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

After five weeks of training, Tien Long talked about his observation of one of his
classmates, Ling Mei. Tien Long concluded that a person must be talented in reacting
to the urgent situation or knowledgeable in order to apply “paraphrase” well:
I found Ling Mei’s (classmate) ability of “paraphrase” was really good. It was
because she could react to a word very quickly and she was knowledgeable. I
was not clever in using this strategy because I did not have enough
knowledge for explaining many things.
Tien Long believed that “restructuring” was acceptable when learning English:
As to “restructuring,” I believe that “changing plan” in the middle of talking
should be allowable. When I was able to express my intended meaning with
restructuring, my partners would consider the pause in the middle for
changing plan to be acceptable and correct. I observed that restructuring was
especially acceptable at school because everybody understood that the pause
or changing mind of expressing would be allowed under a status of learning.
In the second interview, Tien Long displayed his understanding about interlanguage.
Tien Long still did not express if he preferred to use this strategy:
I could describe what a certain chemical substance was through paraphrase if
132
I were a teacher. For example, I described that “Diamond” was “Substance