Communication strategies in second-language acquisition
overcoming communication difficulties in a second language
In the course of learning a second language, learners will frequently encounter communication problems caused by a lack of linguistic resources. Communication strategies are strategies that learners use to overcome these problems in order to convey their intended meaning. Strategies used may include paraphrasing, substitution, coining new words, switching to the first language, and asking for clarification. These strategies, with the exception of switching languages, are also used by native speakers.
The term communication strategy was introduced by Selinker in 1972, and the first systematic analysis of communication strategies was made by Varadi in 1973. There were various other studies in the 1970s, but the real boom in communication strategy scholarship came in the 1980s. This decade saw a flurry of papers describing and analyzing communication strategies, and saw Ellen Bialystok link communication strategies to her general theory of second-language acquisition. There was more activity in the 1990s with a collection of papers by Kasper and Kellerman and a review article by Dörnyei and Scott, but there has been relatively little research on the subject since then.
Communication strategies
No comprehensive list of strategies has been agreed on by researchers in second-language acquisition, but some commonly used strategies have been observed:
Circumlocution
This refers to learners using different words or phrases to express their intended meaning. For example, if learners do not know the word grandfather they may paraphrase it by saying "my father's father".
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