The Effect of Teaching Communication Strategies on Their Use in an English for Academic Purposes Context

Communication strategies (CSs) are considered effective tools which can fill the gaps in linguistic knowledge of second/foreign language (L۲) learners in a communicative context. Although teaching CSs has been substantially investigated in L۲ education, educational contexts such as English for Academic Purposes (EAP) in which L۲ learners have to struggle to learn technical content have not been explored. The present study aims to fill the gap in the literature by finding out whether teaching CSs can increase the efficiency of communication of EAP learners. Participants of the present study were ۲۸ university students (۱۸ males and ۱۰ females) at B.A. level majoring in law. The students went through a ۱۶-session CSs training program which incorporated CSs into their regular EAP curriculum. In order to collect the data, ۱۴ pairs of students were asked to audio-record the tasks they were practicing which resulted in ۵۶ hours of classroom data. The data were analyzed by first transcribing the audio-recordings and then identifying the CSs worked on during the academic semester. The data revealed that incorporating CSs training program into the EAP course had a positive effect on their use by the participants. In addition, the results of the chi-square test showed that there was a significant difference between the use of CSs at the beginning and end of the training program. It was further revealed that fillers and lexical repetition were the most frequently used types of CS at the end of the course.

کلیدواژه ها:

communication strategies ، second/foreign language ، English for Academic Purposes ، fillers ، lexical repetition