Bialystok (1990) Says That Non-Native and Native Speakers of a Given Language Sometimes

A proposed abstract for KOLITA 5: 7-8 May 2007 at UNIKA ATMAJAYA, Jakarta

ANW

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES EMPLOYED BY INDONESIAN LEARNERS AT THE ENGLISH DEPARTMENT, PETRACHRISTIANUNIVERSITY

Anneke H. Tupan –

English Department – Faculty of Letters

PetraChristianUniversity

Jl. Siwalankerto 121-131, Surabaya

ABSTRACT

This is a study on the types of communication strategies used by Indonesian English Learners at the English Department of PetraChristianUniversity. The object of the research is senior students, batch 2003-2004, who are already in the sixth semester. The writer is interested in doing this research since she notices that the senior students still have some obstacles when they have to express their ideas in the target language (English). As senior students, they are considered as having mastered their target language since they have learned English for many years, three years when they were in Elementary School (4th-6th grade), three years when they were in Junior High School, three years when they were in Senior High School and three years when they are now in the sixth semester of the university. What makes this research more challenging is they use many kinds of communication strategies to overcome their hesitancy in expressing their ideas in English. Therefore, the writer is eager to observe the types of communication strategy that has the highest occurrence when they are communicating in English. The writer used communication strategies proposed by Dornyei (1995) in analyzing the data. Based on Dornyei’s strategies, she sets up some criteria to identify the data. The data are collected in one semester, when the senior students are taking ‘Public Speaking’ subject. The observation is done during the class meeting which is once a week and during the English Day in which all students should speak English on a certain day in a week. In other words, to make the collecting data more natural, the observation is done both in formal situation (in class) and in informal situation (English Day). The writer finds that the senior students use eight strategies, out of twelve strategies, suggested by Dornyei. There are two additional strategies found namely self correction and repetition. Therefore, the total number of Communication Strategies found is ten out of fourteen. The strategy that has the highest occurrence is ‘Use of fillers’. It reveals that the senior students do not easily give up when they find difficulties in expressing their ideas in the target language.

Introduction

Bialystok (1990) says that non-native and native speakers of a given language sometimes have to struggle to find the appropriate expression or grammatical construction when they are trying to communicate their ideas. The ways in which an individual speaker manages to compensate for this gap between what she wishes to communicate and her immediately available linguistic resources are known as Communication Strategies (CmS). This is in line with what Dornyei says that Communication Strategies are defined as “systematic technique employed by a speaker to express his or her meaning when faced with some difficulty” (1995:56). What is meant by difficulty here is lack of basic grammar and vocabulary in the target language.

In this research, the writer is interested to observe her own students who join ‘Speaking VI’ or ‘Public Speaking’ subject. It is the highest level of speaking class in the English Department of PetraChristianUniversity. In this level, the students are already in the sixth semester and therefore are considered as ‘seniors’ who have to set up good examples for their ‘juniors’ especially in English communication. Why? The length of studying English for foreign language learners is important because the longer they learn and practice the more likely they can speak fluently. However, the writer notices that they still find some difficulties in communicating their ideas in English. In Speaking VI class, using Indonesian is not welcomed so no matter what happens they are challenged to find ways to express what they want to say in English. In finding the ways, the students do not realize that they often use certain strategies in their communication in order to make the communication run well. For example:

A: I believe that the speaker has to well, um, mm accommodate all the feedback before you give the response.

It is clear that A uses one of communication strategies named ‘Use of fillers’ (well, um, mm) as hesitation device when she is trying to find the appropriate word, which is ‘accommodate’.

The research is a study of communication strategies used by Indonesian learners at the English Department of PetraChristianUniversity specifically those who join ‘Speaking VI’. The purpose of doing this research is to find the types of communication strategies used and mostly used by Indonesian English learners in speaking their target language (English). In addition, the writer would like to know whether the highest occurrence of communication strategy influences their mastery in English. She hopes that the result of this study could help teachers improve the way they teach ‘Speaking’ classes and help students with limited oral proficiency to communicate better in English.

Theories

In general, scholars agree that communication strategies are ways to make the conversation go on because every learner in a second language actually has a problem in expressing what they want to say. The problem is the inadequacy in the target language being learned. Some of them who give specific contribution on these strategies are Tarone (1977), Faarch & Kasper (1980), Littlewood (1984) and Dornyei (1995). Tarone and Little wood have similar concepts that there are eight kinds of communication strategies that the learners use to fill the ‘gap’, which is the lack of L2 knowledge. The writer tries to put their strategies in the following table to see their similarities.

From the table, it is clear that their only difference lies on the different terms only. However, there is another hesitancy that has not been covered by their concept. Therefore, Faarch & Kasper (1980) add four more items with a wider coverage of the strategies. They are ‘Generalization’, ‘Restructuring’, ‘Interlingual transfer’ (foreignizing) and ‘Intralingual transfer’. In the development of communication strategy, Dornyei (1995) formulates communication strategies into twelve kinds. Considering the number of strategies, he does not argue Faarch & Kasper’s. In understanding the concept, however, he disagrees with his formers’ classification due to ‘Generalization’ and ‘Restructuring’, which he later replaced by ‘Use of all purpose words’ and ‘Use of fillers’/hesitation devices.

In analyzing the data, the writer decided to use Dornyei’s classification of communication strategy. He divides the strategies into three major strategies, namely Avoidance strategies, Compensatory strategies, and Stalling strategies. The first includes ‘topic avoidance’ and ‘message abandonment’; the second consists of ‘Circumlocution’, ‘Approximation’, ‘Word coinage’, ‘Code switching’, ‘Use of non-linguistic means’, ‘Appeal for help’, ‘Foreignizing’, ‘Literal translation’, and ‘Use of all purpose words’; while the third only covers ‘Use of fillers/hesitation devices’.

1. Avoidance strategies

(1)Topic Avoidance: the strategy where learners try not to talk about concepts which they find it difficult to express. For example: a learner avoids saying certain words or sentence because he/she doesnot know the English terms or forget the English terms.

(2)Message abandonment: the strategy of leaving message unfinished because of language difficulties. For example: “He took the wrong way in mm…” (he/she does not continue his/her utterance)

1. Compensatory strategies

(3)Circumlocution: the strategy used by learners in which they describe or paraphrase the target object or action. For example: if a Learner does not know the word corkscrew, he/she replaces it by saying ‘the thing that you use to open the bottle’.

(4)Approximation: the strategy in which a learner uses an alternative term to express the meaning of the target lexical item as closely as possible. For example: ship for sailboat; pipe for waterpipe.

(5)Word coinage: a learner creates an L2 word based on his/her knowledge of morphological rules. For example: vegetarianist for vegetarian (vegetarianist is not stated in the dictionary).

(6)Code switching: the strategy in which learners use their L1 word with L2 pronunciation. For example: if a learner does not know the word baki (tray), he/she will say ‘baki’ with L2 pronunciation.

(7)Use of non-linguistic means: a learner uses non-linguistic resources such as mime, gesture, facial expression, and sound imitation to help him/her in expressing the meaning. For example: a learner uses his/her hands and acts like flying to refer to birds.

(8)Appeal for help: the strategy where the students ask other students or teacher for help because they do not know or forget some words, structures, or idioms. For example: a learner may ask his/her friend by saying ‘What do you call……?”

(9)Foreignizing: learners use L1 word by adjusting it to L2 phonologically. For example: a learner does not know the word tap, he/she uses the L1 word, that is kran but with L2 pronunciation, so he/she says kren.

(10)Literal translation: the strategy in which learners translate a lexical item, an idiom, or a structure from their L1 to L2. For example: do not enter sign for no entry sign.

(11)Use of all-purpose words: this is the strategy when learners expand an empty lexical item to context where certain words are lacking. For example: the overuse of the words thing, stuff, make, do, what-do-you-call-it, what-is-it.

1. Stalling Strategies

(12)Use of fillers/hesitation devices: a learner may use filling words to fill pause and to gain time to think. For example: well, as a matter of fact, now let me see. Wajnryb (1987) added the examples of fillers such as I think, you know, you see, um, mm, ah, sort of, OK, right, reall.

Methodology

The approach of this study was qualitative. The data contained Communication Strategies used by EFL students of the English Department. The subjects were twenty (20) students of Speaking VI class.

The instrument of the research is the writer herself. In collecting the data, she used a tape recorder to record the subjects when they were presenting certain topics in class and answering questions from their fellow students after their presentation. Besides, the writer also recorded their English interaction with their friends during the ‘English Day’ which is on Fridays. To make the collecting data more natural, the observation is done both in formal situation (in class) and in informal situation (English Day).

Procedures of data collection and data analysis

In collecting the data, the writer tried to transcribe the students’ presentations in class (twenty students) and their interaction during the ‘English Day’. Then she identified the communication strategies used by them. There were some characteristics used in identifying the strategy. The first characteristic was pause. If there was a pause, the sentence after the pause might be communication strategy. The writer observed whether after the pause, the student used another strategy or not. Not all pauses indicated communication strategy. The second characteristic was a change of intonation and speed. When the student uttered a sentence then there was an intonation change or the speed became slower, the writer observed the sentence. The changing of intonation and speed show that the student was not sure with his utterance. Therefore, this situation was like a strategy to make the conversation keep going. The third characteristic was gesture. This identification was clearly stated by Littlewood. Whenever the student makes a gesture, then it is a strategy called non-linguistic resources. The fourth was eye movement. This identification was used when the student look for help by looking at his friends/teacher and gave some signals or other hesitation devices.

In identifying the data, the writer used the characteristics of communication strategies given by Dornyei (1995, p. 58), which the writer put in the following table

Findings and discussions

The following table shows the frequency and the percentage of Communication Strategies used by the subjects. The writer will discuss it starting from the highest occurrence to the lowest one.

Table 1. Types of Communication Strategies used by Speaking VI students

of the EnglishDepartment-PetraChristianUniversity

Total 197 100 %

There were ten (10) Communication Strategies found in the analysis: topic avoidance, circumlocution, approximation, use of all-purpose words, use of non-linguistic means, literal translation,appeal for help, use of fillers, self correction and repetition. However, four Communication strategies namely message abandonment, word coinage, foreignizing, and code switching were not found. Based on the data analysis, additional Communication Strategies called self correction and repetition were found.

Use of fillers here got the highest number with the percentage of 27.41 %, or as many as 54. The example of usingUse of fillers is “The most expensive present I’ve ever got is ..mm.. let me see… mm… a wristwatch from my dad”. When the subjects need some time to think about what they want to say while trying to make the oral task run smoothly at the same time. The subjects might forget words or utterances they actually knew, or they could not concentrate well due to the question being asked.

The second highest number of Communication Strategy is Approximation. The total number of ‘Approximation’ is 49 or equals 24.87 %. For example, a subject said circle streetto refer to roundabout. In this example, the subject tried to overcome the difficulty of finding the term roundabout by using “an alternative term to express the meaning of the target lexical item as closely as possible’ (Dornyei, 1995, p. 56). Since the shape of roundabout was round or circle and it was on the street, the subject just created her own term by saying circle street.

Self correction which was the additional strategy found in this study, got the percentage of 17.77 %. This is the strategy in which the subjects corrected the utterances they had made before so that the listener could understand what he/she actually meant; for example “a man and an instruction… I mean a man and an instructor”. Self correction might happen because even though subjects are considered as having mastered the target language, they might get nervous when they have to speak in public. Therefore, they corrected the mistakes immediately after they realized that they had produced the wrong words or phrases. Based on the data, most of the mistakes in this self correction strategy were grammatical mistakes such as preposition mistakes ( he turns out …eh… he turns on the lamp), verbs mistakes (he go…uh… he goes) and article mistakes (get a strategy….. get the strategy). This proved that the subjects knew the correct grammatical forms they should have produced. Self correction strategy also happened because the subjects wanted to make clear the phrases or terms they already uttered so that they felt it was necessary to add a word modifier. It could be seen from these examples: the exam….the midterm exam, the cheese…..the cream cheese, the library ….the new library. The other reason of having self correction strategy was because the subjects thought that the used the wrong/inappropriate vocabularies so they replaced the words immediately, for example: train station……..railway station, gas …….petrol, morning plane ...morning flight.

Repetition, as the additional strategy besides self correction, got the percentage of 9.64, or as many as 19. The following is an example of repetition: when a subject intended to say ‘turn on the engine’ but she did not know or forgot the English word for it, she gained time to think by using repetition words like “he starts to ….he starts to …….he starts to… up the machine”. In this strategy, the subjects repeated the same word or words to gain time to think. They spent some time to think of certain words or structures they actually knew. Repetition here was used to avoid silence while thinking of the appropriate terms so that communication – in this case the oral task – seemed to run smoothly.