The primary purpose of this study was to identify what were Taiwanese
University English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners’ perceptions about learning
communication strategies. This study collected qualitative data about students’ beliefs
and attitudes as they learned communication strategies. The research question guiding the
study was: What are Taiwanese University EFL learners’ perceptions about learning five
communication strategies?
Twenty-four university students were trained for 10 weeks to use strategies in
Faerch and Kasper’s (1983a) taxonomy, and seven volunteers were interviewed. None of
the students majored in English but were enrolled in a required Basic English course in a
Freshman English Non-Majors’ (FENM) program in Agriculture College at Tunghai
University. In the middle and at the end of the training period, participants were
interviewed and videotaped for 90 minutes. The results were as follows:
1) In the reduction set of communication strategies, seven volunteers tended to
admit that “topic avoidance” (1.) was applicable; however, they disagreed
about “keeping silence” because of their concern about politeness. 2) Students had mixed views about “message abandonment” (2.) that ranged from
a neutral position to appropriate and inappropriate usages.
3) In the meaning replacement strategy (3.), most of the students believed that it
was convenient to have access to getting to know their interlocutor’s intended
meaning.
4) In the second achievement set, four students perceived it was useful, but three
students provided their vague attitudes with various suggestions for usage. For
the interlanguage strategy (4.), six students noticed it offered a function of
enhancing their comprehensibility in English communication, and one student
had a neutral attitude. The data revealed students had sufficient and complex
perceptions about “word-coinage.”
5) In the cooperation strategy (5.), six students believed it assisted them to
achieve the purpose of learning, but two of seven students believed it was
losing face when appealing for help.
6) The constant method of analysis revealed eight themes associated with topic
avoidance (1.), message abandonment (2.), meaning replacement (3.),
interlanguage (4.), and cooperation (5.) strategies, were mentioned by seven
participants. They were comprehension, politeness, intentionality, native
language, face-saving (losing-face), interlanguage system, time-saving, and
keywords.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-1287 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Lin, Grace Hui Chin |
| Contributors | Larke, Patricia J. |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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