English Language Teaching in its Social Context

COMPREHENSION AND PRODUCTION STRATEGIES 83provide a rationale for output-led interlanguage development.This literature (Tarone 1981 ;Faerch and Kasper 1983; Bialystok 1990) has examined the ways in which the strategiesthat learners adopt when faced by communication problems can be described clearly andclassified. Many categorization systems have been proposed, such as Faerch and Kasper’s(1983) distinction between achievement and avoidance strategies, and Bialystok’s (1990)contrast between linguistic and cognitive factors. One attraction of such systems is that theyaccount for the range of strategies which are used as parsimoniously and yet as comprehensivelyas possible. In addition, it is useful if they can be grounded in related fields, as isthe case with Faerch and Kasper’s (1983) appeal to general psycholinguistic models.However, a central issue is whether the operation of such strategies of communicationat a particular time to solve particular problems has any implications for interlanguage changeand development over time. ’ One could ask, for example, whether achievement strategies(that is, retain the original intention of meaning, and use resourccs creatively to solve acommunication problem) are more likely to lead to development than avoidance strategies(that is, do not extend one’s linguistic repertoire, but instcad change the message to becommunicated so that it comes within available resources). Similarly, one could ask whetherthere are different implications from the use of linguistic strategies compared with cognitiveones.A different way of examining essentially the same point is to consider the relationshipbetween communication strategies and the Canale and Swain (1980) model of communicativecompetence. This contains three (Canale and Swain 1980) or four (Canale 1983)competences: linguistic, sociolinguistic, discourse, and strategic (discourse being the addedfourth competence: see the discussion in McNamara 1995). Linguistic, sociolinguistic, anddiscourse competences are, in a sense, more basic, since they represent areas of coherentcompetence in relation to different aspects of communication. Strategic competence, in thisformulation, has a less integrated quality in that it is meant to function in an improvisatorymanner when problems are encountered because other competences are lacking (seeBachman 1990). Presumably the capacity to negotiatc meaning would be part of a moregeneral strategic competence.A weak interpretation of what is happening would be that such strategies have no otherfunction than to solve some sort of communicative breakdown in order that conversationcan proceed.With this interpretation, all that happens when a problem is encountered is thatsome degree of resourcefulness is drawn on, and the problem in question may or may notbe solved. In this view, it is not assumed that there is much trace from thc activity of solvingthe problem in question. Although the ‘solution’ may enable further interaction to take place(which is, of course, not a bad thing), its details are regarded as transitory and unimportant.However, a stronger interpretation is that when communication strategies are used,they have implications for longer-term language development.There are three requirementsfor this to happen. First, it is necessary that solving current communicative problems leavessome sort oftrace. In other words, what is initially an improvisation to convcy one’s meaningwhen resources are limited is noticed and becomes more than a transitory but evanescentsuccess; there must be something about the interaction which is sufficiently salient, and/orthe processing capacity available allows such attention. Second, the improvisation whichhas become a solution must be useful to future problems ~ it must have some transfer orgeneralizing power. Such an outcome would reflect the way the interaction itself has ledto useful hypothesis generation or to syntactic processing (Swain 1985; 1995). Third,the communicative solution needs to becomc proceduralized, either because it is so strikingduring one occurrence (Logan 1998), or because its strength is built up more graduallythrough repeated related solutions to essentially the same communicative problem