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

Ling Mei Fang
Ling Mei remarked that interlanguage was a suitable strategy for her to use.
She believed that some strategies had to be used cooperatively. Although Ling Mei
perceived that sometimes using this strategy might be wasting time, it was still
worthy. Additionally, Ling Mei believed that interlanguage would be more applicable
when talking to people who were from similar backgrounds. Ling Mei offered
examples of “word coinage” that she observed from her classmates. Ling Mei also
provided some ideas of how to teach “generalization” and “exemplification.” In Ling
Mei’s first interview, she talked about how she believed some strategies should be
applied to compensate for the failure of expressing:
For the “generalization,” I would not simply use it alone, but I would use it
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with another strategy. For example, if I would like to say “koala,” I would say,
“An animal that lives on the tree.” Only saying “animal” made the focus too
ambiguous. I would not just say animal.
Using the other strategy with “generalization” made the meaning clearer. In
my learning experiences, I was not able to find a generalized word to replace
some words very easily. For example, I would not say, “Whale is a fish,”
instead, I should say, “It is a viviparous fish.” I perceived that I should use
two strategies at the same time. I believed that exemplification and
generalization should be applied for explaining one meaning.