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

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

TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC HẢI PHÒNG

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

IMPROVE THEIR COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Supervisor: Nguyen Van Phi, M.A

Haiphong, May 2016

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 NguyenVan Phi, M.A for his enthusiastic help and useful advice

Secondly, I would like to express my deep thanks to all the teachers in ForeignLanguage Department of Haiphong University for giving me helpful lectures that can beconsidered very good source of background knowledge to support my ideas

My thanks also go to my family as well as my classmates who haveenthusiastically helped and encouraged me during the time I conducted this work

Haiphong, May 2016

Nguyen Thi Tra Mi

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

Figure 1: Faerch and Kasper’s classification of communication strategiesFigure 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 languageTable 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

TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES

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

1.5.The design of the study 2

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4

2.1.Speaking skill 4

2.1.1 Speaking Skill definition 4

2.1.2 Characteristics of speaking skill 4

2.1.3 Speaking sub-skills 6

2.1.4 Learning speaking skill 8

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

2.2.2.2. Syntactic aspect 13

2.2.2.3. Lexical aspect 14

2.2.2.4. Topic aspect 14

2.2.2.5. Message abandonment 16

2.2.2.6. Meaning replacement 16

2.3.Compensatory strategies 17

2.3.1 Code switching 17

2.3.2 Paraphrasing/ Circumlocution 18

2.3.3 Generalization 19

2.3.4 Word coinage 20

2.3.5 Restructing 20

2.3.6 Non-linguistic strategies 21

2.4 Communicative competence 21

2.4.1 Components of communicative competence 24

2.4.2 Grammatical competence 24

2.4.3 Social linguistic competence 25

2.4.4 Strategic competence 26

2.4.5 Discourse competence 27

CHAPTER 3: METHODS OF THE STUDY 29

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 31

4.1 Results and discussion 31

4.1.1 Speaking strategies 31

4.1.2 Speaking topic 31

4.1.3 Language knowledge 33

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 40

4.1.6.3 Self-confidence 41

4.1.6.4 Personality 42

CHAPTER 5: RECOMMENDATIONS AND CONCLUSION 43

5.1 RECOMMENDATIONS 43

5.1.1 Listening in motion 43

5.1.2 Repeating hard work 44

5.1.3 Information Gap 44

5.1.4 Brainstorming 45

5.1.5 Storytelling 45

5.2 CONCLUSION 46

5.3 SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTHER RESEARCHES 49

REFERENCES

APPENDIX

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1.1 Rationale of the study

In the process of learning English, it is acknowledged that one of the mostimportant skills in learning English as well as other languages is speaking skill Speakingnot only helps students improve their communicative competence but also enables them

to develop language skills such as listening, writing, and reading Thus, it is extremelyimportant in learning language especially learning communicative English

Besides, in learning reality, many first year students struggled with speaking skillfor the reason that they can hardly have chance to practice this skill at lower levels Thisfact is true at Haiphong University in the progress of helping students with accessing todirect communication and improving their communicative competence at the very firststage

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 withspeaking 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 Englishmajor students at Haiphong University

2 To provide some solutions to the problems that the students encounter whilelearning speaking skill

1.3 Scope of the study

The study deals with the common problems that the first year English major students atHaiphong University usually have when they learn to speak English in the classrooms

1.4 Research questions

The study aims at answering two questions:

- What factors affect speaking skills of the first year English major students atHaiphong University?

- What are the solutions to improve the students’ speaking ability?

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, scopeand the structure of the study

- Chapter 2: Literature review

This chapter gives an overview on skills focusing on speaking skill, strategies andtheories 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 anddiscussed

- 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

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

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 knowdefinitions 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, andspeech is basic communication by sounds And according to him, speaking is the skillused by someone in daily life communication whether at school or outside The skill isacquired 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’sthoughts and feelings in spoken language [Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, 2009]

Speaking skill is considered the art of communication and a productive skill thathelps the speakers express their ideas, opinions or feelings to others by using words orsounds of articulation A person who has good speaking skills is the one who cangenerate words that can be understood by listeners and for that good speaking skill is auseful means to make the utterances clear and informative Speaking process should payattention 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 Toshow the characteristics of speaking skill, he investigates the characteristics of spokenlanguage In his point of view, it seems that speaking skill has not been identified as a

research area as willingly as, for example, reading or writing In other words, speaking isnot completely accepted as a separate area (Bygate, 1998:20) This idea may besupported by the above theory that speaking skill is the rally of different components.According to him, speech is more commonly unplanned, contextualized, informal andreciprocal than writing It is clear to see that speakers usually have very little time toprepare their utterances in a conversation Bygate claims: “oral language can beidentified 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 wholesentences In human’s daily dialogues, people do not have much time to think of whatthey are going to mention or to plan how the information should be sorted and this is thereason why they often have the common spoken utterances that are usually short andexpressive 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 ischaracterized by subordination of clauses Also, spoken language is characterized byrepetition of utterances, close relation to the context in question and features ofcorrecting speech

Since speaking skill is the ability to start and to maintain a conversation, it closelyrelates to the performance of the participants in a conversation As Turner (1998) writes

“If speaking is considered as a communicative performance, its assessment should bebased on scales and criteria which have been derived from the performance of thespeakers.”

According to Jack C Richard, there are three speaking situations that people canfind themselves; they are interactive, partially interactive, and non-interactive Interactivesituation 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 situationmay be face-to-face or not; face-to-face conversations occur regularly in daily life,

however phone calls can be seen as interactive situation although the speaker and thelistener are not speaking face-to-face Another situation of speaking is partiallyinteractive; the typical situation is the act of learning in the classroom The last type ofspeaking situation is non interactive This situation is usually the mono-dialogue whenthe speaker has no interaction with the listeners for example the TV speaker speaks onthe 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 thatpeople should master if they wish to have a good speaking skill These micro skills arethe subordinated skills that can be ministerial to the speaker’s oral skill

Firstly, speaker should try to make the distinctive sounds of a language clearlyenough so that people can distinguish them This includes making tonal distinctions.Pronunciation is a very important component to help listeners understand what thespeaker really wants to express, listeners can only decode the meaning by recognizing thesounds, so that the best way to make the speech easy to understand is making sounds thatare easy to recognize

Secondly, to help to make learner’s speaking skill better, they also should usestress and rhythmic patterns, and intonation patterns of the language clearly enough sothat people can understand what is said Rhythm, stress and intonation are importantfactors to express speaker’s ideas; a good speaker is a person who knows how to userhythmic patterns and intonation appropriately

Besides, using the correct forms of words is another good way to improvelearner’s speaking skill This may mean, for example, changes in the tense, case, orgender For example, to indicate singular form of the noun “girl”, it can be said “She is abeautiful girl”; however, it is not accepted when people say “they are beautiful girl” but

“they are beautiful girls” The plural form of the noun “girl” must be “girl”, this iscommonly 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 abeautiful girl” due to the effect of their mother tongues’ system

For the oral skill, vocabulary is very important to transmit speaker’s ideas to thelisteners 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 vocabularysource so that he can use the glossary appropriately Following that, various vocabulariescan make the utterances flexible and expressive

However, vocabulary should be used in an appropriate way; speakers should usethe register or language variety that is appropriate to the situation and the relationship tothe conversation partner Before speaking, speakers should determine the style of theconversation: formal or informal and based on that, they can use acceptable words in thesituation

Another micro skill that can help people speak better is making clear to thelisteners the main sentence constituents, such as subject, verb, object, by whatever meansthe 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 speechcan emphasize what the speaker wants to focus There are definitely some differencesbetween these two sample sentences: “I want a house” and “A house is what I want” Inthe first sentence, “A house” is placed at the back of the sentence; however, it is placedinitially in the second one, the place can show the emphasis of the speaker In the secondsentence, “A house” is emphasized so that the speaker does not say in the normal way as

in the first sentence

Following the above micro skill, this micro one is to make the main ideas standout from supporting ideas or information This is to focus on the main ideas of theconversation Leading listeners to the key content of the conversation is very necessary ifthe speaker wishes to achieve the goal of the conversation.

The conversation is like a river, it should have the flow to connect the ideas sothat listeners can follow the conversation That is why speakers should have the skill tomake the discourse hang together so that people can follow what they are saying Theconnectors 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 ofspeaking 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 speakingability the measure of knowing a language Many people define fluency as the ability toconverse with others, much more than the ability to read, write, or comprehend orallanguage They regard speaking as the most important skill they can acquire, and theyassess 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 requireslearners a set of items to study So what is meant by “learning”? As far as he stated in histheory, learning speaking skill described as follow:

- Produce the English speech sounds and sound patterns: Pronunciation is a veryimportant part in learning any languages including English

- Use word and sentence stress, intonation patterns and rhythm of the secondlanguage:

- 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, whichcalled 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, whenlearning speaking skill, a talk is considered interactions when it has the followingcharacteristics Above all, that talk can create social interactions among people Andthen, the talk can address the face needs of participants Everyone has his own socialimage that he wants to save and improve in front of the public; interaction talk is the onethat may address this social image of the people involved in the conversation Besides, aninteraction 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 arementioned and become the main content of the conversation Meanwhile, a talk is atransaction 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 participantswants to transmit Lastly, a talk is performance when there is audience and speaker, thespeaker must be single so that there is no interaction in the talk and of course, the speakermust create a “product”, here, it may be a welcome speech, class talk or businesspresentation, etc

Coming back to the set of goals by Jack Richards, beside that the talk must showthe characteristics of one of three aspects mentioned above, the speaking class should

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 mainphases: pre speaking, speaking and tasks; sufficient language and other supports aresupplied 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 speakingtime Learning a language that is not their mother tongue, students may find it difficult toexpress their ideas Moreover, speaking skill is a productive skill then students need asmuch practice as possible; they really need to have time to practice speaking samples.Practicing time may help them make acquaintance with new structures, sounds andwords

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 thesenders to the receivers In a technical description, it is said that the sender encodes amessage and the receivers decode it Communication problems occur when the encodedmessage sent is not the message received In other words, the massage sent is not themessage received For example, the mother implies that the daughter should bring hersome 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’simplication so that she does not bring any water but says “I am thirsty, too” In thiscircumstance, the encoded message is not decoded Sometimes, communication problemsmay occur when the encoded message is incorrectly decoded For example, the mothersays to her boy: “children should not watch films!” when she cognizes that her son iswatching 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 sondoes not turn off the television but changes the channel into another program The boymisunderstands his mother’s implication that causes the problem in communication

Rubin (1987) considers communication strategies as those strategies which areused by a learner to promote and continue communication with others rather thanabandon it Brown (2000) suggests that communication strategies pertain to theemployment of verbal or nonverbal mechanisms for the productive communication ofinformation Besides, in the book named “Communication strategies”, Bialystok (1990)quotes Coder’s definition about communication strategies: “a systematic techniqueemployed 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 inreaching a particular communicative goal” Faerch’s classification of communicationstrategies is a standard classification that is approved by many other authors

1 Phonological 1 Topic avoidance 1 Code switching

2 Morphological 2 Message abandonment 2 Intralingua transfer

3 Syntactic 3 Meaning Replacement a Generalization

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 twocategories: avoidance behavior and achievement behavior Each of them is classified orcomprised of other subcategories The avoidance behavior consists of formal reductionand functional reduction The formal reduction can be phonological, morphological,syntactic and lexical The functional reduction consists of reduction of speech actmodality and reduction of the propositional context The reduction of the propositionalcontext can be topic avoidance, message abandonment and meaning replacement Theachievement behavior is divided into subclasses such as code switching, intralingua

transfer, cooperative strategies and non-linguistic strategies The intralingua transfers cangeneralization, paraphrasing, word coinage and restructing.

2.2.2 Factors affecting speaking skill

Avoidance strategies involve the tactics and techniques people use when the donot want to be influenced by the other participants of a conversation AvoidanceStrategies or avoidance behavior is also called reduction strategies These strategies areused when people come across difficulties in their communication caused by their lack ofadequate knowledge of the language The avoidance strategies include the followingstrategies:

2.2.2.1 Phonological aspect

Phonological avoidance is a strategy used when people have difficulty inpronouncing words Usually, people try to avoid using the words that they are not surewith the pronunciation, instead of using these words; they try to use other ones that havesimilar meaning to replace

For example, instead of saying the word “breeze” because people cannot makesure whether it is pronounced /bri:z/ or /brεz/, they find another words that can bez/, they find another words that can beaccepted in the situation such as “wind” Obviously, phonological strategy is reallyhelpful to make the utterances clear to the listeners This strategy can help speakers limitthe 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 mothertongue in the second language r he fails to express his ideas by using an inappropriatestructure

For example:

A (L2 learner): I lost my road

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 anotherstructure that is understandable

2.2.2.3 Lexical aspect

Learners use this strategy when they have lack of vocabulary, instead of using thecorrect word, they may try to find out the words that have the same meaning Forexample, instead of using the word “hippopotamus”, students may use the word

“buffalo” In many circumstances, this strategy is very useful to maintain the talkbecause 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 thepresident 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 thelocal hospital” and the president of the primary school” At the first place, “president” isused 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 orconcepts that may pose language difficulties for them According to Corder (1978), topicavoidance “occurs when the learner does not talk about concepts (or topic) for which thevocabulary 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 directshis conversation away from the troublesome topic There are three ways to avoid the

topic: people can pretend not to understand the speaker, change the topic or avoidresponding 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 theempty account; however, his message is not decoded awarely by speaker B when shepretends not to understand A’s message

Another way to avoid the topic that people do not feel confident or interested totalk 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 thetopic 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 uninterestedtopics 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-corporationwith A This is a typical signal to avoid the topic when people are participating in aconversation

2.2.2.5 Message abandonment

Corder (1978) says: “message abandonment occurs when the learner startsexpressing 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 notdeveloped 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 forsomething (places, things) preceding the idea; however, the topic is changed suddenlybecause after a short pause, the speaker focuses on the description of the man: “it’s astone-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 maymean 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 littleinformation relating to A’s question At least, in this circumstance avoidance strategy canhelp B continue the conversation because normally, A would not ask B this questionagain

2.2.2.6 Meaning replacement

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 expandhis linguistic resources and overcome his communicative problem, he deliberatelychooses to be less specific than he originally intended to be” This means that the speakerdoes not omit the topic; however, it is not expanded as the speaker wishes that it shouldhave 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 asafe and simple choice

2.3 Compensatory strategies

According to Oxford (1990), compensatory strategies are those that “enablelearners to use the new language for either comprehension or production despitelimitations in knowledge” It is too hard for the learners to maintain a conversation in aforeign language Thus, they use a set of strategies to compensate for their lack of thelanguage knowledge These compensatory strategies include code switching, intralinguatransfer, cooperative strategies and non-linguistic strategies The subclasses ofintralingua transfer contain paraphrasing or circumlocution, generalization, word coinageand 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 switchingmay be defined as the alternation between two or more languages and it usually occursnaturally in the scheme of bilingualism

Although it is an unconscious behavior, research shows that it is not just a randomphenomenon 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 sharemore than one language The choice of code switching is possible only when theparticipants of the conversation have the ability to decode the encoded message by thespeaker 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 đivắng!

In the conversation, A and B is communicating in English; however, B suddenlyswitch the code from Vietnamese to English and following that, A still understand B’sanswer 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 speakerand hearers must have the common knowledge of the foreign language that they intend touse

2.3.2 Paraphrasing/ Circumlocution

Paraphrasing or circumlocution is a strategy used when the speaker does notknow or temporarily forgets the words and he tries to find out the ways to continueexpressing his ideas To continue the talk without interruption to think of the word, the

speaker may “goes round” the word, it means he may explain or give the description ofthe words.

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 toexplain the word she forgot She “goes round” the word by giving a list of thedescription of the thing that she is trying to remember its linguistic form This strategycan help people continue the conversation without any interruption or pauses because itsometimes can involve the listeners in speaker’s strategy (speaker gives the definitionand the explanation while listeners guess the word)

2.3.3 Generalization

Generalization strategy is applied when the speaker use the general word to standfor more specific words General word may be the bound word and the replaced wordcan be the word is a field

For example: Last month, I had a very exciting holiday: I went to New York byplane and then I went to a small island by boat

In the above example, the word “went” is used twice “Went” is the bound wordand the speaker uses it to replace the subordinate words in the field Respectively,

“went by plane” should be “flied by plane” and “went by boat” should be “sailed by boat” The vocabulary field whose bound word is “go” contain subordinate wordssuch as fly, sail, walk, run, etc

2.3.4 Word coinage

Word coinage is the phenomenon of making new words in the process ofexpressing ideas The speaker wants to refer to something; however, he does not knowthe words or temporarily forgets it, he may create new words to illustrate These wordsmay not exist in the target language’s vocabulary; however, listeners are still able tounderstand what the speaker means

For example: During the trip, we visited many places At Grand Canyon, westayed for two days and a er a sleep day

Actually, the speaker is creating a new word “sleep day” when she cannotremember the word “night” In fact, this strategy is commonly used in dailyconversations and many words have been created such as “ice-box” to refer to “fridge”,

“air-ball” to refer to “balloon”, etc

2.3.5 Restructing

This strategy is used when the speaker wants to change the structure of theutterance to make it easier to understand For example:

A: what are you doing?

B: I am looking for my wallet

A: What does it look like?

B: It is a brand-new one and it’s more er it’s bigger than yours

Obviously, Speaker B changes the structure from comparison with long adjectives

to comparison with short ones Initially, speaker B tries to describe the wallet with

“more” and a long adjective is expected to appear but then he corrects the structure into

“bigger” to make the description clearer This phenomenon is sometimes considered theself correction or addition

2.3.6 Non-linguistic strategies

Non-linguistic strategy can be gestures, facial expression or sound imitation Realexperiences show that this strategy is very useful to express their ideas For example,instead of saying “she is an athlete”, the speaker may say “she is ” and then makes agesture of running to help listeners understand

Besides, the facial expression is very helpful especially to express the adjectivesfor example, to indicate the word “surprising”, the speaker can make the surprising face

Moreover, Sound imitation is a very good way to help people “survive” in theconversations for instance; speaker can imitate the sound of the animals or the vehiclessuch as “quack quack” to refer to the ducks, “ding ding” to refer to the bells, etc

People can apply different strategies to help them communicate better in theconversations, after a period of practice, it may become the skill of communicating

For many people, communication is simply the talks that happen naturally in dailylives Actually, the fundamental problem with defining communication is nothing elsebut the fact that information exchange is only necessary but not a sufficient condition forunderstanding the complex process of communication “Communicative competence” iscomprised from two words which means “competence to communicate” Communicativecompetence is a concept introduced by Dell Hymes and further developed by many otherauthors Beside Dell Hymes, Lane, Canale and Swain and other researchers are alsointerested in the topic

Hymes, a sociolinguist as well as ethnographer of communication is the firstpeople introducing the idea of communicative competence in terms of the

“appropriateness of social cultural significance of the utterance” (Canale and Swain,1980) His theory is derived from Noam Chomsky’s distinction between competence andperformance According to Tatsuko Ohno, Chomsky’s competence is “the sharedknowledge of the ideal speaker-listener set in a completely homogeneous speechcommunity Such underlying knowledge enables a user of a language to produce andunderstand an infinite set of sentences out of a set of a finite set of rule” Following that,linguistic competence is the subconscious knowledge of grammar rules of his or herlanguage following which the speaker can generate meaningful sentences Turning back

to Hymes’ view, he retains Chomsky’s idea of grammatical competence and looks atcontextual relevance as one of the crucial aspects of people’s knowledge of language Inhis theory, Hymes affirms that meaning in communication is determined by the speechcommunity and actual communicative event which includes the following components:settings, participants, ends, act sequence, key and instrumentalities, norms of interactionand interpretation, and genre These components are considered the speech context inwhich the conversation takes place This means only in real contexts, an utterance candetermine its meaning or function In different situations, an utterance has differentmeanings and performs different functions For example, “where are you going?” is aquestion; however, it must be considered in different circumstances: it can be a question

if the speaker really wants do ask listener’s destination, it also can be a greeting if thespeaker does not really want to know listener’s destination but he asks as a socialetiquette

Another concept which is mentioned in Hymes’ theory is the feasibility In hisview, the feasibility looks at whether and to what extend something is possible under anycircumstances It means that this feature refers to the possible uses of some constructions

in the language For example, no one says: “it’s a beautiful, modern, expensive, luxury,

equipped, tall, big, steady house” however this structure is grammatical in Englishgrammar system.

Besides, some other authors such as Lane or Canary also pay much attention onthis aspect Lane defines: “communicative competence is the degree to which acommunicator’s goals are achieved through effective and appropriate interaction.Obviously, Dr Lane emphasizes the importance of the appropriateness of the utterances

in the verbal interaction Also, Canary studies the communicative competence in terms ofthe criteria for asserting communication competence According to him, there are sixcriteria, they are adaptability or flexibility, conversational involvement, conversationalmanagement, empathy, effectiveness and appropriateness

In 1980, Canale and Swain develop Hymes’ theory of communicative competenceand then it is edited in 1983 and becomes widely accepted all over the world The theory

in 1980 defines communicative competence in terms of three components: grammatical,sociolinguistic and strategic competence Following that, the 1983’s theory adds onemore component which is called discourse component Canale and Swain’s theory isvery important in second language learning because it is considered the first step for therevolution in learning of language Canale and Swain list a set of criteria to definecommunication According to them:

- It is a form of social interaction

- It has a higher degree of unpredictability and creativity

- It takes place in discourse and social cultural contexts

- It is carried out under psychological and other conditions such asmemory, fatigue or distractions

- It always has purpose

- It involves authentic material

- It is judged as successful or not depending on the outcome (forexample, an utterance like “How go Central Park?” can be regarded assuccessful if it is answered by an appropriate answer).

Obviously, it is necessary to analyze how people become language users and whatspeakers know about their mother tongue that can enable them to use it effectively in notonly L2 learning but also in L1 learning Thus, analyzing the mechanisms used by nativespeakers would help teachers much in deciding what students should learn to becomegood language users As a result, the field of communicative competence shows itsimportant role in language learning and learning

2.4.1 Components of communicative competence

Canale ans Swain (1980) develop Hymes’s theory of communicative competencewith three components; however, along with the social development as well as thechanges in the needs of language learning and learning, they accomplish their theory in

1983 with four components: