An Empirical Study On The Choice And Employment Of Communication Strategies Of Science-Technology University Students

Spoken Language Acquisition, as a main part of Second Language Acquisition (SLA in short), requires Chinese science-technology university students to improve their spoken English ability. The fundamental aim of this thesis is to foster science-technology students'expressive and communicative competence of oral English by means of developing their strategic competence in communication. Based on the theories in the field of communication strategies (CSs in short) and the related empirical studies both at home and abroad, the thesis intends to prove the effectiveness of CSs such as circumlocution, approximation and fillers on their oral English proficiency through an experiment.The thesis is composed of five chapters, with introduction as the first and conclusion the last. Beginning with the research backgrounds of the study, the thesis discusses the urgency of improving oral English proficiency and emphasizes the need and the significance of developing science-technology university students' communication strategic competence. What's more, the research design, as well as the overall structure of the thesis, is presented. In the second chapter, the definitions of CSs are introduced and the relevant theoretical and empirical achievements are reviewed and evaluated. The heatedly discussed issue of conceptualizing and classifying CSs is the core of the theory of CSs. The thesis analyzes and presents the differences and correlations among various definitions and taxonomies, which serve as a framework for the investigation of the use of CSs by science-technology university students while discovering the essence of CSs. Then the theoretical achievements in the field of strategic competence and strategy training are presented, which lay basis for the experiment in theory. Chapter Three is the experimental part with the purpose of answering the following three questions:1) Can the students' communication strategic competence be improved by classroom teaching and training of CSs? 2) How much can CSs foster oral English proficiency? 3) Do those students agree on the teaching and training of CSs? The experiment is carried out among 110 freshmen from the School of Information Technology in Shandong University at Weihai. They are divided into two groups:experimental group and control group. Questionnaire and observation are employed to investigate the differences in the choice and employment of CSs after training. The oral English pretest and posttest are used to testify the improvement in students'oral English proficiency level. And the data on whether students approve of the teaching and training of CSs is obtained through interviews and students'learning report. Chapter Four, one of the main parts of the thesis, presents and analyzes the results of the experiment, most of which are proved positive. The results indicate that:1) the teaching and training of CSs could greatly increase the frequency of strategy use and help students tend to use more achievement strategies and fillers; 2) the employment of CSs, such as circumlocution, approximation and fillers, could improve the students'overall oral English proficiency but has little role in the enhancement of students'pronunciation; 3) 63% of students in the experimental class show their complete approval of the training of CSs. CSs are the keys to helping open students'mouth and stimulate them to actively take part in oral English activities. Combining the three main results together, the thesis is ready to make the conclusion that CSs are indispensable for the improvement of science-technology students'oral English proficiency level. Chapter Five, the conclusion part, concludes the results of the experiment first and then points out the limitations of the study, which shed some light on the further research on CSs in the actual English teaching environment.In summary, the teaching and training of CSs and their employment play a positive role in enhancing the science-technology students'oral English proficiency. College English teachers should integrate this training into the traditional oral English classes while taking into consideration students'actual needs and their proficiency level so as to motivate students to speak more English. Only in this way can oral English teaching make immense progress.