Communication strategies in teacher talk :a case study in Malaysian ESL classroom

Ch'ng, Looi Chin (2007) Communication strategies in teacher talk :a case study in Malaysian ESL classroom. [Final Year Project Report] (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Communication strategies (CS) are used by language speakers to help them to get their meaning across. For learners, CS served as tool to compensate for their target language deficiency. How ever, little is known on the use of CS among teachers in their teaching. This study thus examined to what extent the proficiency level of learners influenced the use of communication strategies by the teachers in their teacher talk in order to deliver thei r lessons effectively. The study involved three ESL teachers. Data were obtained from audio observation of classes of different proficiency levels at a school in Samarahan Division, Sarawak. The verbal data were analysed based on the theoretical framework of Faerch and Kasper (1984), Tarone (1978) and Clennell (1995) on the use of CS by teachers. The types of teacher talk were analysed based on Flander’s Interaction Analysis Category (Flander, 1970 ) . The findings showed that proficiency level of the student s influenced teachers’ use of communication strategies in different types of teacher talk to compensate for students’ language deficiency. In general, CS were regularly used by teachers in both classes of high and low proficiency level when giving lecture and asking students questions in order to enhance message and make message salien t to the students. The common CS used include tonicity, lexical repetition and language switch . Nevertheless, it was also noted these CS were more frequently used by teachers in low prof iciency classes especially during prompting, giving directions and accepting students’ ideas . This could probably due to greater language deficiency faced by this group of students. On the whole, the study found out that ESL classroom interactio ns in this school were mainly one - way communication where the teachers made the most talking by us ing Clennell’s (1995) discourse - based CS (tonicity, lexical repetition and topic fronting) to maintain their teacher talk in both high and low proficiency cla sses.

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