On The Teaching Of Communication Strategies

Communication strategies play an important role in improving second language (the term"second language"includes"foreign language"in this paper) learners'communicative competence. A great number of researchers at home and abroad have conducted research on communication strategies. These studies center on the definition of communication strategies, the taxonomy, the factors influencing the use of communication strategies and the training of communication strategies. The teachability of communication strategies has been a controversial issue, especially among the researchers abroad. The research conducted by Chinese scholars finds that most of the Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners'awareness of communication strategies is weak and almost all Chinese researchers agree on the beneficial impact of communication strategy teaching. Therefore, the paper holds that it is necessary to teach communication strategies in China. Furthermore, the paper continues to point out that the previous research on the training of communication strategies has opened up the possibility of communication strategy teaching in China. Communication strategy teaching is investigated in the paper from the perspectives of teaching objectives, syllabus, teaching activities, learner roles, teacher roles and instructional materials. Meanwhile, the teaching of nine communication strategies is discussed in detail. These communication strategies are avoidance strategies, paraphrase, approximation, word coinage, appeals, non-linguistic strategies, code switch, foreignising and literal translation, with a focus on the first six communication strategies. Through the research on communication strategy teaching, the paper aims at raising Chinese EFL students'awareness of communication strategies and their communicative competence, as well as providing practicable suggestions on the classroom teaching of the nine communication strategies. It is hoped that this research will be conducive to the development of communication strategy teaching in China and will offer an insight into the further exploration of this issue, that is, the classroom implementation of communication strategy teaching.