. Prefabricated Patterns Another common communication device is

to memorize stock phrases or sentences without internalized knowledge of the components of the phrase.

E.g. + “I don’t speak English” + “I beg your pardon” + “Can you…?” ; “Let’s…” ; “Do you know…?” etc.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

2. Prefabricated Patterns Prefabricated patterns “enable learners to

express functions which they are yet unable to construct from their linguistic system, simply storing them in a sense like large lexical items”

-Hakuta (1976:333).

A lack of knowledge of the structural rules may lead to many errors

E.g. Learners combine 2 fabricated patterns to make the sentence “Do you know where do they live?” without deleting the auxiliary “do”

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

1. Avoidance 2. Prefabricated Patterns 3. Appeal to AuthorityIf “stuck” for a particular word or phrase

Learners may directly ask a native speaker (the authority) for the form, using the expressions such as “How do you say/spell …?”, “What is this?”, etc.

Learners might venture a possible guess and then ask for verification from the native speaker.

Learners might also choose to look a word or structure up in a bilingual dictionary.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

1. Avoidance 2. Prefabricated Patterns 3. Appeal to Authority 4. Language switch

When all the strategies fail, learners may resort to language switch. That is, they may simply use their native language whether the hearer know that native language or not.