Communication Strategies

How do learners manage to communicate when their command of a language is limited?. The techniques and approximations they use are known as communication strategies. Understanding these strategies adds in part to the knowledge of linguistic structur and physchological processing. It also adds to the practical business of language teaching. This book addresses central issues in the study of communication strategies. How can er determine when language use is strategic? How are strategies best conceptualized and classified? These issues of identification link to problems of explanation, How do learners select, use and understand communication strategies? Are they also used by children in acquiring a first language? What kind of cognitive and linguistic processes are involved? These questions lead to issues in teaching and instruction. Can communication strategies be taught? Is there any advantage in doing so? In answering such theoretical and practical questions, the author aims to place the subject withon the broader frame of language processing, adding to the understanding of both first and second language acquisition. 1. Defining strategies

2. Identifying communication strategies

3. Taxonomies of communication strategies

4. empirical evaluation of the taxonomies

5. Communicating in a first language

6. Investigations of second language use

7. Language acquisition and language processing

8. Learning and teaching communication strategies

Ellen Bialystok is professor of psychology at York University in Toronto and the author of three books, including Communicaiton Strategies and Language Processing in Bilingual Children.