Oral Communication Strategy Use Of Senior Middle School Students

To learn and to use oral communication strategies can be beneficial for language learners to carry on effective conversations. Hoping to help English learners to develop their speaking proficiency, this study explored how Chinese senior middle school students used oral communication strategies.The research was to investigate oral communication strategies used by Chinese senior middle school students as well as the relationship between their speaking proficiency and their use of oral communication strategies. It also examined the differences in oral communication strategy use between high and low proficient English speakers as well as the gender differences of oral communication strategy use among those students.Numerous researches have been conducted on communication strategy use; however, there were fewer investigations on communication strategy use towards EFL students. The researches focusing especially on oral communication strategy use towards EFL students were even rare. Consequently, the present research used an English speaking test, a modified edition of Nakatani's (2006) Oral Communication Strategy Inventory and a follow-up interview to research on the oral communication strategy use of 110 senior middle school students from eight aspects, which has broadened the field of research in oral communication strategy. The students received an English speaking test and were grouped by their performances in the test. Then the questionnaire was used to gather data about students' oral communication strategy use. After that, Pearson correlation and independent-samples t-test were used to analyze the quantitative data. Researchers also invited some students to be interviewed, hoping to get qualitative data for the study.The study displayed that Chinese senior middle school students'English speaking proficiency was related to their use of oral communication strategies to a certain degree. It also showed that oral communication strategy use differed among high proficient and low proficient students. High proficient Chinese senior middle school English speakers tended to use effective social affective strategies, fluency-oriented strategies, accuracy-oriented strategies and nonverbal strategies more often; whereas message reduction and alternation strategies as well as message abandonment strategies are more commonly used by low proficient speakers. Gender differences also existed in using oral communication strategies. Compared with the boys, the girls participated used social affective strategies, fluency oriented strategies, nonverbal strategies and negotiation for meaning strategies more frequently.After discussing the results, pedagogical implications were given and suggestions were made for further studies.