The Effects of Awareness-Raising Training on Oral Communication Strategy Use

This study examines current patterns of oral communication strategy (OCS) use, to what degree these strategies can be explicitly taught, and the extent to which strategy use can lead to improvements in oral communication ability. In a 12-week English as a Foreign Language (EFL) course based on a communicative approach, 62 female learners were divided into 2 groups. The strategy training group (n= 28) received metacognitive training, focusing on OCS use, whereas the control group (n= 34) received only the normal communicative course, with no explicit focus on OCSs. The effects of the training were assessed by 3 types of data collection: the participants' pre- and postcourse oral communication test scores, transcription data from the tests, and retrospective protocol data for their task performance. The findings revealed that participants in the strategy training group significantly improved their oral proficiency test scores, whereas improvements in the control group were not significant. The results of the transcription and retrospective protocol data analyses confirmed that the participants' success was partly due to an increased general awareness of OCSs and to the use of specific OCSs, such as maintenance of fluency and negotiation of meaning to solve interactional difficulties.