| Since the reform of foreign language teaching in China, to cultivate learners’communicative competence has been set as the main goal in English teaching and learning. While strategic competence is one part of communicative competence, the study of communication strategies (CSs) has been paid great attention to by scholars in this field. However, the reform of college English teaching is not so satisfying, for learners’communicative competence is still weak. And "dumb-English" still exists. Therefore, this study investigates the use of CSs among non-English major students, hoping that the results can provide some implications for the English teaching and learning and also provide help in improving non-English major students’ communicative competence.In this study, questionnaire survey is the chief means for collecting data. The subjects are161non-English major students from Guangxi Normal University. The communication strategies questionnaire is designed on the basis of the classifications proposed by Tarone, Bialystok and Faerch and kasper. Besides, it is made with reference to the relevant questionnaires designed by other researchers. The group of strategies in the present study includes reduction strategies and achievement strategies. Among the achievement strategies, there are L1-based strategy, L2-based strategy, cooperative strategy, nonverbal strategy, stalling strategy and fixed repetition.Three research questions are addressed and examined as follows:1. What’s the frequency of oral communication strategies used by non-English major English students?2. What are the different frequencies of the use of communication strategies between male and female speakers?3. What are the different frequencies of the use of communication strategies between the liberal arts and science major learners?Findings of the study can be summarized as follows:1. The reduction strategies are most frequently used among non-English major students in Guangxi Normal University, and then followed by the L1-based strategies, stalling strategies, nonverbal strategies, cooperative strategies and fixed repetition are the five secondly most frequently used strategies. The L2-bascd strategies are the least frequently used strategies. As for the whole situation, the frequency of using reduction strategies is higher than that of achievement strategies.2. The frequency of using CSs among male students is higher than that of female students. Male students use more reduction strategies, stalling strategies, L1-based strategies, fixed repetition and nonverbal strategies, while female students use more cooperative strategies and L2-based strategies.3. The frequency of using CSs among liberal art students is higher than that of science students. Compared with Science students, each of the strategies is used more frequently by liberal art students except the strategies of fixed repetition. In addition, respectively speaking, L1-based strategies are the most frequently used strategies by liberal art students, while reduction strategies are the most frequently used strategies by science students.The results provide some implications for English teaching and learning.1. Teacher should raise students’metacommunicative competence of using CSs. Students should be made aware of the existence of CSs through the CSs teaching and training.2. Teachers should encourage students to use more achievement strategies, for the use of achievement strategies is a reflection of higher communicative competence.3. Teachers should provide more opportunities for students to practice their speaking.4. Teachers should create a more relaxing classroom atmosphere for students so that they can feel free to speak in the class. Besides, various communicative contexts should be designed by teachers so as to make students gradually adapt to different real communicative situations.5. The content of CSs training should be added into the syllabus and curriculum. For example, the notion of CSs should be introduced into English textbooks. |
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