Communication strategies and their significance in foreign language teaching

System, Vol. IS. No. 3. pp. 351-364, Printed in Great Britain.

1987

03&-251X/87 Pergamon

$3.00~0.00 Journ& Ltd.

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHIke GlbARD

Hogeschool Interstudie,

M. WILLEMS

Educatieve sector, Nijmegen, Netherlands

Language in the L2 classroom traditionally is strongly teacher-controlled. With the introduction, in the course of the last decade, of varieties of communication into the classroom which are less strictly teacher-controlled learner language made its entry into foreign language teaching as a variety of the L2 that deserves our serious attention. If given real scope, learner language will be in need of the kind of support that is not normally offered in the traditional foreign language class. The learner will be in need of language to express himself as he would in nonpedagogic situations. He will need to be able to use his innate strategic and discourse competence. He will be in need of some basic awareness of what happens in faceto-face interaction and may benefit from instruction about communication strategies. In this article suggestions are made for instruction about and practice in the use of communication strategies in the L2.

1. INTRODUCTION 1.1 Strategic competence . . . however much we try to match content with communicative needs, the learners will only be able to communicate successfully in everyday situations if we help them towards a communicative ability which is sufficiently flexible and creative to go beyond the needs we predicted.

1.1.1. What Littlewood (198 1: p. 84) is referring to here has, since Canale and Swain (1980), been called “strategic competence”. We may be reasonably successful in preparing our learners for communication in the foreign language (L2) by giving them insight and practice in grammatical structures and teaching them to express notions and functions in the L2. However, the exact nature, sociolinguistically speaking, of the communicative situations in which these learners may later find themselves is highly unpredictable. It is necessary, therefore, to teach them to use skills they may already possess naturally in the Ll: how to express uncertainty as to the appropriateness of the language they use and, of course, much more basically, to describe or approximate concepts and words they do not know or that cannot be instantaneously retrieved, to form or coin words on the basis of derivation rules, to implicitly or explicitly ask their interlocutor for help etc. In short, we shouId give them a chance to develop a range of communication strategies (CmS) in the L2 by sensitizing them, where necessary, to a large variety of CmS, and by providing them with L2 verbalisations of these strategies. In their daily practice language teachers may notice that not every learner is equally adept in using CmS or, for that matter, commands the same range of CmS. Certainly in young learners strategic competence in the Ll is still developing 351

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and what they do not command in the Ll they cannot put to use in the L2 (Paribakht, 1985: p. 142). Foreign language teaching has a role to play here. This role has been pointed out more than once in the literature on CmS. Harding (1983: p. 40), Haastrup and Philhpson (1983: p. 156), Faerch and Kasper (1983: p. 55) and Tarone (1984: p. 132) all claim sensitisation of the (young) learner to CmS to be a task of foreign language teaching’ as well as training the verbalisation of CmS. Even if the learner is reasonably sensitive to CmS it does not follow that he will use them appropriately nor that he will be able to verbalise them. Traditional (foreign) language teaching, as a try-out in class of the exercises offered in the second part of this article will show, falls short on this point. Especially for those learners who in traditional teaching do not reach the so-called “threshold level” it is important to develop a strategic competence in order to “get by” later on. A side effect of introducing a certain amount of attention to CmS will be that weaker learners will derive some motivation for learning the L2 as they will develop a feeling of at least being able to do something with the language. Finally, it goes without saying that in language teaching correctness and appropriateness should remain the central issue and should not be replaced by the teaching of CmS. The latter, however, have received so little attention so far that encouraging their use in foreign language teaching seems in order. 1.1.2. Language strategies are of two kinds: receptive and productive, and we use them, consciously or unconsciously, while listening to what we hear, while reading for meaning or while trying to put into words what we want to say. The first category has not been extensively researched: productive strategies are slightly less unfamiliar. If we wish to analyse the language production process, and that is what we are doing when we study CmS, it seems advisable to base ourselves on what the science of psycholinguistics has to offer, which is the following: when we wish to say something in a communication, situation, i.e. realise a speech intention, we plan in a flash at least the beginning of our message and use our plan, as long as it satisfies us, as our basis for speaking. This planning process, especially when we communicate in an L2, may not always run smoothly. We may be unsuccessful in retrieving a certain word. We may be unfamiliar with a situation or with certain idiomatic expressions or grammatical/syntactic structures. In short we may have verbalisation problems. In order to overcome these problems we need CmS. It is these kinds of strategies that form an essential component of the “strategic competence” that Canale and Swain are referring to. 1.2 Types of strategies and their recognisability Communication strategies may be positive (achievement/compensatory strategies) or negative (reduction strategies), they may be mother-tongue-based or based on another foreign language the speaker happens to have (some or full) command of, they may contain an implicit or explicit request for help and they may be non-verbal (paralinguistic strategies). They cannot always be identified unambiguously. In cases where the speaker makes an explicit appeal for help or coins a nonexistent L2 word on the basis of a derivation rule (either Ll- or LZ-based) it is obvious that he makes use of CmS. Quite frequently, however, it is not so easy to identify CmS because they may be unmarked. Faerch and Kasper (1983: p. 234) visualise the use of strategies as in Fig. 1.

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Pro&m unmarked in performance

marked in performance

Interlocutor’s interpretation

- appeal

+ appeal

Fig. 1. Reproduced from Faerch and Kasper (1983) Strategies in Inferlunguage Communicdon,

p. 234. Longman.

The square represents the use of CmS in the planning and production of a message. Depending on whether a speaker’s formal command of the language is great or small a smaller or larger number of the strategies he uses may with certainty be identified because they will be marked in performance. The line in the middle of the square will move to the right or the left accordingly. Of the identifiable CmS some may contain an implicit or explicit request for help (the hatched area). Others will reveal that the speaker has opted for solving his communication problem himself (the non-hatched area top right), and will subsequently analyse his interlocuter’s reaction to make sure if the latter’s interpretation of the message signals successful transmission of meaning. Beside formal characteristics there are often other, concomitant signals that make recognition of CmS possible (Faerch and Kasper, 1983: p. 214). One such signal is slow rate of articulation (although this is always relative and ought to be assessed in comparison with Ll rate of articulation or L2 rate when the speaker is sure of himself). Other such signals are phenomena like “self-repair” [“he was asked to bring . . . erm . . . to . . . to take along some records”, (Faerch and Kasper, 1983: p. 221)], and pauses, filled or unfilled. Further there are nervous laughs, drawls, gambits (like “you know”, “what’s it called” etc.), repeats and false starts. Often, too, a rising intonation is a sign of uncertainty marking strategy use. They are all of them signs indicating that the speaker is having trouble verbalising his thoughts and that in all probability he is using strategies in his verbal planning. His verbalisation process shows little automatisation as yet. “Slips” like “we knew that there wore erm were warnings of. . .” (own observation) should not be taken as signalling the use of CmS. On the contrary, they are signs of a completely automatic verbalisation process. The /a:/ sound in “warnings” obtrudes itself at too early a stage probably because of the phonologically similar surroundings (/~a:/ and /wo:/). Like achievement strategies, reduction strategies are often unmarked and therefore hard to identify. Often the only way to ascertain whether a learner avoided saying what he intended to say because of verbalisation difficulties is to ask him (“introspection”). In spite of this I have included them in the typology which follows in order to warn or remind teachers of their existence and to make them realise that often learners, for fear of making

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mistakes, leave things unsaid that they want to say, without trying to verbalise them with the help of achievement strategies. Learners seem to think that there must be a “correct” way of saying what they have in mind. If they do not have this correct formulation at their disposal they prefer saying nothing. For these reasons, I strongly feel that achievement strategies should be encouraged in spite of all the consequences this may have for the (in)correctness of the language, if only to diminish our learners’ reduction behaviour. Reduction behaviour is, obviously, a major obstacle to language development. 1.3 A typology of communication strategies A survey of observable CmS might appear as in Table 1. In building this typology I have liberally culled from Tarone et af. (1976) Faerch and Kasper (1983), Littlewood (1984), Riley (1984), Poulisse et al. (1984) and Paribakht (1985). Following Poulisse et al. (1984) I have subdivided achievement strategies into two categories: interlingual and intralingual. In interlingual strategies, the Ll or another foreign language plays a role; intralingual strategies are monolingual (the L2). 1.4 Communication strategies and their role in foreign language teaching As we said earlier, all of us-and not just our pupils-have a natural tendency to use CmS when communication problems arise. More often than not we do so automatically. Skilfullness in using them is of great importance to convey what we mean, to fulfill our needs or get things our own way. Our command of CmS in our mother-tongue is usually adequate for our needs (although some Ll speakers may display a rather limited range of, often primitive, CmS). However, this is usually not the case when we (have to) use a foreign language that we do not speak fluently. If, for instance, we lack control of simple gambits like “erm . . . what d’you call it . . .” when we want to play for time in order to revise our planning or to retrieve a word, we may lose our turn in the discourse. If we do not have simple verbal tricks at our command for descriptions of lexical items we do not know (“it’s used in . . .“; “You can find it in . . .“; “It’s oval shaped or square and has four legs . . .” etc.) and can in no way influence the course of the interaction, we will tend to feel handicapped and our interlocutor will find it hard to take us seriously (Dolle-Willemsen et al., 1983: p. 176). Whether we use and develop CmS in trying to speak the L2 apparently depends on the situation in which we learn the L2. Research (Raupach, 1983: p. 207; Tarone, 1984: p. 128) shows that so-called “street-learners” (in contradistinction to “classroom learners”) who have acquired the L2 in the L2 environment are extremely skilful strategy users’, as are learners who have acquired the L2 in immersion programmes in Canada and the United States which teach all sorts of school subjects through the medium of the L2 (.&derson and Rodes, 1984: p. 176). “Classroom learners”, judging from videotaped interview material, are, generally speaking, nothing of the kind, at least, they use only a limited number of mostly non-verbal and rather primitive types of CmS.3 In my opinion it is this kind of observation that prompted Faerch and Kasper’s statement: “. . . by learning how to use communication strategies appropriately, learners will be more able to bridge the gap between pedagogic and non-pedagogic communicative situations” (1983: p. 56). If, therefore, traditional classroom learning does not produce skilful L2 strategy users and if we think it important that our learners should be able to get by in real communication with speakers of the L2, we shall have to pay some serious attention to CmS in our L2 lessons.

\

/ / Achievement strategies (Classification depends on resources used.)

\

Inlralinguul stralegies exploit generally only the L in which the conversation is taking place. (Interlingual strategy may be embedded.)

irom the one in which the conversation is taking place.

Reduction slrategies / Forma1 (Often difficult to identify. Introspection of learner may be a guide here.) ~Functional

I. A typology of communication

strategies

under

V. Approximation (generalization): The use of an L2 word which shares essential semantic features with the “rose” for “flower” or “lorry” for “van”. target word: “birds” for “ducks”, “animals” for “rabbits” from “intonation”, VI. “Word coinage”: An L2 word is made up on basis of sudposed rule: “intonate” “inonded” for “flooded”. I. physical properties: Colour, size, spatial dimensions; VII. Paraphrase: a. description: 2. specific features: “It has a motor . .I’; b. circumlocution: 3. functional feutures: “It is used in . . .‘I; 4. locational features: “You find it in a factory”; 5. temporal features: “It’s between summer and autumn”; subordinate terms used instead of unavailable superordinate terms like: c. exemphfication: trade names: “Puch” for “moped”. The use of empty or meaningless words to fill gaps in vocabulary command like: “thing”, V111. “Smurfing”: “whatsit”, “what-do-you-call-it”. IX. Self repair (restructuring): Setting up a new speech-plan when the original one fails. X. Appeals for assistance: a. Explicit: “What d’you call”: “Speak more slowly”; “I am foreign”; "DO you understand?“; b. Implicit: pauses, intonation, drawls, repetition or “I don’t know what to call this” and the like. C. Checking questiois: To make sure something is correctly understood: questions: “DO I hear you say . . .‘I; “Arc you saying that , . .“; “Do I hear you say . . .; “Are you saying that . . .‘I: XI. Initiating reprrir: “I am sorry, there must be some misunderstanding. Does . . mean . . .? I took it to mean . . . I hope you don’t mind my asking . . .”

a native language word or phrase is used with a native language Borrowing or “code switching”: pronunciation, e.g. “Please Sir, have you a ‘krijtje”’ (Du. for “piece of chalk”). Literal translation: a literal translation from LI to L2 of lexical items, idioms or compound words; e.g. “make it a little” (Du. for “Come off it”); “nighttable” (for Ger. “Nachttisch” = “bedside table”); “greens” for “vegetables” (from Du. “groente”); “Je suis pardon” for “I am sorry”; “cool-box” for “refrigerator” (from Du. “koelkast”). ‘Foreignizing”: Using a word or phrase from the LI with L2 pronunciation; e.g. “/‘km&/” from Da. “knallert” for “moped”; “/,sa:kja’leiJn/” from Fr. “/‘sirrkylasid/” for “traffic” in: “There was a tot of circulation”.

The use or mimetic gestures, facial expression etc. IO replace speech.

Message ahundonment: “Oh I can’t say this, let’s talk about something else.” Meaning replacement: Saying almost what you want to say; saying something less politely than you would in your Ll (“Modality reduction”). Topic uvoidunce: Saying nothing at all. form extremes of a continuum.] [“Meaning replacement” and “topic avoidance” N.B. “Meaning replacement” resembles closely what is called: “approximation” or “generalisation” ‘Achievement strategies”.

“difficult” segments or cluslers of segments. f%onolo irrrl: Avoidance of words eOIltaining Morph0 ipogrcal: Avotdance of talking about yesterday to avoid past tense forms. Syntactic: Avoidance of speaking about what might happen for fear of using conditionals. Lexical: Avoidance of certain topics because the necessary vocabulary is lacking.

Table

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With Elaine Tarone (1984) I am of the opinion that the attention paid to CmS in our lessons has to be of two kinds. The fact that CmS in the Ll are mostly used automatically and that learners are not always aware of their own preferences or limitations with regard to CmS will make it necessary to spend some time on instruction about CmS. Doing this we counteract somewhat the fact that our learners, because of the rather artificial situation in the L2 class, are insufficiently exposed to authentic language in face-to-face interaction and thus do not get a chance, like “street learners”, to develop a sufficiently varied command of CmS in the L2. In the second place we shall have to devote time to practising rhe use of CmS on the basis of a conscious awareness of a variety of possible CmS to choose from.4 For instruction purposes the above typology might serve. For practice, various methods and materials have been proposed by, among others, Elaine Tarone (1984), Brown and Yule (1983) and Elisabeth Woodeson (1982). A selection of their suggestions, some adapted to a certain extent, is given below. With a little imagination any teacher will be able to devise similar materials for the stimulation of CmS.

2. PRACTICAL

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2.1 Which CmS should specially be stimulated? It is relatively simple to detect a hierarchy in the achievement (or compensation) strategies category. From rather primitive (paralinguistic) strategies via interlingual (borrowing, literal translation and foreignizing) strategies to intralingual strategies like checking questions and initiating repair there runs a clear line of growing complexity of a mainly verbal nature. For stimulating interlingual strategies it seems to be sufficient to merely make our learners aware of the fact that their innate tendency to use them in free speech activities is quite a natural urge and nothing to be frowned upon. If the teacher shows that he/she is not dead set against them, certainly not in the transfer or “free” stage of the lesson, learners will spontaneously take to them if they feel at a loss for a word or construction. Nor will paralinguistic strategies, although often subtly differing from culture to culture, need much practice if the learner feels uninhibited, i.e. not critically watched by the teacher. The remaining intrafingual category needs most practice, not least because the CmS that belong to it require more command of the target language than the other two categories. Of the six varieties of intralingual strategies mentioned in the typology, approximation and paraphrase are most suitable for practice by means of not too complex exercise material In the exercises geared towards developing them, word-coinage will also be practised naturally. Practising explicit appeals for help simply requires giving the learners a set of commonly used phrases. The same goes for the practice of checking questions. As, however, modality often plays a role in the use of these latter two categories of strategies, it seems advisable to devise special exercises to develop the learner’s skill in using them with success. Also in these sub-categories metaquestions about the language occur. This implies for the learner that he knows how to change the topic of conversation in the L2. This, in its turn, requires rather complex language use and therefore more complex exercise material. For this reason I shall concentrate in the following practice material mainly on approximation and paraphrase development. Even Littlewood (1984: p. 87), who takes up a rather cautious position with regard to the practice of CmS, as we really do not know

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overmuch concerning its effect, would like to make an exception for the practice of paraphrase: “Other strategies-such as paraphrase or adjusting the message [“self-repair”, G.W.]-may not help the learners to expand their repertoire, but help them to become fluent with what they already possess”. I would like to add to this that at the same time learners, by using them, will become more acceptable as interactants and enlarge for themselves their chances to learn the language. Intuitively we tend to believe that paraphrase and approximation are the most commonly used CmS. A count of the strategies used by speakers talking about themselves in interviews with a native speaker or near-native Sth-year teacher trainees in the above-mentioned video material, seems to confirm this intuition. The limited size of this video-tape corpus and the inequality in the (linguistic) status of the participants, however, should make us wary of overhasty conclusions. Moreover, strategies are often task- or learner-specific. However this may be, the statement that skill in the use of approximation and paraphrase strategies in particular will be extremely useful for everyone trying to master or (later) use an L2, seems completely justified. This is why the following exercises aim especially at the development of these two CmS. 2.2 Practice in the use of approximation and paraphrase strategies Just in case the reader/teacher feels inclined to try out the following exercises in class it seems convenient to describe them in the form of lesson-plans, i.e. in terms of objecrives, materials, activities (of learner as well as teacher) and evaluation. 2.2.1. Exercise 1 Objective: The learner practises the use of paraphrase (description and especially circumIocution; see typoIogy) and acquires flexibihty and creativity in the use of what he has already mastered of the L2. Materials: A set of pictures (cut out of magazines etc.) of, for example a colander, a gearlever in a car or a meat-mincer. Care should be taken to find pictures of objects that the learner does not know the L2 word for. Activities: This exercise can be done in class in two ways: (a) the learners are first given instruction about description/circumlocution CmS and various ways of implementing them; (b) the learners are only given instruction about how the exercise should be done and are left to fend for themselves. The group of learners is divided into pairs and each pair is given a picture of an object that is difficult for them to name. In order to make the evaluation stage more interesting and efficient it is advisable to give a number of pairs the same picture. The learner who has the descriptive task has to describe his object in such a way that his partner can write down the word for it in his mother-tongue. It fits in with the objective of this exercise to allow the learner with the “guessing” task to ask questions for elucidation. The learner with the descriptive task will be asked to reflect on his task after the exercise and write down what he found particularly difficult and how he solved his verbalisation problem (introspection).

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Evaluation: Ask the learners to check if the description of the object was successful. (This checking normally happens spontaneously immediately after the exercise). Then make an inventory of the problems that the describers encountered. They should consult the notes they made directly after the exercise. If approach (b) was chosen the number of problems encountered will, of course, be considerably greater than if approach (a) was preferred. Depending on the learning style and motivation of the learner, however, the learning effect may be considerably greater if some applicable paraphrase techniques are given after the exercise rather than before. Comment: Useful phrases for successfully doing this type of exercise (e.g. the description of the colander) are: “it’s made of metal (plastic)“-“it has a silver colour”-“it is bowlshaped”- “it is about 30 cm in diameter”-“it has two handles on the rim”-it has (or: is perforated with) small holes”; and “it is used to drain liquid from food”. It is unlikely that a 2nd or 3rd year learner will have all the necessary vocabulary at his disposal for this description. It is on the contrary very likely that the learner (and his teacher?) will discover how impractical, in the sense of useful for realistic everyday exchange of information, the language of the coursebook really is. Elaine Tarone (1984: p. 130) remarks that much exercise material (even in communicative syllabuses) aiming at problem-solving competence in the learner only stresses smooth and straightforward exchange of information: “However, few, if any, materials presently available teach students how to use communication strategies when problems are encountered . . ..” She concludes that much of the basic language material needed for approximation and paraphrase like: “on each end”, “on the rim”, “bowl-shaped”, “oval”, “left hand top corner”, “a bit further down” etc. are never used even by advanced learners and cannot be found in their course materials either. For the teacher who aims at developing his learners’ strategic competence the task is clear. Much of the language material necessary for an efficient use of CmS will have to be devised and brought in by himself. 2.2.2. Exercise 2 Objective: The learner practises the use of paraphrase (description, circumlocution and exemplification) and possibly also approximation and is trained in making use of the L2 as independently as possible. Materials: Two versions of the same crossword puzzle of which version A has approximately half the words filled in and version B the other half so that together they form one completed puzzle. There are no clues given. An example, taken from Elisabeth Woodeson (1982), is presented in Fig. 2. Procedure: The learners form pairs and are each of them handed a version of the crossword puzzle different from their partner’s. Care should be taken that they cannot see each other’s version. (For this kind of pair-work small screens that can be placed on the learners’ desks or tables, may come in handy. A back-to-back arrangement is not so advisable for this task as its makes communication unnecessarily strained and paralinguistic strategies impossible.) The pairs try to complete their puzzles by asking questions like: “What is number 1 down?” The answer might be: “It is a place where you can go for a coffee or another drink”.

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Fig. 2. Reproduced from Woodeson, MET 10(2), 1982.

Evaluation: This exercise may generate a realistic and authentic classroom discussion about problems met with when paraphrasing. A pair, reporting on their negotiation, might produce language like: “He/she said . . . and I thought it was . . . but that did not fit in my puzzle. So I said it was wrong and he/she tried again with . . .” etc., etc. The teacher may make an inventory of the problems encountered for later use in a training session. He may start making this inventory already while walking round the classroom during the exercise. Comment: This is a more playful, but at the same time more demanding version of the first exercise in strategy use. Elisabeth Woodeson, incidentally, does not use the term CmS. She just found to her disappointment that learners remain very dependent on their teacher when they are at a loss for a word. She made a deal with her learners that questions like: “How do you say X in English?” would be taboo and designed her communicative crossword puzzle to offer her learners a chance to develop some linguistic self-sufficiency. 2.2.3. Exercise 3 Objective: The learner practises the use of all sorts of technical vocabulary in order to improve his ability to describe parts of machinery which he (and often his teacher or even a native speaker) does not have the technical vocabulary for.

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Materials: All sorts of dismountable pieces of household apparatus or spare-parts of engines or machines. Old-fashioned vacuum cleaners, smoothing-irons, meatmincers and spareparts like carburettors are ideal. Procedure: Learner A (or, if you have a number of identical pieces of apparatus, several learners A) is instructed visually, i.e. non-linguistically, about the mounting and dismounting of the apparatus or spare-part. The same is done for learner(s) B. This instruction can be done while the other half of the group are doing written work as the instruction takes place in complete silence. Next, learners A instruct learners B how to assemble their piece of apparatus, using words alone and vice versa. It is advisable to have them do this only verbally as this will tax their strategic competence maximally. Evahation:

See Exercises 1 and 2.

Comment: This approach to language teaching and learning, which I based on Brown and Yule (1983), hopefully makes language learning a bit more acceptable and motivating in technical schools where pupils are mostly oriented towards practical learning and not so interested in the abstract way in which languages are traditionally taught. It is advisable to use old-fashioned pieces of apparatus in order to avoid the problem of a learner’s already knowning how to assemble his piece of equipment without needing any instruction. A cupboard full of “junk” may therefore be extremely useful for a teacher of languages and a visit to a garage or a junk-shop can help to fill it. As far as the language needed for this type of exercise is concerned we may distinguish between so-called “instructional verbs” like “insert”, “take-out”, “(un)screw(on)“, “takeoff”; prepositions like “below”, “under”, “on top of”, “in between” and CmS (of the description type) like: “the piece with the little square bit sticking out”, “the star-shaped bit”, “the piece with the screw at the end” etc. I suspect that it will be necessary with this rather difficult type of exercise to go through the vocabulary beforehand with the learners frontally and leave it on the OHP or blackboard for consultation. The effect of this type of exercise on vocabulary acquisition by the learner is remarkable. The secret is the fact that the vocabulary is used to convey meaning of a very concrete kind. Besides, the learner tends to be emotionally engaged in getting the job done. These conditions are ideal for vocabulary acquisition (Leont’ev, 1980). However, regular repetition of this type of task is called for. 2.2.4. Exercise 4 This exercise is a variant of Exercise 3. In this case the learner is asked to describe a situation. The teacher needs a rather larger number of toy cars, motorcyclists, lorries, cyclists and pedestrians, many of them identical. Learner A is invited to devise a more or less problematic situation on a blank crossroads offered him on A3 size paper. Care should be taken to have him do this unobserved by learner B who, instructed by learner A and in possession of a fair number of toys including a complete set of replicas of A’s toys, subsequently has to reconstruct A’s traffic situation on his crossroads. It is clear that the number of toys determines the degree of difficulty of his task. The problem confronting the learner is to get his references clear and unambiguous. This problem is rather daunting if the number of toys used exceeds five or six. Descriptive

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strategies when verbalised will look somewhat like this: “the red lorry coming from the right if you are standing on the pavement facing the grocer’s”, “the pedestrian on the zebra-crossing”, “the woman cyclist who was turning left” etc. (this idea is taken from Brown and Yule, 1983). 2.2.5. Discussion Anyone who has acquired a fluent command of a foreign language during a prolonged stay abroad knows that their fluency is based on the repeated verbalisation of concrete speech intentions as exemplified in the above exercises. The concentrated effort of transmitting concrete meaning seems to be a necessary condition to get this acquisition process going. The strategies evoked and practised in performing tasks like the above, with their very concrete meaning often coupled with an affective component (“can I get him or her to do it in the L2?“), appear to be extremely useful in a host of situations and basic to our fluency development. Varied and often motivating exercises like the above offer our learners training in building up a basic “strategic competence” somewhat comparable to the one learners get in the foreign country. Out-of-school reality unequivocally shows that the way we handle language in the classroom not only in traditional structural approaches but also in modern “communicative” ones does not suffiently help the learner to develop this “strategic competence”. If we want to give our learners the chance to do so, we will have to be willing to take on a lot of extra work and worry in the way of classroom management and the collecting and caraloguing of materials. The conviction that we are setting about language teaching in a more responsible way and the discovery that our learners are more interested and motivated will no doubt sustain our creativity and help us do what initially will strike us as an extra burden in an already demanding job. Of course, the learners will make all sorts of grammatical, lexical, sociolinguistic and discoursal mistakes. This is a natural phenomenon and should not worry us overmuch.’ Indeed, in accordance with our communicative objectives, we give our learners a chance to practise using the L2 for communication with native speakers (and others who speak it) and not as native speakers. This means that out first task is to train them “not for perfection but for communication”.6 Correctness-errors, which learners will make anyhow, may reasonably be compensated for in interaction by skilfullness in the use of CmS.’ Besides, as language teachers we are naturally interested in the way language learning takes place. Allowing the learner a certain amount of freedom in his use of the language, as illustrated in the above sample exercise material, will offer us insights into how learners deal with linguistic problems. In the words of Chris Candlin (1985: p. XIV): “Learners’ language offers us ‘windows’ on their covert cognitive behavior, giving us clues as to how they go about thinking and planning”. This interpretation, then, of communicative language teaching will not only benefit the learner but will also, ultimately, make us more enlightened teachers. 3. CONCLUSION Of late years, since Dell Hymes’ 1972 publication “On Communicative Competence” and the Council of Europe’s Modern Languages Project publications, e.g. van Ek’s Threshold

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Level of 1976, there has been a lot of talk among (foreign) language teachers about the communicative approach. Nobody seems to know, however, what exactly the communicative approach, in the sense of one distinct methodological ideology, is. There is considerable terminological confusion as to the interpretation of the term (Savignon and Berns, 1984: p. V). I, for one, am fully convinced that a communicative approach is a matter of teacher attitude and would like to suggest that the stimulation of the use of, especially intralingual CmS by the learner if his L2 command lets him down, is one of the ways in which a teacher

may show his true “communicative”

face.

It is hoped that instruction about CmS on the basis of the typology suggested in this article and practice in their use with the aid of the kind of exercises and procedures described above may help him to do so to his own and his learners’ satisfaction.

NOTES I The objection raised by the teaching profession that the teaching of (instruction about and training in the use of) CmS need not be incorporated into foreign language teaching teaching because the learner needs only a certain degree of formal command of the L2 to start using CmS automatically is refuted by Faerch and Kasper (1983: p. 65) as follows: “. . . if by teaching we also mean making learners conscious about aspects of their (already existing) behaviour, it is obvious that we should teach them about strategies, in particular how to use communication strategies most appropriately”. * In this connection it is interesting to take note of Raupach’s (1983: p. 207) statement that while students of French after a term’s study in France did not show any noticeable progress in their grammatical command of the language, they did display a considerable change in their use of Cm.% 3 This videotaped material is partly my own, and partly kindly made available by Poulisse et al. of the University of Nijmegen Institute of Applied Linguistics. It consists of videotaped interviews between a NS or Sth-year teacher trainees with a good command of the language and secondary school learners with various degrees of proficiency. Owing to the inequality in the status of the participants (adults-adolescents and (near) NS-NNS) and the fact that CmS may be task or learner specific, I feel I can only tentatively support my statement that “classroom learners” do not develop into proficient strategy users. Out of a total of 56 registered CmS in a small corpus of about 18 minutes’ videotape of NS-learner or near-NS-learner personal interviews the following CmS occur in the following numbers: - Approximation : 13 times - Paraphrase : 22 times - Self-repair : 15 times - Borrowing/code switching : 5 times - Word coinage : 1 time : 0 times - Explicit appeal for help - Paralinguistic strategies : abundant (as support or carrying the negotiation of their own accord). I should like to use the first two, most “common”, CmS as a norm with which to contrast, percentage wise, the frequency of the others. The fact that the last three are relatively speaking “underused” begs questions. As an answer I should Iike to suggest that in traditional language teaching the learner is supposed to produce “correct” language only. The relatively high number of self repairs and the complete absence of appeals for help seem to support this. One wonders about how much in these interviews was left unsaid . . . 4 The usefulness of adult NNS-NNS negotiation of meaning in this kind of practice for language acquisition is pointed out by Varonis and Gass (1985: p. 87). There seems to be no reason why classroom learners should not benefit in the same way if the use of the L2 is felt to be normal practice. 5 It goes without saying that it is a teacher’s task to get this learners’ language as correct as possible. This laudable aim, however, as we all know, cannot be reached by our circulating in class correcting errors while our learners are practising creative language use. Structural practice and pronunciation practice belong in the practice phase of our lessons. Error correction there is necessary and fully acceptable for our learners. In the meantime, we should not forget that exposure to a rich linguistic environment is one of the best guarantees for linguistic development in our learners. ’ This quote comes from an introduction to a workshop on ‘~communicative language learning” that was recently given by Pat Pattison for alumni of Interstudie Institute for Teacher Education in Nijmegen, Netherlands.

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’ Against the background of my enthusiasm for the stimulation of achievemenr strategies it may be self-evident that I can muster little support for Rod Ellis’ (1984) proposal to assess learners’ oral proficiency against their use of CmS. I would be fully behind him if he had been referring to reduction strategies only. ElIis suggests reduction nnd achievement strategies for this purpose, however. If we view language acquisition as a creative process, we feel that achievement strategies should be stimulated. As soon as we start using their occurrence to assess our learners’ proficiency negatively, we shall discourage their use and thus work as counterproductively as we did before in demanding correctness. In short, we shall throw away the communicative child with the strategic bath-water.

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