Communication Strategy Use in an Oral Narrative Task among English Learners with Different Hemispheric Brain Dominance

Abstract

Certain functions are neurologically indicated to be lateralized to different brain hemispheres. Among numerous studies on impacts of communication strategy use and brain dominance on second language learning, only a small number of them, specifically in the Thai context, comprehensively explore possible relationships between learners’ communication strategy use and their brain dominance. This paper aimed at exploring the communication strategy choices in an oral narrative task applied by English learners with different hemispheric brain dominance and discovering their different uses. The sample included 100 EFL Thai undergraduates. The instruments covered the Brain Dominance Inventory (BDI), a 4-picture series, retrospective comments, and semi-structured interviews. The study was based on DÖrnyei and Scott (1997)’s communication strategy taxonomy. Descriptive statistics and Kruskal Wallis Test were applied in data analysis. The findings indicated that the whole-brained learners were the highest users of message replacement, restructuring, all-purpose words, mumbling, self-rephrasing, fillers and verbal strategy markers. All of these belong to achievement strategies. The left-brained learners most preferred message abandonment, which is an avoidance strategy, literal translation, retrieval, omission, and self-repetition. The right-brained learners most frequently used message reduction, which is the other avoidance strategy, circumlocution, approximation, mime, similar sounding words, and self-repair. Code switching was equally highly applied by both the left-brained and the right-brained learners.