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

Prior Training
Instruments
On the first day of training, the researchers explained to the 24 participants
that the study of communication strategies might offer them the following
advantages:
1) An opportunity to interact and communicate in English understandably
with limited linguistic proficiency obtained in high school.
2) A set of free learning materials, including a Digital videodisc (DVD) and a
notebook containing a series of conversation topics for introducing the
skills of communication strategies, would be distributed to them for
practicing English communication in class.
3) The communication strategies might help the subjects make their decisions
to learn communication. This study would make them consider in what way
they should develop their communication proficiency in the future.
4) The daily-life topics provided and the training of communication strategies
should be practical, interesting, and motivational for learning English
conversation and improving communicative competence.
Criteria of Five Communication Strategies Based on Faerch and Kasper’s Taxonomy
For achieving criterion consistency, only two sets of five communication
strategies in Faerch and Kasper’s classification (1983c) had been applied as a
standard classification when the researchers trained the students, coded students’
dialogues, and interviewed the students. Among many taxonomies of communication
strategies, only two sets of reduction and achievement strategies in Faerch and
Kasper’s classification (1983c) had been used consistently as a criterion of
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