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

in this study was comparison analysis, although the long talk, which could not be
completely displayed, could indicate some common traits in the 7 university students’
perceptions toward learning communication strategies. Briefly, the 7 students’
statements in interviews were videotaped, converted into a DVD format, coded,
compared, and conceptualized into several themes. These themes were formulated in
later sections.
In this study, five of Faerch and Kasper’s (1983c) communications strategies
in reduction and achievement sets were taught to 24 students. Then, 7 volunteers
among the 24 students were interviewed in order to examine their perceptions toward
each communication strategy. After coding and analyzing the data collected by
face-to-face interview with a video camera, the researcher concluded and displayed
two or three themes associated with students’ perceptions of learning each
communication strategy. These themes addressed students’ similar and diverse
attitudes as well as their similar and different positions toward each communication
strategy.
Research Question One
What Do Taiwanese University Students Perceive in Learning the Topic
Avoidance Strategy?
The analysis significantly demonstrated that most of the students tended to
feel that topic avoidance was an applicable strategy. However, they also asserted that
“keeping silence” in this strategy was not appropriate. Therefore, they voiced that
they preferred not to use it. All students (Sung Ru, Cheng Chih, Jiun Sheng, Jian Guo,
Tien Long, Ling Mei, and Pei Pei) offered their suggestions on how to change the
topic appropriately when changing topics was necessary. Also, some (Cheng Chih,
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