An Exploratory Study On Communication Strategy Research Contents And Methods

As an essential element of communicative competence, communication strategies are a major means to keep communication going on when difficulties or even breakdowns occur in communication, which are very important to the second language and foreign language learners. These strategies can make up for lack of linguistic knowledge and enable the speakers to deal with all kinds of communication problems in order to reach their communicative goals. Communication strategy research shows that the effective use of communication strategies is of great significance for second language learners while facing the communication difficulties. The study of communication strategy is flourishing on both domestic and international level. The present study attempts to examine and compare current trends in communication strategy research contents and methods in China and the West, by conducting a review on communication strategy articles in the related literature in China and abroad.The present study has reviewed 123 communication strategy articles published in twenty-nine major international and domestic academic journals from 1997 to 2007, among which 67 articles are from sixteen major domestic academic journals and 56 ones from thirteen international academic journals on applied linguistics and second language acquisition. Each article is analyzed in two dimensions: the research contents and research methods. Regarding research contents, in accordance with the categorization based on previous study and the analysis of the collected data, the articles are classified into such five categories as theory and research methods, the use of strategy in second language acquisition, correlation between CS choice and other factors, and strategy teaching and training, and special topics. As for research methods, each article is first analyzed according to the category of empirical or non-empirical research; then the empirical articles are reanalyzed based on the category of qualitative, quantitative or the mixture of the two.The results show that communication strategy research at home and abroad focuses on different contents and is extraordinarily different with regards to research methods. Generalizing the analysis and comparisons of communication strategy research in China and abroad, it is concluded the seemingly various trends at home and abroad bestow illumination to Chinese communication strategy research. As far as research method is concerned, the empirical research methods must be reinforced in order to generate more reliable research. Further more, the combination of both qualitative and quantitative research methods should be employed instead of adopting just one of the two for achieving higher validity and reliability. It is hoped that the paper and the study conducted can provide some insight into the CS research, and make contributions to inspire more communicative competence studies in China.