Communication Strategies in L1 and L2 Same or Different英文文献.pdfVIP

Communication Strategies in LI andL2: Same or Different?1 THEO BONGAERTS and NANDA POULISSE University ofNijmegen This paper sets out to explore similarities and differences in LI and L2 referen- tial communication. Some inadequacies in existing taxonomies of L2 com- munication strategies are pointed out and an alternative taxonomy is presented in which similar distinctions are proposed to the ones made in studies of LI referential communication. An account of an experiment is given in which native speakers of Dutch had to describe, first in Dutch and then in English, a set of unconventional abstract shapes which have been used in a long series of studies of LI referential communication initiated by Krauss and Weinheimer (1964). It is demonstrated that the referential behaviour of the subjects in both task versions can be described in terms of choices between two main strategies: subjects set out to describe the shapes from a holistic or a segmental perspec- tive. In both task versions subjects exhibited a strong preference for holistic per- spectives. Differences between the two task versions were mainly quantitative in nature. In particular, subjects needed much more time for the English version than for the Dutch version. 1. INTRODUCTION Since 1973, when Varadi presented his much-quoted paper, there has been a constant flow of publications reporting on research on the strategies which second language learners employ in compensating for lexical deficits encoun- tered in situations in which they have to refer to an object, a concept, or an event (for a collection of articles see Faerch and Kasper 1983, and for a survey, Poulisse, Bongaerts, and Kellerman 1984). Such referential strategies have generally been termed communication strategie