On The Relationship Of Chinese College EFL Learners' Classroom Communication Apprehension And Communication Strategies

McCroskey (1977a) defines communication apprehension as"anindividual's level of fear or anxiety associated with either real oranticipated communication with another person or persons". It is usuallyregarded as having negative impact on communicative competencedevelopment. Communication strategies (CSs) is believed to be one waythat can deal with this problem.The term"communication strategies"was coined by Selinker (1972)in his account of the processes responsible for interlanguage. In the lightof the foregoing discussions, Ellis (1985: 182) defines CSs as"psycholinguistic plans which exist as part of the language user'scommunicative competence. They are potentially conscious and serve assubstitutes for production plans which the learner is unable to implement".The purpose of this paper is to study the relationship between CA andCSs. Special attention is paid to CA and CSs difference between differentmajors and grades, and among different language proficiency groups.The subjects for this study are 341 students of China University of Petroleum (Qingdao Campus), intentionally sampled from four groups, i.e.,62 English major postgraduates, 75 non-English major postgraduates, 120English major juniors, and 84 non-English major juniors.The instrument used in this study includes questionnaire andinterview. Data were entered into SPSS for Windows, version12.0 forvarious analyses. Results show that: 1. CA and CSs difference issignificant between majors while not between grades, and the differenceamong language proficiency groups is more likely to be identifiable interms of major than language proficiency; 2. CA and CSs are negativelycorrelated.Statistically, we do not know whether CSs is the cause or result ofCA. Data obtained from interview supplies answer to this question.Question one shows students'awareness of CSs is very low though theyare to some degree able to use CSs. Students in question two all agree thatCSs use helps alleviate CA. As for the third question"If you feel lessnervous or anxious when speaking, do you think you can use CSs moreeffectively?"most students are not sure about it.The study concludes that an investigation of CA and CSs differencein oral communication processing helps identify specific areas where highCA learners might be trained to be more effective communicators.