About this workshop

Introduction

Communication strategies have been defined in Second Language Acquisition as compensating for a lack of linguistic competence, and as requiring planning. This workshop problematizes this view, suggesting that a focus on interaction as action (as presented in Levinson’s notion of the “Interaction Engine”) reveals many of the things we consider to be communication strategies to be integral elements of interaction. The workshop draws upon a short conversational excerpt in Japanese to highlight these notions.

Time commitment

35 minutes

Who Should Attend?

Language instructors…

Before you start

1) What are communication strategies? Why do language users employ them?
2) As a language instructor, do you feel learners should be encouraged to use communication strategies?
3) Have you ever been in a situation where you were not able to communicate using your linguistic skills? Were you able to get through interactions anyway? If so, how? If not, why?

Workshop videos

What are Communication Strategies

In this introduction, we discuss the traditional view of communication strategies, including how they are referenced by the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR).

The Interaction Engine

Here, Rue introduces Levinson’s (2006) notion of the “Interaction Engine”, the various elements that are involved in human communication. He argues that many of the things we consider communication strategies are related to the elements of the Interaction Engine, and are less about compensating for a lack of knowledge and are more about finding ways to succesfully conduct the actions that make up human interaction.

“Long Name”

In this section, we look at some data from a Japanese as a Second Language “Conversation for Learning” (Kasper, 2004). We analyze the data to show how the participants use a variety of resources and practices to work through communicative difficulty. See the attached transcription.
* This data was also presented and analyzed in Burch (2014).

Discussion: The Pros and Cons of Communication Strategies

The faculty discusses the pros and cons of encouraging learners to use communication strategies in the sense discussed in Part 1.

Documents:

Rethinking Strategies

Quizzes

Rethinking Strategies in Interaction: Actions and Resources