A Survey On Normal University English Majors' Perceptions Of Communication Strategies

The ultimate purpose of language learning is to use it for communication, then how to improve learners' communicative competence becomes a crucial task for language teachers. An essential approach to achieving this goal is to help learners use communication strategies (CSs), one important element of communicative competence, effectively in communication because there exists an inevitable gap between what learners are taught and what they need in coping with unpredictable situations, and the gap can be bridged by CSs. CSs are of relevance to L2 learning. Firstly, they can be used to help learners solve encountered problems in communication by playing their compensatory roles when linguistic knowledge is not available. Secondly, CSs can keep communication going, make learners receive more input and relieve their anxiety and frustration resulted from unsuccessful communication. Thirdly, CSs are vital to L2 learners because their L2 knowledge is restricted so they may confront much more difficulties than native speakers in communication. So it is absolutely necessary to make a study of CSs.However, the study of CSs is not adequate in China, thus this thesis puts forward a comprehensive analysis of CSs by discussing some major issues concerned in literature, especially focusing on the definition, classification. In order to fill the gap of insufficient empirical research on CSs in China, the author further conducts an experiment to check English majors' perceptions of CSs. The experimental results are based on the questionnaire and the interview which focus on examining the learners' attitude to CSs and the frequency of using them in communication. Through the analysis of the data by SPSS, the results indicate: 1) the learners have a positive attitude to achievement strategies, while a negative attitude to reduction strategies, and their attitude to reduction strategies has significant difference, that is, the higher the language proficiency, the lower belief in reduction strategies; 2) the learners do not use achievement strategies frequently, while frequently use reduction strategies, and the frequency of using reduction strategies has significant difference among different language proficiency learners, i.e. the lower the language proficiency, the higher the frequency of using them; 3) there exist correlations between the attitude to cooperative strategies, LI-based strategies and nonlinguistic strategies and the frequency of using them. Reasons accounting for these results are also explored, such as, the learning and teaching situations, linguistic and strategic competence and personality differences.Based on the results, the author points out that learners can use various CSs, but what they lack is not the strategies themselves but how to use them appropriately in communication. Accordingly, the author puts forward some suggestions about how to improve learners' ability to use CSs in language teaching.