NHỮNG NHÂN tố CHÍNH ẢNH HƯỞNG tới kĩ NĂNG nói của SINH CHUYÊN năm NHẤT CHUYÊN NGÀNH NGOẠI NGỮ đại học hải PHÒNG và một số GIẢI PHÁP đề XUẤT NHẰM PHÁT TRIỂN NĂNG lực GIAO TIẾP CHO đối TƯỢNG SINH VIÊN này

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HẢI PHÒNG
KHOA NGOẠI NGỮ
--------------------

SINH VIÊN THỰC HIỆN
LỚP

: NGUYỄN THỊ TRÀ MI
: CỬ NHÂN ANH K13B

KHÓA LUẬN TỐT NGHIỆP
THE MAJOR FACTORS AFFECTING SPEAKING SKILL OF FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR STUDENTS
AT HAIPHONG UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TIONS TO IMPROVE THEIR
COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE
(NHỮNG NHÂN TỐ CHÍNH ẢNH HƯỞNG TỚI KĨ NĂNG NÓI CỦA SINH CHUYÊN NĂM NHẤT CHUYÊN
NGÀNH NGOẠI NGỮ ĐẠI HỌC HẢI PHÒNG VÀ MỘT SỐ GIẢI PHÁP ĐỀ XUẤT NHẰM PHÁT TRIỂN
NĂNG LỰC GIAO TIẾP CHO ĐỐI TƯỢNG SINH VIÊN NÀY)

NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC
THẠC SĨ NGUYỄN VĂN PHI

Hải Phòng tháng 5 năm 2016


HAIPHONG UNIVERSITY
FOREIGN LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT
-------------------STUDENT: NGUYEN THI TRA MI
CLASS: ENGLISH MAJOR B K13

Graduation Paper

THE MAJOR FACTORS AFFECTING SPEAKING SKILL OF FIRST YEAR ENGLISH MAJOR
STUDENTS AT HAIPHONG UNIVERSITY AND SOME SUGGESTED SOLUTIONS TIONS TO
IMPROVE THEIR COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Supervisor: Nguyen Van Phi, M.A

Haiphong, May 2016


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I could not complete my assignment without the great help and useful advice from
my teacher, my family as well as my friends.
Firstly, I would like to express my great thanks to my supervisor, Mr. Nguyen
Van Phi, M.A for his enthusiastic help and useful advice.
Secondly, I would like to express my deep thanks to all the teachers in Foreign
Language Department of Haiphong University for giving me helpful lectures that can be
considered very good source of background knowledge to support my ideas.
My thanks also go to my family as well as my classmates who have
enthusiastically helped and encouraged me during the time I conducted this work.

Haiphong, May 2016
Nguyen Thi Tra Mi

I


LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
Figure 1: Faerch and Kasper’s classification of communication strategies
Figure 2: Students’ personalities
Table 1: Students’ strategies to speak English

Table 2: Students’ opinions about speaking topics
Table 3: Students’ favorite topics
Table 4: Students’ difficulty in creating sentences
Table 5: Students’ listening comprehension
Table 6: Students’ opinion about teachers’ learning methods
Table 7: Teachers’ learning methods in pre-speaking phase
Table 8: Teachers’ methods in speaking practice phase
Table 9: Students’ motivation to learn English
Table 10: Students’ recognition about the role of the target language
Table 11: Students’ recognition about the role of English
Table 12: Students’ interest in learning English
Table 13: Students’ interest in speaking English
Table 14: Students’ feelings when speaking English

II


TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES
REFERENCES...............................................................................................................................................IV
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................1
1.1. Rationale of the study..................................................................................................................1
1.2. Aims of the study..........................................................................................................................1
1.3. Scope of the study........................................................................................................................1
1.4. Research questions.......................................................................................................................2
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................................................4
2.1.1. Speaking Skill definition.............................................................................................................4
2.2. Factors affecting speaking skill....................................................................................................10
2.2.1. Communication strategies.......................................................................................................10

2.2.2. Factors affecting speaking skill................................................................................................13
2.2.2.1. Phonological aspect..............................................................................................................13
2.4.1.3.Strategic competence............................................................................................................26
2.4.1.4.Discourse competence..........................................................................................................27
3.1. Overview of the survey...............................................................................................................29
3.1.1. Aims of the survey...................................................................................................................29
3.1.2. Informant and settings............................................................................................................29
3.2. Description of questionnaires.....................................................................................................30
CHAPTER 4: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION....................................................................................................30
4.1. Results and discussion................................................................................................................31
4.1.1. Speaking strategies..................................................................................................................31

III


4.1.2. Speaking topic.........................................................................................................................31
4.1.3. Language knowledge...............................................................................................................32
4.1.4. Listening comprehension.........................................................................................................33
4.1.5. Teachers’ learning methods.....................................................................................................34
4.1.6. Subjective factors....................................................................................................................37
4.1.6.1. Motivation............................................................................................................................37
4.1.6.2. Interest.................................................................................................................................39
4.1.6.3. Self-confidence.....................................................................................................................40
4.1.3.4. Personality............................................................................................................................41
CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION..............................................................................42
5.1. RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................................42
5.1.1. Suggested activities for effective speaking..............................................................................42
5.1.1.1 Paraphrasing..........................................................................................................................42
5.1.1.2. Chain game or chain story....................................................................................................43
5.1.1.3. Information Gap...................................................................................................................43

5.1.1.4. Brainstorming.......................................................................................................................44
Practice gives students the confidence. Brainstorming is a practical activity that can help students
to be confidents while expressing ideas in front of a group of people..............................................44
5.1.1.5. Storytelling...........................................................................................................................44
5.2. GUIDELINES FOR using games and pair work and group work in a speaking lesson effectively..45
5.4. SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTHER STUDY............................................................................................48

REFERENCES
APPENDIX

IV


CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
1.1. Rationale of the study
In the process of learning English, it is acknowledged that one of the most
important skills in learning English as well as other languages is speaking skill. Speaking
not only helps students improve their communicative competence but also enables them
to develop language skills such as listening, writing, and reading. Thus, it is extremely
important in learning language especially learning communicative English.
Besides, in learning reality, many first year students struggled with speaking skill
for the reason that they can hardly have chance to practice this skill at lower levels. This
fact is true at Haiphong University in the progress of helping students with accessing to
direct communication and improving their communicative competence at the very first
stage.
To some extend, the researcher tried to conduct the study entitled “The factors
affecting speaking skill of the first year English major students at Haiphong
University and some suggested solutions to improve their speaking skill.” The author
hopes that her study will be a useful material that can help first year students with
speaking skill.

1.2. Aims of the study
The aims of the study are as follows:
1. To investigate the factors affecting speaking skill of the first year English
major students at Haiphong University.
2. To provide some solutions to the problems that the students encounter while
learning speaking skill.
1.3. Scope of the study
The study deals with the common problems that the first year English major students at
Haiphong University usually have when they learn to speak English in the classrooms.
1


1.4. Research questions
The study aims at answering two questions:
-

What factors affect speaking skills of the first year English major students at
Haiphong University?

1.5.

What are the solutions to improve the students’ speaking ability?
The design of the study

The study consists of five chapters as following:
-

Chapter 1: Introduction

This chapter deals with the reasons for choosing the topic of the study, the aims, scope

and the structure of the study.
-

Chapter 2: Literature review

This chapter gives an overview on skills focusing on speaking skill, strategies and
theories on communicative competence.
-

Chapter 3: Methods of the study

This chapter aims at stating the methods that the author applies to do the study.
-

Chapter 4: Results and discussion

In this chapter, the results of the study are analysed and some findings are given and
discussed.
-

Chapter 5: Conclusion and recommendation

This chapter provides some suggested solutions to help students overcome the difficulties
in speaking skill and to improve their communicative competence. Also, this part is the

2


summary of the main points presented in the study. Additionally, the suggestions for
further study are also mentioned.

3


CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Speaking skill
2.1.1. Speaking Skill definition
Speaking is one of the skills that have to be mastered in learning English. Speaking
is also a crucial part of the language learning process. It is important for students to know
definitions first. Many experts define speaking in different ways.
Chaney and Burke [1998: 13] define speaking as “the process of building and
sharing meaning through the use of verbal and non-verbal symbol, in a variety of
contexts.”
While another expert, Huebner [1960:5] said language is essential speech, and
speech is basic communication by sounds. And according to him, speaking is the skill
used by someone in daily life communication whether at school or outside. The skill is
acquired by much repetition; it primarily a neuromuscular and not an intellectual process.
It consists of competence in sending and receiving messages.
Speaking skill refers to the action of conveying information or expressing one’s
thoughts and feelings in spoken language [Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, 2009]
Speaking skill is considered the art of communication and a productive skill that
helps the speakers express their ideas, opinions or feelings to others by using words or
sounds of articulation. A person who has good speaking skills is the one who can
generate words that can be understood by listeners and for that good speaking skill is a
useful means to make the utterances clear and informative. Speaking process should pay
attention to what and how to say as well as to whom appropriately.
2.1.2. Characteristics of speaking skill
One of the researchers who have paid much attention to this oral skill is Bygate. To
show the characteristics of speaking skill, he investigates the characteristics of spoken
language. In his point of view, it seems that speaking skill has not been identified as a

4


research area as willingly as, for example, reading or writing. In other words, speaking is
not completely accepted as a separate area (Bygate, 1998:20). This idea may be
supported by the above theory that speaking skill is the rally of different components.
According to him, speech is more commonly unplanned, contextualized, informal and
reciprocal than writing. It is clear to see that speakers usually have very little time to
prepare their utterances in a conversation. Bygate claims: “oral language can be
identified by certain features which are more prototypical of speech than of writing”.
Among these features, one of the most typical one is that speech is organized by clauses,
phrases and spoken utterances while writing is generally organized according to whole
sentences. In human’s daily dialogues, people do not have much time to think of what
they are going to mention or to plan how the information should be sorted and this is the
reason why they often have the common spoken utterances that are usually short and
expressive such as “really?”, “I don’t know”, etc. In addition, spoken language is less
formal in relation to vocabulary and grammar than written language and it features words
such as ‘but’ , and that join words, phrases and clauses whereas written language is
characterized by subordination of clauses. Also, spoken language is characterized by
repetition of utterances, close relation to the context in question and features of
correcting speech.
Since speaking skill is the ability to start and to maintain a conversation, it closely
relates to the performance of the participants in a conversation. As Turner (1998) writes
“If speaking is considered as a communicative performance, its assessment should be
based on scales and criteria which have been derived from the performance of the
speakers.”
According to Jack C. Richard, there are three speaking situations that people can
find themselves; they are interactive, partially interactive, and non-interactive. Interactive
situation is created when more than one speaker are involved in the dialogue for example
a group of people talking together in a cafeteria after the work. The interactive situation

may be face-to-face or not; face-to-face conversations occur regularly in daily life,
5


however phone calls can be seen as interactive situation although the speaker and the
listener are not speaking face-to-face. Another situation of speaking is partially
interactive; the typical situation is the act of learning in the classroom. The last type of
speaking situation is non interactive. This situation is usually the mono-dialogue when
the speaker has no interaction with the listeners for example the TV speaker speaks on
the screen, he simply supplies the information without any interaction with the audience.
2.1.3. Speaking sub-skills
The speaking skill is a complicated skill that contains a set of micro skills that
people should master if they wish to have a good speaking skill. These micro skills are
the subordinated skills that can be ministerial to the speaker’s oral skill.
Firstly, speaker should try to make the distinctive sounds of a language clearly
enough so that people can distinguish them. This includes making tonal distinctions.
Pronunciation is a very important component to help listeners understand what the
speaker really wants to express, listeners can only decode the meaning by recognizing
the sounds, so that the best way to make the speech easy to understand is making sounds
that are easy to recognize.
Secondly, to help to make learner’s speaking skill better, they also should use
stress and rhythmic patterns, and intonation patterns of the language clearly enough so
that people can understand what is said. Rhythm, stress and intonation are important
factors to express speaker’s ideas; a good speaker is a person who knows how to use
rhythmic patterns and intonation appropriately.
Besides, using the correct forms of words is another good way to improve
learner’s speaking skill. This may mean, for example, changes in the tense, case, or
gender. For example, to indicate singular form of the noun “girl”, it can be said “She is a
beautiful girl”; however, it is not accepted when people say “they are beautiful girl” but

6


“they are beautiful girls”. The plural form of the noun “girl” must be “girl”, this is
commonly forgot by the students.
Additionally, syntax is an essential element to remind, speakers should remember
to put words together in correct word order to make the utterances grammatically correct.
For example, Vietnamese speakers always say “she is a girl beautiful” instead of “she is
a beautiful girl” due to the effect of their mother tongues’ system.
For the oral skill, vocabulary is very important to transmit speaker’s ideas to the
listeners and this is the reason why speakers should be careful when using vocabulary.
Using a wide range of words can be a signal that the speaker has a good vocabulary
source so that he can use the glossary appropriately. Following that, various vocabularies
can make the utterances flexible and expressive.
However, vocabulary should be used in an appropriate way; speakers should use
the register or language variety that is appropriate to the situation and the relationship to
the conversation partner. Before speaking, speakers should determine the style of the
conversation: formal or informal and based on that, they can use acceptable words in the
situation.
Another micro skill that can help people speak better is making clear to the
listeners the main sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, object, by whatever means
the language uses. A grammatical sentence is taken for granted easier to understand than
a sentence that is hard for listeners to determine its parts. The place of the part of speech
can emphasize what the speaker wants to focus. There are definitely some differences
between these two sample sentences: “I want a house” and “A house is what I want”. In
the first sentence, “A house” is placed at the back of the sentence; however, it is placed
initially in the second one, the place can show the emphasis of the speaker. In the second
sentence, “A house” is emphasized so that the speaker does not say in the normal way as
in the first sentence.
7

Following the above micro skill, this micro one is to make the main ideas stand
out from supporting ideas or information. This is to focus on the main ideas of the
conversation. Leading listeners to the key content of the conversation is very necessary if
the speaker wishes to achieve the goal of the conversation.
The conversation is like a river, it should have the flow to connect the ideas so
that listeners can follow the conversation. That is why speakers should have the skill to
make the discourse hang together so that people can follow what they are saying. The
connectors in this case are very useful means to make the separated utterances linked and
to make the conversation logical and easy to recognize the main contents.
Obviously, the micro skills are very important to contribute to the success of
speaking skill. To ensure the success of the conversation, mastering the set of micro skill
is considered a very good preparation. From the learning reality, most of the teachers
advise their students to practice as separated one and combine them in the set.
2.1.4. Learning speaking skill
Speaking skill is such an important skill that many people consider speaking
ability the measure of knowing a language. Many people define fluency as the ability to
converse with others, much more than the ability to read, write, or comprehend oral
language. They regard speaking as the most important skill they can acquire, and they
assess their progress in terms of their accomplishments in spoken communication.
Hence, learning speaking is very important but very hard work.
According to Hayirie Kaky, “learning speaking” is a technical term that requires
learners a set of items to study. So what is meant by “learning”? As far as he stated in his
theory, learning speaking skill described as follow:
-

Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns: Pronunciation is a very
important part in learning any languages including English.

8


-

Use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and rhythm of the second
language:

-

Select appropriate words and sentences according to the proper social setting,
audience, situation and subject matter.

-

Organize the thoughts in a meaningful and logical sequence

-

Use language as a means of expressing values and judgments

-

Use the language quickly and confidently with few unnatural pauses, which
called as fluency.

Jack Richards is a very famous professor at Cambridge University for his lectures
on Learning Speaking Theory and Methodologies. According to his theory, when
learning speaking skill, a talk is considered interactions when it has the following
characteristics. Above all, that talk can create social interactions among people. And

then, the talk can address the face needs of participants. Everyone has his own social
image that he wants to save and improve in front of the public; interaction talk is the one
that may address this social image of the people involved in the conversation. Besides, an
interaction talk has to focus on participants and their social needs such as greeting,
asking for permission, etc. In these circumstances, the social needs of the participants are
mentioned and become the main content of the conversation. Meanwhile, a talk is a
transaction when it simply gives or obtains information or gets goods or services. Instead
of focusing on people’s social needs, it focuses on the message that the participants
wants to transmit. Lastly, a talk is performance when there is audience and speaker, the
speaker must be single so that there is no interaction in the talk and of course, the speaker
must create a “product”, here, it may be a welcome speech, class talk or business
presentation, etc.
Coming back to the set of goals by Jack Richards, beside that the talk must show
the characteristics of one of three aspects mentioned above, the speaking class should
9


have sufficient language and other supports for the tasks such as supporting vocabulary
or structures that are useful for the topic. A speaking class usually consists of three main
phases: pre speaking, speaking and tasks; sufficient language and other supports are
supplied in the first phase. The pre speaking phase is to give students necessary supplies
in terms of vocabulary, structures as well as culture and social knowledge.
The next criterion of a good speaking class is that students have sample speaking
time. Learning a language that is not their mother tongue, students may find it difficult to
express their ideas. Moreover, speaking skill is a productive skill then students need as
much practice as possible; they really need to have time to practice speaking samples.
Practicing time may help them make acquaintance with new structures, sounds and
words.
2.2. Factors affecting speaking skill
2.2.1. Communication strategies

Communication is simply defined as a process in which a message is sent from
the senders to the receivers. In a technical description, it is said that the sender encodes a
message and the receivers decode it. Communication problems occur when the encoded
message sent is not the message received. In other words, the massage sent is not the
message received. For example, the mother implies that the daughter should bring her
some water when she says to the daughter “I am very thirsty!”, then the encoded message
is “Bring me some water”. However, the daughter does not understand her mother’s
implication so that she does not bring any water but says “I am thirsty, too”. In this
circumstance, the encoded message is not decoded. Sometimes, communication
problems may occur when the encoded message is incorrectly decoded. For example, the
mother says to her boy: “children should not watch films!” when she cognizes that her
son is watching a film at the time he should be doing his homework. The encoded
message is “turn off television and do your homework”. The problem may happen when
the son does not turn off the television but changes the channel into another program.
10


The boy misunderstands his mother’s implication that causes the problem in
communication.
Rubin (1987) considers communication strategies as those strategies which are
used by a learner to promote and continue communication with others rather than
abandon it. Brown (2000) suggests that communication strategies pertain to the
employment of verbal or nonverbal mechanisms for the productive communication of
information. Besides, in the book named “Communication strategies”, Bialystok (1990)
quotes Coder’s definition about communication strategies: “a systematic technique
employed by a speaker to express his ideas when faced with some difficulties”.
Additionally, Faerch and Kasper (1983) consider communication strategies the
“potential conscious plans for solving what to an individual present itself as a problem in
reaching a particular communicative goal”. Faerch’s classification of communication
strategies is a standard classification that is approved by many other authors.

11


1. Phonological

1. Topic avoidance

1 Code switching

2. Morphological

2. Message abandonment

2 Intralingua transfer

3. Syntactic

3. Meaning Replacement

4. Lexical

a. Generalization
b. Paraphrasing
c. Word coinage
3. Non-linguistic strategies

Figure 1: Faerch and Kasper’s classification of communication strategies
Faerch and Kasper suggest that communication strategies are divided into two
categories: avoidance behavior and achievement behavior. Each of them is classified or

comprised of other subcategories. The avoidance behavior consists of formal reduction
and functional reduction. The formal reduction can be phonological, morphological,
syntactic and lexical. The functional reduction consists of reduction of speech act
modality and reduction of the propositional context. The reduction of the propositional
context can be topic avoidance, message abandonment and meaning replacement. The
achievement behavior is divided into subclasses such as code switching, intralingua

12


transfer, cooperative strategies and non-linguistic strategies. The intralingua transfers can
generalization, paraphrasing, word coinage and restructing.
2.2.2. Factors affecting speaking skill
Avoidance strategies involve the tactics and techniques people use when the do
not want to be influenced by the other participants of a conversation. Avoidance
Strategies or avoidance behavior is also called reduction strategies. These strategies are
used when people come across difficulties in their communication caused by their lack of
adequate knowledge of the language. The avoidance strategies include the following
strategies:
2.2.2.1. Phonological aspect
Phonological avoidance is a strategy used when people have difficulty in
pronouncing words. Usually, people try to avoid using the words that they are not sure
with the pronunciation, instead of using these words; they try to use other ones that have
similar meaning to replace.
For example, instead of saying the word “breeze” because people cannot make
sure whether it is pronounced /bri:z/ or /brεz/, they find another words that can be
accepted in the situation such as “wind”. Obviously, phonological strategy is really
helpful to make the utterances clear to the listeners. This strategy can help speakers limit
the phonological errors in the conversation.
2.2.2.2. Syntactic aspect

Syntactic avoidance strategy is used when the speaker finds it difficult to express
an idea into a foreign language, he cannot find the equivalent structure with his mother
tongue in the second language r he fails to express his ideas by using an inappropriate
structure.
For example:
A (L2 learner): I lost my road
13


B: (native speaker): What? You lost your road? (Rising voice and emphasizing
“road”)
A (L2 learner): I got lost.
It can be clearly seen from the example that the leaner A tries to express his ideas;
however, his utterance is not acceptable so that it does not make sense to the listener B
(the native speaker), to avoid the error in using structure, the leaner changes another
structure that is understandable.
2.2.2.3.

Lexical aspect

Learners use this strategy when they have lack of vocabulary, instead of using the
correct word, they may try to find out the words that have the same meaning. For
example, instead of using the word “hippopotamus”, students may use the word
“buffalo”. In many circumstances, this strategy is very useful to maintain the talk
because people cannot stop talking to look up in the dictionary.
For example: My father is the president of the local hospital and my uncle is the
president of the primary school in which I studied grade 1 and grade 2.
In this example, the speaker uses the word “president” twice: “the president of the
local hospital” and the president of the primary school”. At the first place, “president” is
used to replace “the manager” and in the second place, it replaces “the principal”.

2.2.2.4. Topic aspect
This strategy is applied by the learners when they want to avoid the topic areas or
concepts that may pose language difficulties for them. According to Corder (1978), topic
avoidance “occurs when the learner does not talk about concepts (or topic) for which the
vocabulary is nor known”. He suggests that there may happen two cases: in extreme
case, this may result in no communication at all and in less extreme cases, the learner
directs his conversation away from the troublesome topic. There are three ways to avoid
14


the topic: people can pretend not to understand the speaker, change the topic or avoid
responding the speaker.
For example:
A: My account is out of money.
B: Really?
(A and B are friends)
Speaker A tries to send a message of borrowing money when he mentions the
empty account; however, his message is not decoded awarely by speaker B when she
pretends not to understand A’s message.
Another way to avoid the topic that people do not feel confident or interested to
talk about is changing the topic. For example:
A: Your boss is really crazy!
B: Where did you buy this shirt?
At first, B’s response may seem not to fit A’s utterance; however, B changes the
topic on purpose because she does not want to continue A’s topic about her boss.
Besides, keeping silence is also a good way to avoid the unfamiliar or uninterested
topics. For example:
A: Do you agree with me that her style is so eery!
B: (Silence)
For the reason of avoiding the topic, B keeps silence to show her in-corporation

with A. This is a typical signal to avoid the topic when people are participating in a
conversation.
2.2.2.5.

Message abandonment
15


Corder (1978) says: “message abandonment occurs when the learner starts
expressing a target concept and suddenly realizes that he does not know how to go on.
He then stops in mid-sentence, chooses another topic, and continues his conversation”.
There are at least two messages sent in the utterance; however, the first message is not
developed but it can be changed into the second one.
For example: “A man is coming out of a ... er ... it’s a stone-aged man” (Palmberg,
1979)
The topic is started by “a man is coming out of ...” the listener is waiting for
something (places, things) preceding the idea; however, the topic is changed suddenly
because after a short pause, the speaker focuses on the description of the man: “it’s a
stone-aged man”.
More examples:
A: Uhm...why is it called Los Angeles?
B: Why ... called?
A: Why is it called Los Angeles?
B: Ah ... I’m not sure but ... the ... maybe in the past ... Los Angeles may
mean ... er ... i don’t know how to explain to you ... (laugh)
In B’s answer to A’s question, it is clearly that A can get no information;
however, B avoids answering A’s question by giving some utterances with very little
information relating to A’s question. At least, in this circumstance avoidance strategy can
help B continue the conversation because normally, A would not ask B this question
again.

2.2.2.6.

Meaning replacement

16


Váradi (1980) states: “unlike topic avoidance and message abandonment, the topic
is, in fact, not dropped but preserved by the leaner. However, instead of trying to expand
his linguistic resources and overcome his communicative problem, he deliberately
chooses to be less specific than he originally intended to be”. This means that the speaker
does not omit the topic; however, it is not expanded as the speaker wishes that it should
have been. By preserving the topic, the speaker has to avoid developing his ideas.
For example: The man is coming out of ... his home (Palmberg: 1979).
The speaker intends to say something that is expected to be more specific than
“his home”; however, to avoid unexpected mistakes, the speaker deliberately chooses a
safe and simple choice.
2.3.

Compensatory strategies
According to Oxford (1990), compensatory strategies are those that “enable

learners to use the new language for either comprehension or production despite
limitations in knowledge”. It is too hard for the learners to maintain a conversation in a
foreign language. Thus, they use a set of strategies to compensate for their lack of the
language knowledge. These compensatory strategies include code switching, intralingua
transfer, cooperative strategies and non-linguistic strategies. The subclasses of
intralingua transfer contain paraphrasing or circumlocution, generalization, word coinage
and restructing.
2.3.1.

Code switching
Code switching is a phenomenon that happens subconsciously and that Wardaugh

(1998) say: “people may not be aware that they have switched, or be able to report,
following a conversation, which code they used for a particular topic”. Code switching
may be defined as the alternation between two or more languages and it usually occurs
naturally in the scheme of bilingualism.

17


Although it is an unconscious behavior, research shows that it is not just a random
phenomenon. Li Wei (1998) attests:
Sociolinguists who have studied code switching draw attention to extra-linguistic
factors such as topic, setting, relationships between participants, community norms and
values, and societal, political and ideological developments influencing speakers’ choice
of language in conversation.
Thus, code switching is a strategy used in a community in which people share
more than one language. The choice of code switching is possible only when the
participants of the conversation have the ability to decode the encoded message by the
speaker in another language.
For example:
A: Ước gì tớ có thể speak English hay như Mr. Phương nhỉ?
B: Cậu phải practice nhiều đấy! Tớ phải go to the market đây, hôm nay mother đi
vắng!
In the conversation, A and B is communicating in English; however, B suddenly
switch the code from Vietnamese to English and following that, A still understand B’s
answer. In this conversation, A and B have the common convention that they use English
as the device to use in their conversation. However, to apply this strategy, both speaker

and hearers must have the common knowledge of the foreign language that they intend to
use.
2.3.2.

Paraphrasing/ Circumlocution
Paraphrasing or circumlocution is a strategy used when the speaker does not

know or temporarily forgets the words and he tries to find out the ways to continue
expressing his ideas. To continue the talk without interruption to think of the word, the

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speaker may “goes round” the word, it means he may explain or give the description of
the words.
For example:
A: Yesterday I met Joé
B: Where?
A: Uhm ...in the ... er ... it is a church, but it’s much bigger.
B: A cathedral?
A: Something like that, but ...er ... many priests live and work there.
B: Is it a monastery?
A: Yeah, right! A monastery. I met her in the monastery.
It can be seen clearly from the example that A used the compensatory strategy to
explain the word she forgot.

She “goes round” the word by giving a list of the

description of the thing that she is trying to remember its linguistic form. This strategy
can help people continue the conversation without any interruption or pauses because it

sometimes can involve the listeners in speaker’s strategy (speaker gives the definition
and the explanation while listeners guess the word).
2.3.3.

Generalization
Generalization strategy is applied when the speaker use the general word to stand

for more specific words. General word may be the bound word and the replaced word
can be the word is a field.
For example: Last month, I had a very exciting holiday: I went to New York by
plane and then I went to a small island by boat.

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