A Study On Oral Chinese Communication Strategies Of American Students At Intermediate Level

In the field of second language acquisition, research focused on learner differences is relatively weak. In the teaching of Chinese as a second language, study on learners’oral communication strategy is still in its infancy. Based on the existing research on learners’oral communication strategy, this thesis adopts the means of questionnaire and interview to investigate the use of oral communication strategy among the intermediate American students studying in China, the relationship between the use of the strategy and its influencing factors, and the relationship between the use of the strategy and its communicative effects.This thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter explains the choice and significance of the topic, research objectives, as well as the methodology and innovation of the thesis. The current research on Chinese learning among the American students in China lays much emphasis on the error analysis and comparative analysis, with study strategy slightly involved, but special research on oral strategy of the American students is relatively rare. Therefore, this thesis can not only provide basic material and foundation for the oral Chinese teaching of the American students and the research on oral communication strategy, but also a reference and guidance to oral Chinese teaching of the American students.Chapter2makes a review of domestic and foreign studies on communication strategies. From the theoretical and empirical perspectives, this chapter analyzes the status quo and the weaknesses of studies on communication strategies for learning oral Chinese, and proposes the innovativeness and the significance of this thesis.Chapter3introduces the design of this study, including the subject, the objective and the object of the thesis, the methodology, data collection and analysis. As to the methodology, this thesis employs questionnaire survey and interview. To analyze the questionnaire data, this thesis uses descriptive statistics, independent sample T tests, Pearson correlation analysis, and variance analysis, etc.Chapter4is about the results and discussion. According to the results, middle-level American students are more likely to use oral language communication strategies under the environment of the target language. Second, strategies are related to the environment, namely, the environment of mother tongue or the target language exerts an influence on the frequency and tendency of strategies used. Third, gender, personality, learning motive exert significant influences on certain strategies and the influences change in accordance with the environment. Fourth, the reduction strategy has a negative correlation with the communication outcome while the other five strategies have positive correlations with the communication outcome.Chapter5elaborates on the significance of the research results for the teaching of Chinese as a foreign language, points out the weaknesses of this study, and makes some suggestions for improving the future studies on American students’ communication strategies for learning oral Chinese.