Communication Strategies Employed By Senior High School Students In Oral Production Of English

The purpose of this study was to describe the types ofrnprocedures (communication strategies) students adopt when facedrnwith communication problems due to language shortage and tornsee if these procedures are influenced by students' proficiencyrnlevel. The interlanguage produced by the subjects was classi~rnfied using a slightly modified version of the taxonomy producedrnby Faerch and Kasper (1983). The frequency count of the stra~rntegies showed that the choice of specific strategies was largelyrndetermined by the task type. Thus it was found that subjectsrnused more reduction strategies than achievement strategies inrnthe story retelling task but in picture description and givingrndirections, they used more achievement strategies than reductionrnstrategies.rnIn order to see the effect of proficiency level on thernchoice of communication strategies, subjects were selected fromrntwo different grade levels~gradc 10 and grade 12. The totalrnnumber of strategies used by each group was added up and it wasrnfound that the less proficient group (those from 10th grade)rnused more communication strategies than the more proficientrngroup. A comparison between the strategy preferences of therntwo groups showed that the less proficient group used morernreduction strategies and achievement strategies based on Ll thanrnthe more proficient group. These two findings are in line withrnthe findings of most other studies on learners' use of communi~rncation strategies. However, wh~n considering the specific typesrnof reduction strategies that were employed by the two groups,rnit was found that the less proficient froup used more formalrnreduction strategies than the more proficient group while thernmore proficient group used the strategies of topic avoidancernand message abandonment more frequently than the less proficientrngroup. This greater preoccupation with the form of the languagernat the expense of the meaning of the message, on the part ofrnthe more proficient group, is hypothesized as being the resultrnof personality factors, that is, the more proficient group,rnbecause of their higher age and hence seniority may have beenrnmore afraid of making mistakes infront of people and thus avoidedrn,rnl anguage forms which they were not sure about while the l es s ·rnproficient group, because of their lower age/were less ihhibitedrnand we~e more free in their use of the language.

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