An Interactional Study in Spoken English Communication -Relationship between Communicative Competence and Communication Strategy

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The foreign language learner, whether he/she is the speaker or listener, is struggling to share the meaning originally intended. The decoding process is normally analyzed into schematic knowledge, contextual knowledge and systemic knowledge. However, such a static classification into components does not reveal the dynamic nature of our communication. Moreover, in actual communication a decoding process is not an isolated activity, but is performed interactively and collaboratively. In this research we have focused on how the learner, as a listener, strives to infer the meaning of an unfamiliar word when decoding an utterance, and how the learner, as a communicator, struggles to convey the intended meaning.According to the experiments in listening comprehension, difficulties caused by sound changes were ranked in the following order among Japanese learners : elision> assimilation > linking. In order to be able to exploit contextual clues to enhance auditory comprehension, a certain threshold of English proficiency was required. A similar threshold was also found to exist in inferring the meaning of unknown words.In the area of communicative interaction, qualitative as well as quantitative analyses based on the long-term data indicated that both native and non-native participants used the most effective communication strategies in problem solving, observing the "principle of least collaboration effort." In order to facilitate the interlocutor's understanding, native speakers in particular used a variety of active strategies, especially those for checking the interlocutor's background knowledge and foregrounding it.From the above-mentioned results, we can conclude that significant progress was made in clarifying the effective use of strategies, especially contextual and interactive clues. Such strategies constitute valuable strategic competence in a foreign language and greatly contribute to the successful management of intercultural communication.