COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES.pdfVIP

COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES, FOREIGNER TALK, AND REPAIR IN INTERLANGUAGE’ Elaine Tarone University of Minnesota A framework for the study of interlanguage strategies of communication, production, and learning is established, and rigorous criteria are proposed to define communication strategies within that framework. Research on communi- cation strategies is related to research on foreigner talk (Hatch 1979, Hatch, Shapka, and Gough 1978), and repair in interlanguage (Schwartz 1977,Fathman 1980). The claim is made that much of this research focuses on the same kind of phenomenon in interlanguage communication, but that the conceptual frame- works used by researchers investigating communication strategies, foreigner talk, and repair have in the main been different, and hence caused researchers to “see” different things in the same data. A substantial body of research has been accumulated, using techniques of discourse analysis, on the nature of foreigner talk and repairs in interactions involving second language learners (e.g., Schwartz 1977, Hatch, Shapka, and Cough 1978, Hatch 1979, Hatch and Long, 1980). A smaller body of research is developing which focuses on the nature of “communication strategies” in interlanguage (e.g., Varadi 1973, Tarone 1978, 1979, Galvan and Campbell 1978, Faerch and Kasper 1980). Both bodies of research em- phasize the interactional nature of human communication and stress the importance of including the interlocutor’s input in descriptions of learners’ use of their interlanguage. Hatch (1979) has called for