A Case Study of Seven Taiwanese English as a Foreign Language Freshman Non-English Majors' Perceptions about Learning Five Communication Strategies

A Case Study of Seven Taiwanese English as a Foreign Language Freshman Non-English Majors' Perceptions about Learning Five Communication Strategies
Author: Grace Hui Chin Lin
Publisher: Universal-Publishers
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2007-10
Genre: Foreign Language Study
ISBN: 1581123744

The purpose of this study was to identify what were Taiwanese University English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners' perceptions about learning communication strategies. This study collected qualitative data about students' beliefs and attitudes as they learned communication strategies. The research question guiding the study was: What are Taiwanese University EFL learners' perceptions about learning communication strategies? Twenty-four university students were trained for 10 weeks to use strategies in Faerch and Kasper's (1983a) taxonomy, and seven volunteers were interviewed. None of the students majored in English but were enrolled in a required Basic English course in a Freshman English Non-Majors' (FENM) program in Agriculture College at Tunghai University. In the middle and at the end of the training period, participants were interviewed and videotaped for 90 minutes. The results were displayed clearly with details in Chapter four. In Chapter five, significant themes associated with topic avoidance (1.), message abandonment (2.), meaning replacement (3.), interlanguage (4.), and cooperation (5.) strategies, mentioned by seven participants were revealed through the constant method of analysis. They were comprehension, politeness, intentionality, native language, face-saving (losing-face), interlanguage system, time-saving, and keywords. Chapter six includes a summary of this study, further discussions for the important issues mentioned by previous studies of this field and by participants of this research, and at the end, several important issues recommended as topics for further studies. The issues suggested to readers for future researches were variables in the learners and trainers, students' acceptance level of non-native like language, training pedagogies, the relationship between English proficiency and using strategy, the correlation between gender and strategy, communication strategy in a working situation, and examples through the interlanguage strategy.

Language Education Today

Language Education Today
Author: Georgeta Raţă
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2009-12-14
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 144381797X

Language Education Today: Between Theory and Practice is a collection of essays that appeal to teachers of modern languages (almost exclusively English) regardless of the level of instruction. The essays deal with three main aspects of the opposition Linguistic Identity vs. Multilingualism: language education (mother tongue – Turkish, Kurdish, and Serbian; contact linguistics – the impact of Slavic and of German on modern Romanian; the opposition L1 vs. L2 – Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Serbian vs. English; and contrastive studies – German and Macedonian); English language teaching and learning (English as a Foreign or Second Language taught to Serbian and Ruthenian students; English for Specific Purposes – Business English, Information Technology English, the English of hotel terminology, and the English of business media taught to Romanian students; English language teaching and assessing methods to Thai, Italian, Malaysian, and Croatian students; and the profile of the language teacher in the universities of the F.Y.R. of Macedonia and of Romania); and linguistic issues (with focus on some English word histories and on some English modal verbs, on French spelling and on some French verbs of animal communication, and on the Latin Plesiosauria Nomenclature).

Doctoral Dissertations on China and on Inner Asia, 1976-1990

Doctoral Dissertations on China and on Inner Asia, 1976-1990
Author: Patricia Polansky
Publisher: Greenwood
Total Pages: 1096
Release: 1998-10-15
Genre: Education
ISBN:

A guide to the thesis literature on China and Inner Asia written between 1976 and 1990. Includes more than 10,000 entries for dissertations in the arts and sciences, law, medicine, theology, engineering and other disciplines. Entries are grouped in topical chapters and each entry includes bibliographic information and an abstract.