A Dissertation by GRACE HUI-CHIN LIN Submitted to the Office of ...

deemed that it was necessary to learn how to change a topic, but at the same time,
tended to emphasize the issues of respect and politeness in English communication.
Although they regarded changing the topic to be required, they suggested not
“keeping silent,” but using some other appropriate strategies. The strategies they
created and suggested were, “talking politely,” “finding topics suitable to your
partner’s background,” and “not entirely changing the main topic.”
Research Question Two
What Do Taiwanese University Students Perceive in Learning the Message
Abandonment Strategy?
Students from the same class underscored the message abandonment strategy
with three groups of different attitudes. Two students (Tien Long and Pei Pei)
responded that it was better not to abandon a difficult word. They thought it was
more positive that a student tried to explain a difficult word with the other strategies.
Contrastingly, the other side (Sung Ru, Jiun Sheng, and Ling Mei) supported that the
message abandonment strategy should be applied in communication with their
various reasons. Among the seven respondents, two students (Jian Guo and Cheng
Chih) held an ambiguous attitude toward the message abandonment strategy, and
provided their suggestions for how this strategy should be used.
Sung Ru Liu
Sung Ru reflected on her attitude that supported the message abandonment
strategy by reasons of freedom and saving face. Sung Ru perceived this strategy to be
very useful in both of her interviews. In the first interview, she detected:
Message abandonment was the strategy I used most often in class. I was
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