Holger Meier

The Teachability of Communication Strategies Holger Meier

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2009 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 2,0, Bielefeld University, language: English, comment: Diese Bachelorarbeit entstand durch die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Thema "Kommunikationsstrategien" im Zusammenhang mit Erfahrungen in einem Schulpraktikum. Inhaltlich geht es zunächst um den theoretischen Hintergrund der "Kommunikationsstrategien", also um Strategien, mit denen man Mängel in einer erlernten Fremdsprache ausgleicht oder versucht auszugleichen. Dann wird gezeigt, dass diese Strategien im Schulunterricht gelehrt und gelernt werden können, was an Hand einiger Schulbücher untersucht wird. , abstract: While I was doing an internship in several English classes in a 'Gymnasium' in 2007, a teacher asked me to take a test in his class (8th grade) of the vocabulary of a certain unit in their textbook. I did so and graded the tests according to his requirements. Every incorrect word led to zero points regardless of how 'wrong' the word was. In one case the students were supposed to give the English word for "Süßigkeiten" which, of course, is "sweets". While some simply gave no word, others gave solutions that were wrong, yet creative, for instance a circumlocution, "sweet things" or newly coined word, "sweetys". It did not seem fair to me to disregard these solutions, as someone using them in a communicative situation would be able to better communicate his intention than by simply saying nothing. From this experience I got the idea for my B. A. thesis to deal with the topic of communication strategies , to which these examples belong, and to further examine their role in language learning. This thesis is an attempt to inspect what CSs are and what their part in education could and should be, respectively actually is. In the beginning I will present a summary of the history of research in the field of CSs and I will give an overview of existing (and often varying) theories, definitions and taxon