Abstract:
This study investigated six English lessons from the learners’ textbooks at a private
language institute in Shiraz, Iran, to assess the use of Communication Strategies
(CSs) in open-ended conversation tasks. The participants were 30 pairs of English
learners (N=60) divided into elementary, intermediate, and advanced proficiency
levels. Conversations were recorded and transcribed and the final assessment of the
data was made using both quantitative and qualitative analyses. The results showed
that the frequency of CSs was relatively low, compared with previous studies on
EFL learners in other contexts. Indeed, no significant difference was found
between the three groups vis-à-vis the total number of CSs used. However, it was
found that elementary-level students frequently used the strategies which impeded
the flow of their communication. On the other hand, advanced students mostly
employed strategies to maintain the flow of interaction. Nevertheless, no group
could adequately use self-solving strategies such as circumlocution and
approximation for target language (TL) vocabularies. The results indicated that
while a small number of students could use CSs for conversation tasks; it is
necessary to introduce explicit meta-cognitive strategy training to raise awareness
of CS use in order to further expand TL development
Machine summary:
"‘Free’ to Choose: Communication Strategy Use in EFL Classrooms in Iran Yasuo Nakatani a Professor of Applied Linguistic, Faculty of Economics, Hosei University, Tokyo Japan Mohammad Makki b PhD candidate, School of Arts and Media, University of New South Wales, Kensington, NSW, Australia Joff Bradley Department of English Communication, Faculty of Arts, Toyo University, Tokyo, Japan Received 24 February 2012; revised 5 August 2012; accepted 26 August 2012 Abstract Keywords: Introduction There is a growing body of research on the effects of learning strategies for second language communication (e.
g. Cohen, 1998; O'Malley & Chamot, 1990; Oxford, 1990), and while the inculcation of CSs has been a central concern for enhancing interaction skills in the TL (Bialystok, 1990; Canale & Swain, 1980; Kasper & Kellerman, 1997; Nakatani & Goh, 2007), there is still some disagreement regarding the extent to which characteristics, such as proficiency level and cultural contexts, affect CS use (Chen, 1990; Dörnyei, 1995; Rost & Ross, 1991).
Table 1 Frequency of Communication Strategies Proficiency levels Elementary Intermediate Advanced Strategies Avoidance or Reduction Strategies 20 9 1 Message abandonment 0 0 0 Topic avoidance 20 9 1 Sub Total Achievement or Compensatory Strategies 0 0 2 Circumlocution 2 5 1 Approximation 0 4 25 Use of all-purpose words 0 0 0 Word coinage 0 1 4 Non-linguistic means 1 1 0 Foreignizing 18 10 5 Code switching 4 6 0 Appeal for help 0 1 3 Literal translation 25 28 40 Sub Total Stalling or Time-gaining Strategies 18 20 34 Use of fillers 63 57 75 Total As Table 1 shows, a total of 195 CSs were observed in the thirty conversations of 60 participants in the three proficiency levels."