Use of Communication Strategies by Thai EFL Learners
Use of Communication Strategies by Thai EFL Learners
Use of Communication Strategies by Thai EFL Learners
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Discussions and Conclusion<br />
Discussions<br />
With respect to the first research question, findings <strong>of</strong> the present study revealed that all<br />
communication strategies in the integrated framework were employed <strong>by</strong> the students.<br />
Moreover, the present study indicates that the students tended to rely on compensatory<br />
strategies (94.85%) more frequently than avoidance strategies (5.30%), indicating that the<br />
students attempted to keep the conversation flowing and maintain their interaction with the<br />
interlocutor. This could be explained that participants were familiar with the English<br />
language as they studied in the English program. Put simply, the familiarity <strong>of</strong> L2 could<br />
determine the frequency <strong>of</strong> CS use. Therefore, they had an awareness <strong>of</strong> using the target<br />
language in the required communication situations.<br />
It is also worth pointing out that among twenty-two communication strategies,<br />
fillers/hesitation devices appeared to be the most-frequently used strategies (43.33%) as they<br />
tended to be overused when the students performed their task. This is because the use <strong>of</strong> this<br />
strategy allowed the students to process their cognitive demands required from the task as<br />
well as did help the speech to flow naturally. Generally speaking, the students “slipped”<br />
fillers in their actual speech rather than “used” them. In contrast, the least frequently - used<br />
communication strategy appeared to be “foreignizing” (0.05%) as it was unusual to adjust L1<br />
both morphologically and phonically to L2 because L2 (English) has different characteristics<br />
from L1 (<strong>Thai</strong>).<br />
To answer research question 2, the findings indicated that English-speaking pr<strong>of</strong>iciency did<br />
not have the impact on the choices <strong>of</strong> communication strategies. This result could be<br />
explained that no matter how L2-pr<strong>of</strong>icient they are, <strong>Thai</strong> <strong>EFL</strong> learners seemed to have the<br />
target language problems, influenced <strong>by</strong> their native language transfer, therefore leading them<br />
to use communication strategies as the tool to communicate successfully . In other words,<br />
each student had an ability to tackle with individually communicative problems <strong>by</strong> employing<br />
communication strategies. This provided support for Willems (1987), who maintains that<br />
“…the way we handle language in the classroom not only in traditional structural approaches<br />
but also in modern ‘communicative’ ones does not sufficiently help the learner to develop<br />
this ‘strategic competence’” (p.361). That is to say, the ability to speak is not the same as the<br />
ability to employ communication strategies. Nevertheless, it was observed that high and<br />
middle-English speaking pr<strong>of</strong>iciency students tended to be enthusiastic in performing both<br />
tasks than low English-speaking pr<strong>of</strong>iciency students.<br />
The findings seemed to provide support to the explanation <strong>of</strong> Long (1990) regarding the<br />
effects <strong>of</strong> task types on the use <strong>of</strong> communication strategies that the oral interview, as a open<br />
task, promoted negotiation that involved talking about various topics which required the<br />
students to share their own information and resorted to intra-actional strategies which<br />
required them to use whatever that was available in their linguistic repertoire to help them<br />
solve their difficulties. In contrast, picture story narrative task is considered as close task in<br />
natural which required the students to reach single, correct answer or one <strong>of</strong> the small finite<br />
set <strong>of</strong> solutions. Therefore, they were likely to give up when faced with language difficulties.<br />
Regarding interactional strategies, it was found that oral interview task allowed the students<br />
to resort significantly more frequently to this type <strong>of</strong> strategy than the picture story narrative<br />
task. These results confirm Ellis (2003)’s ideas that reciprocal or two-way tasks would<br />
promote interaction between two or more learners to achieve task outcome where both<br />
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