HomeAnnals of Tropical Researchvol. 4 no. 2 (1982)

Relationship Of Target Language Communication Strategies To Comprehensibility Of Oral Narrations

Justiniano L. Seroy

 

Abstract:

The students' oral narrations on 3 picture stories were tape-recorded. Background questionnaires were administered to the students, and the comprehensibility of the English oral narrations were evaluated by 16 selected judges. Analysis of the data revealed that a) the students widely employed communication strategies in their oral narrations; b) the mean comprehensibility level of the students' narrations was below average; c) there was a significant relationship between the extent of use of communication strategies and oral language proficiency, as well as the use of communication strategies and message comprehensibility; and d) among the personal variables, the type of school, pronunclation, age, years in school, nervousness and sex were found to be significant predictors of the students' comprehensibility level. On the other hand, among the types of communication strategles, topic avoidance, simplification-reduction, circumlocution, modeling, code-switching, message abandonment, approximation and word colnage were found to be significant predictors of the students' comprehensibility level.



References:

  1. CORDER, S.P. 1970. Learner language and teacher talk. Audio-Vis. Lang. J. Berming-ham. 16, 1:5-13.
  2. ERVIN, G. 1977. A study of the use and acceptability of target language communication strategies employed by American students of Russian. Dis. Abstr. Int. 3811: 6597A.
  3. ERVIN, G. 1979. Communication strategies employed by American students of Russian. The Mod. Lang. J. 63, 7:329-334.
  4. CORBET, G. 1974. What the teacher can do? In Errors: New Perspective. Cited by Tarone, 1979.
  5. RICHARDS, J. 1971. Error analysis and second-language strategies. Lang. Sci. 17:12-11.
  6. SELINKER, L. 1972. Interlanguage. Int. Rev. of Appl. Ling. 4, 3: 209-231.
  7. TARONE, E. 1977. Conscious communication strategies in interlanguage: A progress report. In ON TESOL ‘77.
  8. TARONE, E. 1979. Some thoughts on the notion of communication strategy. Proc. First TESOL Summer Inst. University of California at Los Angeles.