Investigating the Use of Communication Strategies by Taiwanese College English Majors

• Main Authors: Wu-chi Li, 李伍騏
• Other Authors: Mei-ling Lee
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2016
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/53036916529379855068

碩士 === 國立高雄第一科技大學 === 應用英語系應用語言學與英語教學碩士班 === 105 === With the advent of globalization, being able to communicate in English has become indispensable to global citizens around the world. Therefore, the adoption of communication strategies (CSs) plays a crucial role in EFL settings. The current study examines two major types of CSs, achievement and reduction strategies, through a psycholinguistic perspective proposed by Faerch & Kasper (1983). Two speaking tasks were designed to elicit utterances and strategies from Taiwanese college English major students for close investigation and analysis. A total number of 20 English majors were recruited to participate in the study from a technological university in southern Taiwan. Students were divided into two proficiency groups, high and low, based on the grades they received in their conversation class. During the experiment, the participants were given three abstract words and three food pictures to describe. To assess the number of CSs adopted by the participants, one native English teacher worked alongside the researcher to mark the CSs systematically and ensure the reliability. Three major findings emerged from the present study. First, high proficiency students produced more words than their low proficiency counterparts in both speaking tasks but the difference was not significant. Second, the high proficiency group adopted more achievement strategies in both speaking tasks compared with the low proficiency group. However, the results did not reach a significant difference. Third, the low proficiency group adopted more reduction strategies than the high proficiency group in the picture description task. While the high proficiency group adopted slightly more reduction strategies in the word description task with no significant difference. Important pedagogical implications are drawn from these key research finding.