An Empirical Study Of The Effects Of Communication Strategy Training In Uyghur EFL Classroom

The purpose of language learning is to communicate. Improving students'communicative competence becomes an overall goal in language teaching. Thus,developing the students' communicative competence is the key factor in realizing thisgoal. It has become one of the primary objectives in English language teaching todevelop the oral communicative competence in recent years. Nevertheless, thereappears to be no study on teaching communication strategies (CSs) to Uyghur learnersof English in Xinjiang. This study investigated the effects of communication strategytraining on Uyghur non-English major learners in college.Sixty-three Uyghur freshmen in Xinjiang Education Institute participated in thisstudy. Students were divided into one experimental class and one control class.Students in experimental class received17-week communication strategy training.The writer introduced the CSs knowledge systematically, analyzed and compared thecharacteristics and uses of different CSs, and conducted many kinds of CSs trainingactivities.The instruments were questionnaires, oral tests, and interviews. Before thetraining, a questionnaire conducted in both classes to ensure no significant differencesbetween the experimental group and the control group in their awareness ofcommunication strategy. After the training, the same questionnaire conducted in bothclasses again to know whether there is any improvement in the awareness of CSs ofthe experimental class. An oral performance test and an interview were carried out inexperimental class before and after the training so as to find out the effects of thestrategy training in terms of the subjects' gains in their actual use of the CSs in theoral production and the attitude hold by the subjects towards employing CSs.The results analyzed by SPSS of pre and post questionnaires show that after thecommunication strategy training, the experimental class is stronger than the control class in terms of communication strategy awareness. The statistically significantdifference between two oral tests of the experimental class indicates that students'CSs use increased significantly. Through twice interviews to the experimental class,the writer found that students hold positive attitudes towards employing CSs after thestrategy training.