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

contributed to reducing students’ anxiety in communication. Actually, Krashen (1982)
pointed out that when learning language, the affective factor was one of the key
factors in language acquisition. When the learners’ anxiety was lower, the input in
language learning would be higher. Hence, this study indicated that although some
students perceived that the message abandonment strategy was not an aggressive
strategy, it still might contribute to enhance the input of language acquisition for the
students.
Time-Saving
Based on findings from the second research question about the message
abandonment strategy, this study suggested that the English teachers in
communication courses would inform the students about the methods for how to
decide if they would use the message abandonment strategy in communication. From
Jiun Sheng’s reflections, he observed that, when the in-class group discussion time
assigned by the lecturer was not long enough, many students frequently abandoned
messages that were not understood by their partners.
This actually suggested that when the discussion time is longer, the message
abandonment strategy would be used less frequently by the students. In contrast, if
the students were allowed to speak in a formal way for a longer time, the other
strategies, such as the restructuring strategy, interlanguage strategy, or cooperation
strategy, would be applied so that message abandonment would not be as useful.
Hence, this study recommended that the English teachers remind the students to be
aware of how much time they are allowed to speak in order to decide whether they
are going to use the message abandonment strategy or resort to the other
communication strategies.
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