A COLSEC-based Study Of The Use Of Communication Strategies

Based on the College Learners'Spoken English Corpus (COLSEC), the present study is an attempt made to probe into the use of communication strategies by Chinese college learners in oral proficiency tests through observation. On the basis of theoretical and empirical researches conducted at home and abroad, the author grouped communication strategies into four main categories and sixteen subcategories, which were adopted to tag 926 subjects'data in 302 files manually. With the employment of quantitative and qualitative methods, the data of the using frequency of communication strategies were explored from three aspects—overall strategy use, differences in gender and oral tasks. Through the analysis of the collected data, some findings are made. The most frequently used strategies are self-repetition, fillers, self-repair and restructuring. There is no significant difference between males and females, apart from self-repetition. The use of strategies shows no significant difference in tasks, except fillers and self-repair. The findings indicate that to some extent, the learners'adoption of restricted strategies hinders the progress of their communication. It is hoped that the present study will enhance both the learners'awareness and training of communication strategies.