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

explored whether the communication strategies were helpful for Arabic English
learners in a Jordan University. Through this study, Rababah (2002b) revealed that
“The more the student is exposed to the target language, the faster and easier he/she
will be able to assimilate the language” (p. 20). His findings also noted that “even
weak learners were good at transmitting a comprehensible and successful message”
(Rababah, 2002b, p. 21). Rababah’s second empirical study that was conducted in
Jordan displayed that the lower level proficiency learners applied more
communication strategies than the higher level proficiency learners. In this study,
Rababah (2002b) argued that, “Students should also be encouraged to take risks and
to use communication strategies” (p. 21).
Littlemore’s study, conducted in 2003 in France, included 82 French speaking,
university-level learners of English. Littlemore (2003) analyzed the subjects’ speech
productions before and after training from a linguistics perspective. Through a close
examination of the transcripts of the recordings, this study led to the identification of
four major types of communication strategies, including substitution strategies,
substitution plus strategies, reconceptualization strategies, and functional reduction
strategies. Littlemore (2003) concluded in this study that “reconceptualization
strategies were likely to be the most effective in this experiment, and within this
category, componential analysis was the most likely to guarantee successful
communication” (p. 12).
Theoretical Base/Conceptual Framework
The book titled, Strategies in Interlanguage Communication, edited by
Faerch and Kasper (1983c) was a primary foundation of this study. In this book,
many scholars provided articles to support Faerch and Kasper’s categorization (e.g.,
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