CC BY
9PEDAGOGICAL SCIENCES
DEVELOPING COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES IN PROFESSIONALLY ORIENTED SPEECH OF
IT SPECIALISTS BY MEANS OF A ROLE-PLAY
Khomyk A.
PhD Student of the Department of English Philology and Methods of English Language Teaching Volodymyr Hnatiuk National Pedagogical University of Ternopil, Ternopil
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4975-4404
Abstract
The article focuses on defining the most important communication strategies for professionally oriented communication of IT specialists. The theoretical analysis carried out within our research allowed us to outline informative, stimulating, emotional, evaluation activity, cooperative strategies and strategies of self-presentation as essential communication strategies for IT specialists' professionally oriented communication. The conducted experiment revealed role-play being the most effective method of developing communication strategies in IT students.
Keywords: communication strategies, professionally oriented communication, IT specialists, role-play.
Introduction
In their professionally oriented communication IT specialists communicate with colleagues and customers from all over the world. Hence, they should be able to communicate globally using English as the global language and the medium of their professional interaction. Thus, their English for professional purposes communicative competence should be built and developed at a relevant level. In case their language level does not allow them to communicate efficiently, strategic competence is considered to be the one that can help specialists achieve communicative goals and thereby fulfill their professional roles and functions.
The aim of the article is to define the most important communication strategies for professionally oriented communication of IT specialists and reveal effective methods of building strategic competence in professionally oriented speech of prospective IT specialists.
With this in mind let us define what the strategic competence is and what is its structure.
The history of the research on strategic competence and communication strategies traces back to Selinker's work on interlanguage [17, p. 209-231]. The scientist considers communication strategies as byproducts of students' attempts to express meanings in their spontaneous speech on the background of their limited target language system.
Different aspects of knowledge (target language knowledge, contextual, world, paralingusitic) contribute to the speaker's performance. The low-proficiency learners with scarce linguistic knowledge or cultural knowledge at their disposal seem to compensate for this by drawing on their world and paralinguistic knowledge. Speech production in the mother tongue is carried out automatically, in foreign language communication can become sometimes unsuccessful. The stages of speech production become more conscious process. S. Thornbury defines four main stages of speech production: conceptualization, formulation, articulation and self-monitoring [20, p. 3-6].
Consideration of a strategic competence as a cognitive capacity implies a set of metacognitive processes (strategies) which can be thought of as higher order executive processes that provide a cognitive management function in language use and language learning [2, p.70].
The above considerations confirm the relevance of the study of interactive instruction methods like a role play for effective building in prospective IT specialists English for professional purposes communicative competence and one of its key components - strategic competence.
Literature review
M. Canale views strategic competence as an essential component of communicative competence along with grammatical, sociolinguistic, discourse competences [6]. M. Canale and M. Swain refer strategic competence to the learners' use of strategies (verbal and non-verbal communication strategies) [7, p. 1-47]. The scientists define strategic competence as one that is called into action to compensate for breakdowns in communication due to performance variables or insufficient competence. M. Canale and M. Swain emphasize the role of compensatory strategies in the structure of strategic competence [7, p. 1-47]. Following M. Canale and M. Swain, G. Rababah claims that strategic competence deals with use of strategies in the communicative course of foreign language with the aim to bridge the gap of linguistic knowledge [16, p. 145-165].
L. Bachman defines strategic competence as the capacity that relates language competence or knowledge of language to the language user's knowledge of structure and the features of the context in which communication takes place [1, p. 107]. L. Bachman widens the circle of strategies composing the structure of strategic competence and defines metacognitive strategies, cognitive strategies, execution strategies and assessment strategies. In scientists' view, strategic competence should embrace all aspects of performing communicative tasks [1].
L. Mariani views strategic competence as one of the areas of communicative competence that lies in the ability to solve communication problems and cope with unexpected problems in communication by means of limited amount of language knowledge and skills that communicators possess [13, p. 11-14]. Following M. Canale and M. Swain [7, p. 1-47], L. Mariani claims that strategic competence is developed through communication strategies [13, p. 11-14].
T. Paribakht defines strategic competence as the learner's ability to try out different means for solving any language-related problems, whether in learning or in communication [15, p. 132-146]. The scientist suggested that the notion of strategic competence should be broadened to include all language-related strategies: learning strategies used to expand the speaker's competence and communicative strategies used to exploit it [15, p. 132-146].
As it has already been mentioned, by resorting to communicative strategies language learners attempt to solve their communication problems when they lack adequate resources in the target language by using certain strategies. Both native and non-native speakers employ communicative strategies in their attempt to achieve the communicative goals. G. Rababah claims that non-native speakers use communicative strategies more frequently [16, p. 145-165].
C. Faerch and G. Kasper define communicative strategies as potentially conscious plans for solving a certain problem in reaching a particular communicative goal [9, p. 36]. The communicative strategies focus on the psycholinguistic processes that underlie communication. Within their taxonomy they define three strategy types: formal reduction strategies, functional reduction strategies and achievement strategies.
T. Paribakht defines communication strategies as the means speakers use to solve communicative problems [15, p. 132-146].
E. Tarone emphasizes the social and interactive nature of communication. His taxonomy identifies five main categories of communicative strategies, namely avoidance, paraphrase, conscious transfer (literal translation or a switch to another language), appeal for assistance and mime [18, p. 417-431].
M. Bygate identifies two main groups of communicative strategies [5] :
1) achievement strategies: guessing strategies, e.g. borrowing a mother-tongue word, literal translation and coining or inventing a word; paraphrase strategies, e.g. circumlocuting around a word; cooperative strategies, e.g. when the speaker signals to the interlocutor for help;
2) reduction strategies: avoidance strategies, e.g. changing one's message to avoid using certain language or to make it more manageable; compensatory strategies, e.g. organizing one's message in order to buy thinking time.
The achievement strategies help learners become better communicators. Fluency is put before accuracy, the learners are prepared to take risks with the language, become more autonomous with language and deal more confidently with the unpredictable nature of speech. There is certainly time and place for reduction
strategies, but over-reliance on these strategies, particularly avoidance strategies could lead to learner's inter-language becoming fossilized [11, p. 46-54 (48-49)].
Based on the analysis of works [6; 8, p. 17; 14], a communication strategy of English professionally oriented speech is defined as an ability to implement the integrity of stage-by-stage thinking and speech activities aimed at the modelling communicative behaviour in the context of professionally applied communication in English in order to achieve the communicative goal.
L. Mariani stresses that developing strategic competence in speaking facilitate students' autonomy in oral interaction [13, p. 11-14]. In our research we view communication strategies as a means to develop students' speaking skills in English for professional purposes, in our case - for IT sphere. According to J. Harmer, role-play is a method used to encourage students' proficiency in speaking [10]. Thus, role-play is considered just the activity that helps integrate building and developing speaking skills through applying communication strategies.
Results
That it is of utmost importance to take into account students' needs while making a decision which strategies are appropriate for the students and what is the best way to present them [11, p. 46-54].
The analysis of IT specialists' professional discourse show that there exists correlation of IT specialists' professional roles with the major communication functions (cognitive, evaluative, fatigue, social, psychological) in English. Thereby it is worth concentrating on the verbal addresser-oriented strategies in the process of IT students' English for professional purposes learning, namely [14, p. 49-54]:
• informative strategies (informing or receiving information, agreeing or disagreeing; influence the verbal or non-verbal behaviour of the interlocutor);
• stimulating strategies (help to direct the behaviour of the interlocutor, prompting him or her to the implementation of action such as argumentation, advice, request, claim etc.);
• emotional activity strategies (help avoid stress and express an emotional state such as joy, approaval etc);
• evaluation activity strategies (aim at monitoring and evaluating interlocutors' speech);
• cooperative strategies (involve positive interdependence in the team of interlocutors for achieving a common aim through equal participation of the interlocutors, interaction and reflection);
• strategies of self-presentation (help interlocutors express their opinions, share experiences in the IT-field).
Observations for the process of English for professional purposes teaching and learning allow to assert that IT students benefit from learning strategies which enable them to listen, speak, read and write more effectively in English for professional purposes classroom aimed at teaching communication strategies.
There are many examples of formulaic expressions that can be introduced to students. A few examples of phrases to realize informative, stimulating, emotional, evaluation cooperative strategies and strategies of self-presentation could include (table 1):
Table 1.
Examples of phrases to realize informative, stimulating, emotional, evaluation cooperative strategies and _ strategies of self-presentation_
Communication strategies Phrases to realize the communication strategies
informative strategies The reason we are here is to ...; We are meeting today to ...; Speaking of
stimulating strategies Keep in mind; Take each problem as it comes; Things happen; I say; How about...? May I have your attention?
emotional activity strategies That's the way! Good for you. That's what I call...
evaluation activity strategies I thought as much; That would be marvelous; You said; Nothing of the kind! That won't do; How dare you?
cooperative strategies Can't we just ? It might be worth looking into ...? See the point? I'd appreciate it if...; Am I right in thinking that you .... ?
strategies of self-presentation As far as I'm concerned ...; Take it from me; The way I see things is that ....; From my standpoint.
To raise students' awareness of the phrases that fulfil a certain communicative function and teach them to select and implement the most appropriate communication strategies for the situation of professionally oriented speech we as teachers are to immerse students into these situations of professionally oriented speech. As the observations for the learning process prove, one of the effective methods to immerse students into certain situations is a role-play that presupposes live interaction.
The main problem tackled by our study is the analysis of the relationship between students' command of English for professional purposes, the repertoire of communication strategies they use in order to achieve their communicative goals in situations of professionally oriented speech and use of interactive instruction methods, e.g. role-plays for the efficiency of the learning process.
In order to prove the efficiency of role plays in using previously learnt phrases to develop informative, stimulating, emotional, evaluation activity, cooperative strategies and strategies of self-presentation of IT students, an experiment was conducted within which the results of the study were analyzed. The experiment involved 1st and 2nd year students of the Faculty of Applied Mathematics and IT Technologies of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv and lasted for one autumn-winter semester.
To examine the aim of the experiment two hypotheses have been formulated:
• hypothesis 1 lied in the statement that students' repertoire of communication strategies and language proficiency level depend on interactive instruction methods and role-plays are effective in this process.
• hypothesis 2 lied in the statement that students' repertoire of communication strategies and language proficiency level do not depend on the choice of interactive instruction methods and role-plays are not more effective than other interactive methods of instruction.
The students were divided into two experimental and two control groups. In control groups we were teaching IT students phrases for informative, stimulating, emotional, evaluation activity, cooperative strategies and strategies of self-presentation strategies via the whole range of different learning methods and speech activities, e.g.: matching and filling in gaps exercises, translating phrases, discussions, dialoguing, projects, presentations, etc. In experimental groups we stressed at learning the phrases and developing the skills of implementing informative, stimulating, emotional, evaluation activity, cooperative strategies and strategies of self-presentation strategies in the process of communicative interaction through role-plays modelling typical situations of real professionally oriented speech of IT specialists.
The results of the survey conducted among students of experimental and control groups indicate that most students (88%) are highly motivated to learn the phrases for informative, stimulating, emotional, evaluation activity, cooperative strategies and strategies of self-presentation strategies in the context of role plays reflecting professional realities of IT specialists.
Assessment of IT students' command of using phrases for informative, stimulating, emotional, evaluation activity, cooperative strategies and strategies of self-presentation strategies in professionally oriented speech has proved that the results are significantly higher in experimental groups (figure 1, figure 2).
Figure 1. Command of using communication strategies in experimental groups
Figure 2. Command of using communication strategies in control groups
The received results of the experiment enable us to affirm that role plays are effective in the process of developing communicative strategies of IT students and, thus, justify hypothesis 2 of the experiment.
Discussion
Many scientists in applied linguistics advocate communication strategies instruction as it helps provide successful communication [4, p. 1-47; 12, p. 41-57; 9, p. 36; 16, p. 145-165]. Among advantages of strategy training L. Mariani defines the following [12, p. 41-57; 16, p. 152-153]:
• being a part of language learning strategies, communication strategies have positive impact on
learning process through immersing students in conversation and thereby result in more successful performance;
• communication strategies help learners remain in conversation on both productive and receptive sides, control the conversation making the interlocutor modify utterances;
• communication strategies train learners' flexibility and ability to cope with unexpected situations, adjusting students to so called inexact communication, reflecting the real nature of communication;
• communication strategies facilitate students' linguistic and cognitive autonomy through risk-taking and individual initiative.
The scientists claim that there exists interdependence between speakers' choice and use of communication strategies as well as their sensitivity to the variety of communication strategies on the one hand and their level of target language knowledge and proficiency on the other hand [19; 3, p. 3-30]. The concentration on language use may encourage the assumption that there is a psychological disjunction at the strategic level between language use and language learning. With the aim to build and develop students' skills of adequate use of communication strategies, teaching approaches will have to concentrate on typical and problem-oriented authentic communicative situations where the strategies play a significant role and ensure that students consider these situations and are immersed into them. Students should perform open-ended interactive tasks and, along the way, facing and solving the set problems, become aware of communicative strategies through observation and try to adequately use these strategies while role playing, discussions, dialoguing, presenting [12, p. 41-57].
Limitations and Conclusion
There are certain limitations to our research since we focus on particular communication strategies of IT students' professionally oriented communication, namely: informative, stimulating, emotional, evaluation activity, cooperative strategies and strategies of self-presentation because these strategies have been defined as the most important communication strategies for professionally oriented communication of IT specialists. The experiment has been conducted to reveal the most effective method of developing communication strategies in IT students. The experiment findings have manifested the role-play being the most effective method of developing informative, stimulating, emotional, evaluation activity, cooperative strategies and strategies of self-presentation in prospective IT specialists.
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