Communicative Strategy And Second Language Acquisition

With the development of technology, communication through computer and other modes is becoming more and more popular, however, face-to face communication still remains. In communication, there is no one who knows everything about a language, therefore they may probably encounter some communication problems caused by inadequate linguistic competence or sociolinguistic competence. To solve these problems, a learner has to use some communicative strategies. Communicative strategies contribute not only to communication but also to second language acquisition. Communicative strategies first help to keep communication channel open, and increase a learner抯 input. Secondly, communicative strategies in general encourage hypothesis formation and automatization. Finally, strategic competence is one of the important constituents of communicative competence. Combined with learning strategies, Communicative strategies are an important prerequisite for a learner抯 autonomy. Communicative strategy is the plan which a speaker decides following a psychological assessment of communicative situation to overcome some problems and to attain to a particular communicative goal. To be more exact, communicative strategies are potentially conscious plans for solving what to an individual presents itself as a problem in reaching a particular communicative goal. The key characteristics for it are potentially conscious and problem-oriented. There are a number of ways of classification, this paper adopts the classification from the psychological point of view, because this typology is more inclusive and systematic and may reflect the nature of communicative strategy better. Communicative 60 Communicative Strategy and Second Language Acquisition strategies, therefore, can be classified into achievement strategy and reduction strategy. The former includes cooperative and non-cooperative strategy, the latter formal reduction and fEinctional reduction strategy. The use of these strategies is restricted by several communicative variables such as learners, learning situation and communicative context etc. Based on the framework of achievement strategies and reduction strategies, this paper investigated the communicative strategies of Chinese learner of English. Through the investigation of the relationship between the attitude toward communicative strategy and the frequency of using them in actual communication, three tentative conclusions have been drawn. First, a learner抯 view of communicative strategy has some influence on the use of communicative strategies. Among the achievement strategies, the attitude to cooperative strategy, stalling strategy, and nonverbal strategy are positively relevant to the frequency of using them. The factors affecting Chinese learner抯 view of achievement strategy include the view of language learning, cultural differences and the degree to which learners realize the role of achievement strategy in second language acquisition and communication. Secondly, Chinese learners of English use reduction strategy most often. The learners with low level of English proficiency are ,more likely to use this strategy than those with high level of language proficiency. Finally, Chinese learners seldom use achievement strategy although they tend to believe the important role of achievement strategy in oral communication strategy. One of the reasons for this is that Chinese learner抯 learning situation, strategic and linguistic competence restrict the use of achievement strate...