An Analysis Of Factors Affecting The Use Of Oral Communication Strategies

In the recent years, linguists and researchers have laid great emphasis on the L2 learners'learning process, personality and communicative competence. Studies on communication strategies can reveal not only the mental processes of the language learners in using the target language, but also the learners'communicative competence. The present paper will make an analysis of communication strategies used by college students in the communicative process, and provide some tentative suggestions for the foreign language teachers to help the students conquer the communicative difficulties.This paper first introduces the purpose of the present study and briefly generalizes the current situation of communication strategy research. Meanwhile, it points out the necessity and urgency of mastering communication strategies for the college students in China.Chapter Two, the literature review, elaborates on the theoretical and empirical researches of communication strategies both at home and abroad, and summarizes the conceptualizations and taxonomies of communication strategies. On the basis of that, the author illustrates the types of communication strategies used in the present research. In addition, the factors affecting the selection of communication strategies are listed and analyzed.Chapter Three is an empirical study of communication strategies used in college students'oral communication. Three experiments are carried out to testify whether learners'language proficiency, personal traits and different oral tasks have influence on the choices of communication strategies. Subjects are 130 junior students majoring in civil engineering in JACEI. Questionnaire, interview and oral tasks are employed as experimental instruments. The experimental results manifest that (1) the learners'language proficiency exerts great influence on the attitudes towards communication strategies and the choices of communication strategies, (2) the learners endowed with different personal traits choose different communication strategies, and (3) the frequency of using communication strategies is different when the learners face with different oral tasks.Chapter Four discusses the findings of the experiments and elicits some implications. Teachers should attach importance to the communication strategies in oral English teaching, promote learners'strategic awareness and integrate classroom teaching with communication strategy training. Teachers had better conduct individualized instruction according to learners'personal traits. Besides, opportunities for practicing communication strategies should be provided in classroom activities.Chapter Five summarizes the main content of the whole paper, lists some limitations and proposes the constructive suggestions for the future research.