The Effect Of Communication Strategy Instruction On Non-English Major Postgraduates' Oral Communicative Competence

A few studies have manifested that, in a tentative way, appropriate use of CSs will generate significant positive impact, such as facilitating learners to compensating for limited linguistic resources, avoiding failures in communication, and improving their oral communicative competence. However, most subjects are undergraduates or middle school students in the past researches. Few empirical studies have paid attention to non-English major postgraduates. Therefore, the present study expects to explore the impact of CSs teaching on non-English major postgraduates'strategic competence, hence their oral communicative competence.For convenient sampling, sixty-four non-English major postgraduates from two parallel classes of Chongqing University are chosen as the subjects. As there is no significant difference in English proficiency between the two classes (T test), one of them is supposed to be the experimental group, and the other is the control group.The author attempts to answer the following two research questions:(1) Can strengthening CSs teaching in class (in experimental group) enhance Chinese non-English major postgraduates'strategic competence, hence their oral communicative competence? Specifically speaking, the author expects to demonstrate it from three aspects, i.e., whether students'frequencies of using CSs can generate significant progress, whether students'fluency in completing tasks can improve, and whether oral scores in the two tests exist significant positive change.(2) After one semester of CSs teaching in class, is there any difference on the employment of CSs categories among non-English major postgraduates with different English proficiencies within experimental group?Research questions are investigated by means of two oral English tests, which are recorded. Results of the CSs questionnaire conducted before the experiment reveal that most students are even not clear about what the term communication strategy means, let alone to use them consciously. This may, to a certain extent, provide the evidence of the necessity to teach CSs in class.Results yielded from the two oral tests manifest that: (1) In accomplishing given tasks, students in experimental group significantly increase the frequencies of using achievement strategies except direct appeal and retrieval strategies. As for reduction strategies, students in experimental group significantly decrease the frequencies; (2) The...