Selasa, 12 Desember 2017

USE OF COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES BY TOURISM-ORIENTED EFL LEARNERS IN RELATION TO GENDER AND PERCEIVED LANGUAGE ABILITY Tao Zhao & Channarong Intaraprasert (CRITICAL REVIEW)

A. ARTICLE REVIEW
            I would like to review the article under the title “Use of Communication Strategies by Tourism-Oriented EFL Learners in Relation to Gender and Perceived Language Ability”. The researchers of this article are Tao Zhao & Channarong Intaraprasert. They come from School of Foreign Languages, Institute of Social Technology, Suranaree University of Technology, Thailand. This article was published in English Language Teaching; Vol. 6, No. 7; 2013 ISSN 1916-4742 E-ISSN 1916-4750 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education with 4 H index.
            The introduction is begun with the explanation from the researchers about the English development in China. In China, English has nowadays been increasingly learned and used as a foreign language with its rapid development of economy, which also facilitates the development of the tourism industry because Chinese governments are encouraging their citizens to learn English, parents are persuading, even forcing, their children to speak it and college students are doing English at the expense of their majors (Jiang, 2003). According to China Daily (2004), the World Tourism Organization (WTO) predicted that China would be the world's largest tourist destination by the year 2020 and English would play a more important role in the development of the world's tourism industry.
            The tourism-oriented EFL learners in colleges or universities are expected to have better English language proficiency, especially their oral communication competence for the future career. However, compared with the EFL learners in the developed areas of China, the EFL learners in underdeveloped or developing areas find it difficult to orally communicate due to lack of communicative opportunities and communication strategies while communicating with people (Zhang, 2007).
            The researchers proposed two research problems, they are:
1.      What is the overall frequency of each type of communication strategies employed by Chinese tourism-oriented EFL learners in relation to gender and perceived language ability?
2.      Does the employment of strategies for coping with oral communication problems vary significantly according to the gender of students and their perceived language ability? If it does, what are they?
The research design used was experimental research.  The participants were 814 tourism-oriented EFL learners (261 males and 553 females) were purposively selected from 6 universities (2 universities in Yunnan Province, 2 universities in Guizhou Province and 2 in Guangxi Province),
The instrument used was only communication strategy questionnaire (CSQ), that contained 20 items of strategies for coping with communication problems (CCP), 10 items of strategies for understanding interlocutor’s messages (UIM), and 5 items of strategies for carrying on the conversation as intended (CCI).
 The research was conducted during November and December, 2012, the researcher went to six universities in the Southwest China in person to collect the data responded to the CSQ, to which 814 university tourism-oriented EFL learners gave their responses and in analyzing the data the researchers used  Analysis of Variance (ANOVA),  Post-hoc Scheffe Test, Chi-square Test.
The result of the use of CSs and students’ gender, the other two individual items of UIM category was very strong. It suggested that females were more interested in interaction, and more cooperative to make themselves understood, obviously female students were active in CSs use and showed significantly higher frequency of individual CSs use and language strategy use is a gender-related issue. If females were more active, positive and skillful in using certain strategies to learn a language, then males may need more help in developing such strategies for communication. Meanwhile, in the use of CSs and perceived language ability there is no significant differences between CSs and CCP category and the significant differences of CS employment were found in the UIM, CCI categories and individual items of CS employment in relation to student’s perceived language ability.
The conclusion is in terms of gender, the results revealed that females were more interested in interaction and more cooperative to make them understood, while males had greater confidence, were more risk-taking, and more enjoyed doing the speaking activity than female students. There is no significant difference according to three aspects of the investigation related to gender and perceived language ability: the overall CS use, the CS category, and the individual CSs. However, interestingly, the findings showed that there were significant differences in both the CS category and the individual CSs.

B. CRITICS AND SUGGESTION

            I begin to criticize the introduction, in the introduction the researchers did not explain the reason they chose gender to be searched. The researchers only explained the need and importance of English in China and the development of tourism in China nowadays. The researchers explained the definition of communication strategies much more than the background.
            The researcher did not mention the significant of the study, they only mentioned the research problem and objective of research. The most important part of the research was the significant of the study, it should be clearly explained both theoretically and practically.
            The participants in the research were chosen from six universities in three provinces that were part of developing areas in China. It is representative enough but unfortunately the researchers chose 553 females and 261 males. The ratio of female and male were quite unfair, it will affect the result of statistical calculation that females tend to be more dominant in the communication.
            The instrument of this research was only questionnaire meanwhile the researchers wanted to measure the effect of communication strategies related to gender and perceived language ability. The instrument was quite not proper because in questionnaire the participants could manipulate the data easily. The researchers should measure the students’ communication strategy by using oral interview related to Faerch and Kasper (1983) and Littlemore’s theories (2003). The aspect that should be measured in the communication strategies are achievement strategies, reduction strategies, substitution strategies and reconceptualization strategies. When the researchers thought that conducting oral interview spent very long time (553 females and 261 males), they could reduce the participants or asking the collaborator to conduct the oral interview. The other instrument that could be used was tape recorder, then the researchers could listen the data more than once to avoid the data bias.
            Faerch and Kasper (1983) divided the communication strategies into achievement strategies and reduction strategies. The achievement strategies applies inter language, cooperative attitudes, and non-verbal languages meanwhile in the reduction applies topic avoidance, message abandonment, and meaning replacement. Littlemore (2003) stated more completely about the aspect of communication strategies, they are substitution and reconceptualization strategies. Substitution strategies apply original analogical/metaphoric comparison, conventional analogical/metaphoric comparison, literal comparison, word transfer with L2 word approximation, super-ordinate, simple word transfer, and substitution plus strategies. Meanwhile reconceptualization strategies apply componential analysis, function, activity, place and emotion. Those strategies were quite suitable and more valid to be used as instrument in this research.
            It is still related with the instrument that the content of the questionnaire were not clear enough, e.g. Strategies to Cope with Communication Difficulties (CCP) no 2: “Using familiar words, phrases or sentences”. The researchers did not state clearly about familiar words, phrases or sentences. The familiar words, phrases and sentences must be based on the student’s vocabulary, background of knowledge, culture etc, therefore it is quite subjective. The researchers should give the example the kinds of familiar words, phrases or sentences to make the same understanding, comprehension between one and other participants.
            Another example of unclear instrument in the questionnaire was Strategies to Cope with Communication Difficulties (CCP) no 5 “Using simple expressions”. The researchers did not give the example of the simple expression. The participants who almost never practice English would regard that most of expression were not simple expression. The researchers should give the guidance the kinds of simple expression.
            The researchers also translated questionnaire into Chinese language to make the participants more understand and easy to fulfill the questionnaire. In my opinion, it is not necessary for the researchers to translate because they wanted to measure the participants’ communication strategy in English. It means that starting from the questionnaire must be written in English only.
            The researchers discussed the result clearly and gave a lot of theories in the discussion. Every result of the research was supported by theories. It makes the readers more understand comprehensively.
            Finally I suggest that it is better for the researchers to conduct the qualitative research to know absolutely about the communication strategies used by the participants, both females and males. That qualitative research will give more information of the kinds and types communication strategy used by participants rather than statistical calculation. Theoretically, the result of the qualitative research can give more information and theories of the way in teaching speaking especially communication strategies. Practically, for the teacher and students, they can also improve the way of teaching and learning English especially speaking and communication strategies.

REFERENCES

China Daily. (2004). China a Top Tourist Destination by 2020. May 13, 2004. Beijing: China Daily.
Faerch, C., & Kasper, G. (1983b). On Identifying Communication Strategies in Interlanguage
Production. in C. Faerch, & G. Kasper (Eds.), Strategies in Interlanguage Communication. New York: Longman.

Jiang, Y. (2003). English as a Chinese language. English Today

Littlemore, J. (2003). The Communicative Effectiveness of Different Types of Communication
Strategy. Retrieved November 25th, from http://www.sciencedirect.com


Zhang, Y. (2007). Communication Strategies and Foreign Language Learning. US-China Foreign Language
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