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

in Louisiana State University. Through the role-play situation of a hair stylist and a
client, Stewart and Pearson (1995) collected their data and revealed different
characteristics in the native and non-native speakers’ speech productions. Their
findings showed that the non-native speakers would use the skills of “appeal for
assistance,” “appreciation,” “literal translation,” and “self-repair” in communication
strategies, but the native speakers would not. On the other hand, the native speakers
used more skills of “repetition,” “clarification,” “confirmation,” and “language
switch” in communication strategies than non-native speakers did. Stewart and
Pearson (1995) concluded in this study that “results suggest that certain types of
communication strategies can be a valuable aid to communication” (p. 17).
Dornyei (1995) managed a quantitative-empirical study in Hungary, which
was based on the issue of the “teachability” of communication strategies. In this
study, six teachers taught six strategies to 53 participants for six weeks. Meanwhile, a
control group of 56 participants were taught with a regular EFL curriculum by
another two teachers. Before and after training, the researchers collected data through
oral activities of topic description, cartoon description, and definition formulation
and writing activities of the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC)
and integrative writing. Through tape-recording and transcribing, the subjects’ speech
rate and strategy applying frequency were measured with the Analysis of Variance
(ANOVA) statistical method. The finding of this study revealed that, “In the
treatment group, the post-training results showed improvement in measures related to
both the quality and quantity of strategy use” (p. 79). Also, “the students found the
strategies in the training useful, especially circumlocution, and their general attitude
toward the training was very favorable” (p. 79). At the end of this study, Dornyei
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