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

in a fluent and voluble way.
Ling Mei perceived that she would apply message abandonment but she should not
abandon key words, which were related to the central meaning of a conversation:
Key words could not be abandoned because it made me lose focus of a topic.
My partners needed to be very patient and spend more time to comprehend
what I wanted to say when I abandoned a key word in a communication. After
a longer time, my partners would understand what I was talking about by
referring to the other information I provided.
Ling Mei expressed her perception that an abstract adjective or an abstract noun was
more difficult to explain. So she would abandon these types of words:
Abstract nouns or adjectives were harder to illustrate, so they should be
abandoned more often than the other types of words. In class, I wanted to
explain an abstract word like “Flat” through appealing to some other
strategies; however, I still failed to make my partners realize what I was
talking about. I tried to use many ways to explain, but my classmates still did
not catch the meaning. Finally, Douglas (the trainer) helped me to make my
partners figure out what “Flat” meant. He used exemplification and said, “The
top of the desk is flat, the floor is flat, and the wall is flat.” Then, my
classmates comprehended my intended meaning of “Flat.”
After two interviews, Ling Mei further reflected in one of several member checks
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