The Research On Undergraduates' Oral English Communication Strategies

This thesis reports a study on university students' overall attitude toward and their use of communication strategies, the relationship between the two, as well as the use of CS in a task of describing objects. It also attempts to find out differences in students' use of CS across different proficiency levels and the main factors that affect their use of CS.The present study employs both quantitative and qualitative methods. In the quantitative part, the researcher examines 380 students of three proficiency levels from two universities through a questionnaire; In qualitative part, the researcher examines 18 subjects through interviews and 6 of them through a task of object description with retrospection.The study draws following conclusions:(1) The subjects tend to believe in the important role of achievement strategies in oral communicative competence, no significant difference exists across the three levels; they as a whole do not show a definitely positive or negative attitude toward reduction strategies, as proficiency level increases, the attitude changes from an indefinite attitude to a slightly negative attitude, there exists significant difference among freshmen and juniors; they also tend to take a negative attitude to L1-based strategies, no significant difference exists across the three levels.(2) According to CS use, the subjects use reduction strategies most frequently, L1-based strategies least frequently and achievement strategies in between. Freshmen use reduction strategies more frequently than do juniors; no significant difference exists, though, in the use of achievement strategies across the three levels; significant difference exists among freshmen and juniors in the use of L1-based strategies.(3) The students' attitude toward and use of reduction strategies are positively correlated, statistically significant correlation exists in juniors; with respect to L1-based strategies, statistically significant correlation exists among sophomores and juniors; the attitude toward and use of achievement strategies are positively correlated, statistically significant correlation exists in juniors.(4) Four factors are found to affect CS use: proficiency level; classroom learning situation; students' attitude toward corresponding strategies; students' knowledge and skills.According to above findings, a systematic instruction should be applied to English classes to teach and train students in the use of CS in practice; both teachers and students should raise their meta-communicative awareness about CS use; authentic listening and speaking materials should be introduced into classroom instruction to exemplify the strategy use; more real communication and real-life-like classroom activities should be brought into classroom to develop students' strategic competence; teachers' assessment must be supportive to the use of CS; cross-cultural knowledge should be provided to help students build up a referential system to the use of CS. Thus students can be assisted to speak more fluent English and promote their interlanguage development.