Native oral production
It seems relevant to examine certain aspects of native oral production, since most learners' ultimate goal is to reach a near-native level of proficiency (sources: Aitchison, 1987; Bygate, 1987).
The syntax tends to be less complicated than in written language. Speakers tend to favour:
Parataxis: Phrases linked not by subordination, but by co-ordinating connectors (and, or, but), or even phrases not explicitly connected, but understood as being related to each other by the way they are uttered by the speaker in a given context.
Ellipsis: Speakers omit elements of the sentences they feel are redundant- given the context and the shared knowledge of the interlocutors (e.g. utterances like ‘Yesterday', ‘On the top shelf').
The utterances are not always grammatically correct (if the written medium is to be regarded as the norm of correctness).
As regards vocabulary, Aitchison (1987: 43) states that ‘‘the mental lexicon contains equipment which enables a person to continually expand old words and coin new ones''. As an example she offers the use of compounding by native-speaking children when they encounter vocabulary shortcomings (e.g. ‘‘sky-car'' for ‘‘plane''). Other methods of creating new lexical items include affixation and conversion (discussed below).
Native speakers frequently encounter shortcomings while communicating orally (due to time/memory/vocabulary restrictions). Speakers may be lost for words, hesitate, make false starts, repeat utterances, self correct, or pause. Regarding pauses, in observations made by Goldman-Eisler (cited in Clark & Clark, 1977: 262) of native speakers who were interviewed or asked to describe pictures it was found that ‘”most people paused between 40 and 50 percent of the time''.
Communication strategies
Similarly the L2 learner can adopt and/or adapt native processes of compensating for shortcomings encountered during oral production. Such learner processes have been termed ‘communication strategies'. ‘‘They can be viewed as the speaker's attempt to communicate meaningful content, in the face of some apparent lacks in the interlanguage system'' (Tarone, in Faerch & Kasper, 1983: 62). Ellis (1986: 165) states that ‘‘native speakers must be considered to use the same strategy types''.
The communication strategies relevant to the aim of this article are achievement strategies (Ellis, 1986: 184-185). They are employed by learners who feel that their linguistic resources are inadequate to carry them through a communicative task, but who, on the other hand, do not want to abandon their communicative goal. We will focus on non-cooperative achievement strategies, that is , strategies that do not require contribution from the interlocutor (Ellis, loc. cit.) :
Substitution: Using an L2 lexical item the learner knows/can recall instead of the ‘target' item the learner does not know/cannot recall. Usually a superordinate item is substituted for a hyponym (e.g. ‘animal' for ‘giraffe'), or an item of similar meaning is used (e.g. ‘table' for ‘desk').
Word-coinage: Producing a lexical item based on assumptions regarding the L2 rules of word-formation. The result may or may not be an existing L2 item.
Circumlocution: Offering a definition or description of the target item (e.g. ‘What bikers wear on their heads' for ‘crash helmet'). Alternatively the negation of an item/phrase of converse meaning can be used e.g. ‘not light' for ‘heavy').
Restructuring: The learner realises that he/she is unable to finish his/her utterance as it was initially intended and tries again using more manageable means (structure/lexis-wise) without abandoning his/her communicative goal.