A Study Of The Application Of Communication Strategies In English Writing Used By Senior High School Students

Using language to communicate is the aim of language learning.Strategic competence is one of the major factors of communicative competence.And using communication strategy is an important part of strategic competence.Communication strategy was coined by Selinker(1972)in his research about interlanguage.There has been a steady increase of interest in the learners' communication strategies since then.Communication strategies in EFL oral communication have always been the focus of attention,but their applications and researches in written communication are seriously insufficient.This paper mainly studied the general situation of communication strategies applied by senior high school students in their English writings as well as the difference of the application of communication strategies between different language proficiency.And the communicative effectiveness was analyzed.The results will provide support for improving the use of communication strategies contribute to learners' strategic competence,which can promote their communicative competence.The paper mainly studied four research questions:(1)What communication strategies do senior school students tend to use in their English writing?(2)What communication strategies are used by senior high school students when they face breakdowns in their writing test?(3)Are there any differences in the use of communication strategies between high-scored group and low-scored group?(4)What's the communicative effectiveness of different types of communication strategies? The present research first employed questionnaire to study the general situation of communication strategies used by students in The High School Affiliated to Inner Mongolia Normal University;and then used think-aloud to probe the actual employment of communication strategies.SPSS 20.0 and Excel were used for analyzing the data.The results indicate that the level of senior high students' communication strategies' application is at medium.They used eleven micro communication strategies which belong to four types: avoidance strategies,compensatory strategies,retrieval strategies and repetition strategies.Eight micro communication strategies were used in their actual writing in testing.There is no significant difference in the employment of communication strategies between high-scored group and the low-scored one.Most communication strategies have their own strengths and limitations,which require appropriate training to make best use of the advantages and bypass the disadvantages.Some teaching implications are given by researcher based on the findings of the present study.Firstly,it's important to raise learners' awareness to employ communication strategies.Secondly,teachers should provide enough opportunity for learners to practice communication strategies.Thirdly,learners should be encouraged to take risks in order to stretch their interlanguage resources.Lastly,communication strategies training can be combined with vocabulary teaching,which can strengthen the connection between words and foster learners' Linguistic-based strategies.