WORKING MEMORY CAPACITY, TOPIC FAMILIARITY, AND COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES (PRE PROPOSAL)

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

This research will investigate the effect of working capacity memory and topic familiarity on communication strategy. This chapter is concerned with background of the study, statement of the problem, hypothesis, significance of the study, and definition of key terms.

1.1  Background of the Study

Language learning cannot be separated from its culture. Language is a clear manifestation of culture. A word can has both cognitive meaning and cultural meaning. Cultural meaning refers to words and expressions which represent cultural perception, values and behavior. At discourse level, the link between language, communication and culture is virtually inseparable.

In real life, people use language to communicate to other people. People often use the same language with people they talk to in order to make them understand and get the meaning of the message. This event can be called as communication. Communication problems occur when the encoded message differs from the decoded message. In other words, the message sent is not the message received. In daily communicative interaction, communication strategies are often used as communication is basically functional. Communication is not just what a message is about but what it wants to achieve.

Foreign language learners may encounter various communication problems when their inter language is limited. In order to convey their messages and remain in a conversation until their communication goal is achieved, ESL (English as a Second Language) learners need to employ communication strategies, which have been defined generally as devices used by second language learners to overcome perceived barriers to achieving specific communication goals (Faerch & Kasper, 1983).

Miscommunication occurs when one interprets communicative rules of one culture in terms of the rules of another culture. In the process of learning a second language, learners make some errors due to first language interference. By knowing strategies to avoid misinterpretation between different backgrounds of speakers, the problems mentioned before shall be avoided easily.

Corder (1983) defines such strategies as “a systematic technique employed by a speaker to express his meaning when faced with some difficulty”. The term communication strategies is often limited to strategies resorted to when the second language learner has difficulty with communicating. Thus, communication strategy is used when things go wrong, it is “a spare type for emergencies”.

Ellis (1994 p. 182) defines communication strategies as psycholinguistic plans which exist as part of the language user’s communicative competence. They are potentially conscious and serve as substitutes for production plans which the learner is unable to implement”. Ellis (1994) also suggests that communication strategies be seen as a set of skills, which learners use in order to overcome their inadequacies in the target language. When students fail to communicate because of their limited knowledge in the target language they have to find a way to communicate in other ways, for example by imitating sounds, code-switching or avoiding the topic.

Communication strategies are usually associated with spoken language and research has shown that students tend to use various communication strategies when they are unable to express what they want to say because of their lack of resources in their second language (L2) (Hedge, in Lai 2010). When learners experience that fluency in their first language (hereafter L1) does not follow the same pattern as their L2, a gap is created in the knowledge of their L2. These gaps can take many forms: a word, a phrase, a structure, a tense marker or an idiom (Bialystok 1990:1). In order to overcome that gap, learners have two options: they can either leave the original communicative goal or they can try to reach other alternative plans and use other linguistic means that they have at their disposal.

In line with the explanation above, the researcher may say that communication strategies are the strategies of communication that someone of non-native speaker of one language should know in order to avoid some problems that may occur during the conversation with the interlocutors. It is also important to know that culture and language cannot be separated, therefore in the context of language teaching, the knowledge of language and its culture need to be taught as well to second language learners. By letting the learners know about it, they may solve their problems during communication and may choose properly which strategies of communication they are going to use. The role of teachers in introducing communication strategies to the learners could determine their learners’ successfulness in facing problems of communication occur in real life situations.

This is an issue, in that working memory capacity may be differentially affected, depending on the communication strategy factor because there could be qualitative differences in the complexity level of speaking tasks involved in each case (Sasaki, 2000) and the degree of activated and reconstructed schematic information stored in long term memory (LTM).

Particularly, the more difficult tasks given to the students the more complicated working memory processing will be. Alptekin (2009) and Weissheimer (2011) in their research found that unlike recall tasks, recognition tasks fail to detect individual differences in working-memory storage. They further indicate that composite scores of storage and processing correlate with inferential rather than literal understanding in L2 speaking when recall based rather than recognition based speaking span tests are used to measure storage. In L2 speech production, it was found that both lower and higher span individuals experienced increase in L2 speech production scores between phases. However, only lower span participants had a statistically significant improvement in working memory scores over trials.

Furthermore, the cognitive resources underlying speaking as a whole can be associated with the processing and storage functions of working memory capacity. It is important to probe what role working memory plays speaking skill take in terms of its multilevel representational architecture, particularly with respect to its specific dimension of literal, academic, public speaking.

Working memory is considered one of the essential constructs within the area of cognitive research. There is general agreement that memory has multiple components, each serving different time and/or processing functions. Working memory more specifically has gained considerable interest in numerous fields of psychology (including, but not limited to, cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, and neuropsychology) throughout the last two decades. Research in those areas has investigated a variety of topics, such as the relation between working memory and general intelligence (Conway, Kane, & Engle, 2003).

From cognitive point of view, cognitive psychologists believe that knowledge can be organized in the form of schemata background knowledge or knowledge of the world which is essential for the way we learn language Long (1990). As cited by Sarandi (2010), the term background information covers a range of knowledge types containing the world knowledge, topic familiarity and prior experience in a field (content schemata), the expectation of the rhetoric of a text (formal schemata) Carrel and Eisterhold, (1983), and the information gotten from earlier input, usually termed as co-textual information Brown and Yule (1983). Through stimulating previous knowledge, readers or listeners' familiarity with text content appears to help general comprehension, in fact, in this process; the focus of the learners is on meaning not form of the written or spoken text.

Chang (2006) revealed that while reading comprehension monitoring efforts were motivated by both topic familiarity and linguistic difficulty, inferencing events were primarily facilitated by topic familiarity. Pulido (2007) also found that familiarity of the learners with the topics of the reading tasks leads to better comprehension of the texts. Combs (2008) revealed that neither typographically enhanced text nor the topic familiarity training had a significant impact on the acquisition of form. Schmidt-Rinehart (1994) indicated that the subjects scored considerably higher on the familiar topic than on the new one. In a similar study, Sadighi and Zare (2002) provided some evidence in support of the effect of background knowledge on listening comprehension. Othman and Vanathas (2004) also indicated that topic familiarity has an influence on listening comprehension. Chang & Read (2007) also revealed that providing background knowledge and familiarizing the learners with the listening tasks’ topics is the most effective support for listening comprehension of the EFL learners. Rahimpour and Hazar (2007) revealed that the topic familiarity had a positive effect on accuracy and fluency of participants’ oral output but it had a negative effect on complexity of their oral performance. Hayati (2009) concluded that familiarity of the language learners with culturally-oriented language material promotes the Iranian EFL learners’ listening proficiency.

As it can be concluded from the results of the above mentioned studies that have been done on the effects of topic familiarity or prior knowledge on L2 learners’ reading and listening comprehension, in most of them, it has positive effects on reading and listening proficiency. However, according to Rahimpour and Hazar (2007), it is necessary to consider topic familiarity as a task feature in syllabus design and materials development. So, because of its importance in topic-based language teaching, there is a need to consider the effects of topic familiarity on four language skills.

1.2  Statement of the Problem

In general, this study will be intended to investigate the effect of working capacity memory and topic familiarity on speaking strategy. To be more specific, this study addresses the following research question:

1.      Does foreign language working capacity memory affect EFL communication strategy?

2.      Does topic familiarity affect EFL communication strategy?

3.      Is there any interaction between working capacity memory and topic familiarity in the EFL communication strategy?

1.3  Significance of the Study

The significance of the research here, theoretically it will contribute to more understanding of the communication strategy. The result of this study hopefully will enrich the body of knowledge about how working capacity memory and topic familiarity influence the students’ communication strategy in EFL context, more specifically in Indonesia. Practically, the finding of this research will give contribution to the ELT teachers and learners in Indonesia about the effect of working capacity memory and topic familiarity on communication strategy.

1.4  Hypothesis

In addressing the research question, the researcher will develop the following hypothesis:

1.      There is an effect of working memory capacity on students’ communication strategy.

2.      There is an effect of topic familiarity on students’ communication strategy.

3.      There is an interaction effect between working memory capacity and topic familiarity on students’ communication strategy.

The hypothesis will aim to lead the researcher to choose the research method as the roadmap to understand the output of the research. Moreover, the hypothesis will also help the researcher predict the outcome dealing with the effect of working capacity memory and topic familiarity on students’ communication strategy.

1.5  Definition of Key Terms

The definition will be given here to avoid misunderstanding and misinterpretation about the terms used in this research.

1.      Working capacity memory is a limited capacity information processing system that allows the active maintenance of information in the face of concurrent distraction while tackling a variety of cognitive task.

2.      Topic familiarity is the mismatch between topic and speakers’ domain knowledge.

3.      Communication strategy is the strategy of communication that someone of non-native speaker of one language should know in order to avoid some problems that may occur during the conversation with the interlocutors.

CHAPTER II

RESEARCH METHOD

This chapter discusses some topics related to research method employed in this study. Those topics are the research design, population and sample, instrumentation, data collection, and data analysis.

2.1 Research Design

            This study will be conducted for the advanced level of the university students. The participants involved in this study will be the university students in the seventh semester of English department who have the minimum score 450 of University English proficiency test. Besides, the students will have been fulfilling speaking course in the S1 degree of English education department. The researcher will assume that the students have sufficient knowledge to understand in speaking. This research will try to investigate how working capacity memory and topic familiarity affect communication strategy in substitution, reconceptualization, reduction and achievement strategies in the students’ speaking skill. To enhance all the objectives of this study, the researcher will use daily topic, then the researcher will connect the history, meaning, and working memory capacity, and topic familiarity in the EFL speaking. In short the procedure of this study of this study can be seen in Figure 2.1:

			Preliminary Study
	Selecting the participants of the study by asking the students to do the University’s English Proficiency test
		Administering students’ working capacity memory test through communication strategy test

 

Administering the students’ topic familiarity test through familiar and unfamiliar topic

                                           

Figure 2.1 The Procedure of Study

            In order to control individual differences in communication, it will be decided that the best method for this investigation is to give experimental conditions to all of the participants. The design clearly has an advantage over independent design in which the participants will be divided into some groups with different treatment.

            Related to the research design, there will be two experimental conditions: working capacity memory and topic familiarity (with two types: familiar and unfamiliar topic).  Table 2.1 will demonstrate that all of the participants will be categorized into two levels of working capacity memory i.e. upper and lower, takes part in all experimental conditions. In short two-way ANOVA will be applied in the present piece of research.

Table 2.1 Experimental Condition for Communication Strategies in Relation to

Working Capacity Memory and Topic Version

		Topic
		Familiar	Unfamiliar
Working Memory Capacity	High Capacity	N students	N students
	Low Capacity	N students	N students

2.3 Population and Sample

            The population of this study will be Indonesian undergraduate students enrolled in an English-medium university in Indonesia. They should be successful on the university’s English proficiency test; the minimum requirement score is 450. Furthermore, the researcher will decide that the sample of the study will be the seventh semester students of English department of Kanjuruhan University of Malang who will meet to be the participants of this study. The most important criteria of this study will be that the students should get score 450 in university’s English proficiency tests. The researcher will decide that the sample of this study was about 70 students. The sample of this study will be decided on the basis of the students’ score of English proficiency test.

2.4 Research Instrument

            It will be very important to determine research instruments. In this study, there will be four kinds of instrument used to measure the variables under investigation. They were speaking test, topic to be spoken (familiar and unfamiliar), tape recorder, and observation checklist.

2.5 Data Collection

            To get the information about working capacity memory, I would like to use speaking span test as the instrumentation to measure the students’ memory storage. The test was developed by Daneman and Carpenter (1980). I would measure the students’ topic familiarity through familiar and unfamiliar topic reflecting the students’ own culture and background knowledge. I also asked the previous lecturers who taught speaking about the topic given in the speaking class.

2.6 Data Analysis

In order to prove the hypothesis I would like to use two way ANOVA to know the interaction of working capacity memory and topic familiarity on students’ communication strategy. The instrument that I would use is oral test (pre test, post test), tape recorder, observation checklist.

  

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