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

Regarding the second strategy, message abandonment, the seven respondents
had dissimilar feelings. Two students (Tien Long and Pei Pei) pointed out that
message abandonment was not a fitting strategy that the university students should
use. They described that English learners in the universities should have an
uncompromising standpoint in learning English, and they should try not to ignore any
message that they would like to convey. Three students (Sung Ru, Jiun Sheng, and
Ling Mei) confessed message abandonment was an indispensable strategy that they
needed to learn until their English becomes more advanced. Two respondents (Cheng
Chih and Jian Guo) ambiguously stated that the message abandonment strategy might
be usable. At the same time, they signified their personal suggestions of using it in
particular ways.
Generally speaking, as can be seen in Figure 4.2., the second findings of the
message abandonment strategy derived by the seven respondents’ various positions
indicated that the Taiwanese students had distinct and complex perceptions toward
the abandonment strategy. Some students believed that the message abandonment
strategy must be applied for reasons of time limitation, reducing anxiety in
communication, and vocabulary limitation.
In contrast, two other students believed that it was better to try to express all
the words by resorting to other strategies and a more aggressive attitude of learning.
The third neutral positions provided by two students indicated that the message
abandonment strategy was applicable. However, they tended not to use it except in
emergency situations or when talking to people from different professions.
Furthermore, some students revealed that the key words should not be abandoned
during communication.
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