چکیده:
How L2 learners compensate for their linguistic deficiency when they try to
communicate some concept or idea for which they do not have a linguistic symbol
in their mind is the major focus of this paper. The learners bridge the
linguistic hiatus by deploying six major strategies named conceptual,
linguistic, cooperative, retrieve, appeal, avoidance, each indicative and the
result of a different psychological plan. In this paper a new classification is
proposed and the influence of language proficiency on the selection of
strategies is examined. The results show that proficiency in the language does
not play a significant role in the selection of strategies by those students who
learn English in formal situations.
خلاصه ماشینی:
Regardless of the group factor (proficiency level), as the table shows, the frequencies depicted in the case of sub-categories of Conceptual strategy are: HOCO (1563), ANCO (1160), Unrelated Concepts UNCO (45); in the case of sub-categories of Linguistic strategy, as LIMO (394), LITRA (143), Morphological Uncertainty (354), LIPA (141), LIGA (117), Repair (77), AVGTA (84), AVPA (347), AVMR(41).
The above findings mainly related to the sub-categories of Conceptual and Linguistic strategies are in contradiction with the second hypothesis which states: low proficiency learners depend more on linguistic knowledge/strategies, and use more L1-based strategies; whereas high proficiency learners rely more on Holistic strategies and use more L2-based strategies, as both freshmen and final year students have used the same amounts of HOCO, ANCO, Unrelated Concept, LIMO, LITRA, LIMU, LIPA, LIPA, and LIR strategies.
CONCLUSION: Recalling the small-scaled nature of the majority of the previous studies in which, a) Avoidance strategies had not been touched upon at all, b) less number of elicitation contexts have been used to make generalizations, c) long and different lists of strategies have been proposed, d) lack of connection to the linguistic theories, and above all lack of any research on the students specializing in English urged the investigator to formulate the first objective in order to establish a comprehensive categorization of the communication strategies employed by (Iranian) EFL learners, which has successfully been achieved.