paraphrase  |
Success of communication strategies for listeners (adapted from Bialystok, 1990) |
| Communicative and Compensatory Strategies
|
|
'The easiest way to give the impression of having a good accent or no foreign accent at all is to hold an unlit pipe in your mouth, to mutter between your teeth and finish all your sentences with the question “isn’t it?” People will not understand much, but they are used to that and they will get a most excellent impression.' George Mikes 1946
|
A. Socially-motivated strategies for solving mutual lack of understanding (Tarone): a Communication Strategy (CS) 'a mutual attempt of two interlocutors to agree on a meaning in situations where requisite meaning structures do not seem to be shared'
avoidance topic
avoidance
message abandonment
approximation “animal" for
"horse",
paraphrase word coinage
"airball" for "balloon".
circumlocution “when you make a container" for
"pottery"
transfer literal translation "Make the door
shut"
language switch "That's a nice tirtil"
(caterpillar)
appeal for assistance “What is this?"
mime getting some candles in a shop in France by singing "Happy Birthday" in
English and miming blowing out candles.
Communication strategies in Tarone (1977)
avoidance:
message
abandonment 4%
paraphrase:
approximation
12%
word
coinage under
1%
circumlocution 80%
transfer language switch 2%
appeal for assistance 2%
Frequency of
communication strategies in English-speaking girls learning French (adapted from Bialystok,
1990)
paraphrase |
Success of communication strategies for listeners (adapted from Bialystok, 1990) |
B. Psychologically-motivated strategies for solving the individual's L2 problems of expression (Faerch & Kasper): 'potentially conscious plans for solving what to an individual presents itself as a problem in reaching a particular communicative goal'
L1/L3 codeswitching| Conceptual | Linguistic | ||||
| Analytic | Holistic | Morpho -logical |
Transfer | Totals | |
| advanced | 466 | 138 | 5 | 53 | 762 |
| upper secondary | 630 | 171 | 9 | 93 | 903 |
| lower secondary | 707 | 182 | 7 | 122 | 1018 |
| Totals | 803 | 491 | 19 | 268 | 2581 |
| Percentage | 69.9% | 19.2% | 0.7% | 10.4% |
|
Superordinate strategies in L2 by group for four tasks (adapted from Poulisse, 1989)
| percentage correct | range | |
| Holistic | 51.2% | 0% ("tailor") to 92.3% ("wig") |
| Analytic | 69.6% | 20.6% ("applications") to 100% ("hairdressers") |
| Holistic+ Analytic | 78.9% | 34.6% ("hair-restorer") to 100% ("lawyer") |
| Transfer | 59.3% | 2.9% ("rabbit") to 95% ("wig") |
Success of native speakers at guessing words from L2 compensatory strategies (adapted from Poulisse, 1990)
Research summary
: Poulisse, N. (1990), The Use of Compensatory Strategies by Dutch Learners of English, Mouton de Gruijter, BerlinEnglish (L2) |
Dutch (L1) |
|||||
|
holistic |
partitive |
linear |
holistic |
partitive |
linear |
advanced |
|
|
|
134 |
21 |
25 |
upper secondary |
119 |
34 |
25 |
124 |
33 |
22 |
lower secondary |
116 |
32 |
31 |
117 |
43 |
20 |
Totals |
372 |
87 |
78 |
375 |
97 |
67 |
Comparison of compensatory strategies for shape description in L1 and L2 (adapted from Poulisse, 1990)
ReferencesBialystok, E. (1990), Communication Strategies, Blackwell, Oxford
Faerch, C. & Kasper, G. (1984), 'Two ways of defining communication strategies', Language Learning, 34, 45-63
Firth, A. & Wagner, J. (1997). On discourse, communication, and (some) fundamental concepts in SLA research. Modern Language Journal, 81, 285-300
Kasper, G. & Kellerman, E. (eds.) (1997), Communication Strategies, Harlow: Longman
Kellerman, E. (1991), 'Compensatory strategies in second language research: a critique, a revision, and some (non-) implications for the classroom', in Phillipson, R., Kellerman, E., Selinker, L., Sharwood Smith, M., & Swain. M. (eds.), Foreign/Second Language Pedagogy Research, Multilingual Matters, Clevedon
Poulisse, N. (1990), The Use of Compensatory Strategies by Dutch Learners of English, Mouton de Gruijter, Berlin
Poulisse, N. (1996), ‘Strategies’, in Jordens, P. & Lalleman, J., (eds) Investigating Second Language Acquisition, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin
Tarone, E. (1988), Variation in Interlanguage, Edward Arnold, London
Extract from a Dutch student retelling a story
Here is an example taken from Nanda Poulisse (1990) of a Dutch student retelling a story in English. Take one of the schemes of analysis from Faerch and Kasper or from the Nijmegen project and see what strategies you discover; to what extent do you feel this shows that the bulk of communication strategies are in fact due to lack of lexical knowledge?
it's a story which call, the representer <laughs> it's a man uh, uh, uh who has uh, discovered, uh 1, uh 1 ja, a thing you can put on your head and then your hair will grow, when you're bald, that's very nice and uh, he tries to sell it, to uh, /so/ uh, to a lot of, erm, 1 haircutters <laughs>, erm 1 he does it uh, very, uh xxx clever, he's uh, bald, self, his himself, and uh, then, he puts on uh, uh <laughs> 3 'n pruik (=a wig) <whispers> 2 erm 6 erm, a thing which is made of uh, other man's hair or static hair, and you can put it on your head and then uh, it seems if you're not bald, and uh, then he, uh beweren (=claims), uh <whispers> 4 he says to the, to to the hair-cutter that uh 2 that uh has come because he has use his own uh 2 own, wat is uitviubdig nou weer (now what is invention?) <whispers> 2 own uh thing which he /ha/ had d discocered, uh. he, uh 2 he 2, he uh, earned a lot of money, uh, until the day of uh, the 2 meeting which is hold every year, in 1 outside of uh the houses, in the air, and the wind had uh, blew off, that thing 1 which he had on his hairs, and so 1 uh they discovered that he was a liar <laughs>