Crucial Strategies to Solve Communicative Breakdown

English has increasingly become international language for business and commerce, science and technology, international relations and diplomacy. Due to this fact, the purpose of learning a foreign language is communication. Through communication, people send and receive messages and negotiate meaning. Communication has different forms and takes place in different situations. People communicate to satisfy their needs. Heterogeneous interaction is carried out by a native speaker and a non-native one in the purpose of exchanging of ideas, information between two or more individuals. There is usually, at least one speaker or sender, a message which transmitted, and an individual or individuals for whom this message is intended. Communication breakdowns may happen to anybody communicating in a language other than their dominating language. This problem, surely, can be solved but how? The primary aim of this article is to investigate the heterogeneous communication process in the terms of possible breakdown which happens to all people while communicating, so that they are unable to get their messages across express what they mean and what they understand. The author highlights crucial strategies toward solving these disruptions.

INTERLANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT OF TURKISH SPEAKERS OF ENGLISH: EXPLORING ORAL AND WRITTEN COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES

Language learners employ communication strategies (CSs) to avoid communication breakdowns in times of difficulty, and such strategies develop within strategic competence thanks to exposure to a target language. This research is designed as a developmental study aiming to investigate the possible effects of exposure to English as a foreign language on the use of CSs in the interlanguage of Turkish speakers of English. To attain this aim, we chose 20 Turkish learners of English from the beginner level, and they designated the topics they would speak and write about. Their oral and written performances on the topics were tested at the beginning prior to instruction, in the middle, and at the end of the academic year to observe whether CS usage altered over time. The findings revealed that participants resorted to different types of CSs in their speaking and writing tasks. The comparison of CS employment in each test showed that learners’ CS preferences, as well as L1 and L2-based CSs, changed over time in both speaking and writing. Therefore, it is concluded that exposure to the target language may have a significant effect on the preference of CSs. The results of this study are significant as they suggested that CSs in interlanguage evolves from L1-based to L2-based strategies. The findings of this study have important implications for teaching English as a foreign language in reference to the effects of language exposure on the use of CSs in both oral and written performances of L2 learners.

Speech, Language and Cognitive Profile of Mild Cognitive Impairment: A single Case Study

Heterogeneity of symptoms within and among mild cognitive impairment individuals often makes it challenging to document case reports clinically. Additionally, data on the Indian population is also limited. Therefore, our study includes a case study of a 56-year-old male with mild cognitive impairment from our Institute. A patient had symptoms of mild cognitive impairment following a stroke that occurred 23 years back (vascular in origin). Both formal and informal assessments were carried out. Formal testing was done using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment. On assessment of memory, mild deficits in working memory, episodic memory, and procedural memory were noticed. Attention span and Word-finding difficulties with reduced use of words were observed in language assessment. Problems in reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making skills, indicating deficits in executive functioning were evident. Linguistic deficits presenting secondary to cognitive deficits in our client could have led to communication breakdowns in speech, affecting his overall quality of life.

“Can we take a picture with you?” The realization of the refusal speech act with tourists by Emirati speakers

Effective communication between people from different cultures requires not only the ability to speak a common language but also an awareness of sociocultural rules and sociolinguistics features, an important one being speech acts the realization of which realization by Emirati non-native speakers of English has not been studied sufficiently. This paper investigates a particularly face-threatening speech act - refusals. It explores Emiratis comfort level and the use of the refusal speech act in communicative exchanges with unknown tourists. The data set consisted of 94 participant responses to a pre-instructional activity in an introductory linguistics class. Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the data sets. The key findings suggest that both male and female participants were rather comfortable conversing with a tourist couple that they had never met, but male participants reported being more at ease accepting the couples request to take a photo with the tourists at a statistically significant level. While more than half of the participants reported willingness to take the photo with the tourists, approximately 41.5% would decline such a request, with significantly more females declining the request. The most frequent components of the refusal speech act included a statement of regret, a thank-you note, and an excuse, reason, or explanation. Results also showed that linguistic devices for positive politeness purposes were used rather sparingly, and it was mainly the females who used them. Based on the results, it is helpful for visitors to the UAE to be mindful of Emiratis' sociocultural and sociolinguistic behaviors so that the nuances of communication can be understood and responses are appropriate, which can reduce the likelihood of communication breakdowns and increase the well-being of all involved in the interaction.

Supporting Communication Between Individuals With Disabilities and First Responders: A Preliminary Case-Based Interview Study

Purpose: During a crisis, an individual with a communication disability or difference is at risk of communication breakdowns that could unintentionally escalate the crisis. The goal of this preliminary study was to identify how first responders from various organizations may respond given scenarios presenting potential interactions with an individual with a communication impairment or difference. Method: Three adult participants currently serving as first responders completed semistructured interviews. Participants were asked how they would react in different hypothetical scenarios, all incorporating aspects of communication disorders and differences that could be misinterpreted. Data analysis consisted of transcribing the responses to each scenario and identifying the themes. Results: Participants across organizations receive general communication and disability training, rely on established procedures, problem-solving, open-mindedness, and use of departmental resources in their interactions. Conclusions: This preliminary study illustrates awareness of existing protocols and organizational supports that may support interactions with individuals with communication disorders and differences. Potential areas for additional resources and training include the use of augmentative and alternative communication and disability-specific education.

The Assessment and Intervention of Communication Repair Strategies in Primary School Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Who Are Minimally Verbal

<p>Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by marked deficits in communication and social skills in addition to restricted interests and repetitive behaviour. Children with ASD have also been reported to have significant deficits with respect to their ability to repair communication breakdowns. To date, assessments targeting communication repair strategies in children with ASD have been limited in number and lack consistency of implementation. For the current research, both an indirect and direct assessment have been developed to investigate the repair repertoires of primary school-aged children who were minimally verbal. Indirect assessments were conducted with each of the participant’s teachers, and the direct assessments were conducted by creating breakdown scenarios during a requesting routine and recording if and how the children attempted to repair the communication breakdown. Results show that children tended to rely on a singular repair strategy involving the repetition of their initial request. An intervention program was then developed and evaluated with two of the children. These children were taught to use an iPad®-based speech generating device to repair communication breakdowns that occurred when the children’s initial request was followed by receipt of the wrong item. The intervention was evaluated using a nonconcurrent multiple baseline experimental design. Each of the participants showed an increase in responding under specific communication breakdown conditions. While this research is quite preliminary, the data suggests that repair repertoires of children with ASD can be assessed via a structured, direct asses and improved with interventions based on the assessment results.</p>

The Assessment and Intervention of Communication Repair Strategies in Primary School Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder Who Are Minimally Verbal

<p>Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is characterized by marked deficits in communication and social skills in addition to restricted interests and repetitive behaviour. Children with ASD have also been reported to have significant deficits with respect to their ability to repair communication breakdowns. To date, assessments targeting communication repair strategies in children with ASD have been limited in number and lack consistency of implementation. For the current research, both an indirect and direct assessment have been developed to investigate the repair repertoires of primary school-aged children who were minimally verbal. Indirect assessments were conducted with each of the participant’s teachers, and the direct assessments were conducted by creating breakdown scenarios during a requesting routine and recording if and how the children attempted to repair the communication breakdown. Results show that children tended to rely on a singular repair strategy involving the repetition of their initial request. An intervention program was then developed and evaluated with two of the children. These children were taught to use an iPad®-based speech generating device to repair communication breakdowns that occurred when the children’s initial request was followed by receipt of the wrong item. The intervention was evaluated using a nonconcurrent multiple baseline experimental design. Each of the participants showed an increase in responding under specific communication breakdown conditions. While this research is quite preliminary, the data suggests that repair repertoires of children with ASD can be assessed via a structured, direct asses and improved with interventions based on the assessment results.</p>

Safety Events Impacting Hospitalized Patients Following Motor Vehicle Crashes: A Qualitative Study of Reports From Pennsylvania Hospitals

Motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) are a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in the United States and around the world. When a patient who has experienced trauma in an MVC presents to the emergency department, they may be unable to participate in their own care due to numerous factors, such as being unconscious, physically incapacitated, or suffering from confusion. To better characterize challenges with care of these patients, we analyzed reports of patient safety events submitted to the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Reporting System (PA-PSRS) related to MVCs, and we identified 282 reports for analysis that occurred from 2018–2020. Patients were more often male (58.9%; 166 of 282) than female (41.1%; 116 of 282), and they ranged in age from 1 to 93 years. A total of 13.1% (37 of 282) of reports were classified as serious events (i.e., events that resulted in patient harm), compared with 2.9% in the full acute care PA-PSRS database. Problems with monitoring or treatment were most common (43.3%; 122 of 282), followed by problems with evaluation (18.4%; 52 of 282), falls (11.7%; 33 of 282), problems with documentation (7.4%; 21 of 282), medication errors (7.4%; 21 of 282), and problems with transfers (6.4%; 18 of 282). Some potential contributing factors included communication breakdowns, lack of policies or protocols or unawareness about existing policies or protocols for treating certain patient populations, and prioritization of conditions related to an MVC over underlying health conditions.

A novel corpus developed to evaluate the impact of hospital noise on speech intelligibility

Hospital noise often exceeds recommended sound levels set by health organizations leading to reductions in speech intelligibility and communication breakdowns between doctors and patients. However, quantifying the impact of hospital noise on intelligibility has been limited by stimuli employed in prior studies, which did not include medically related terminology. To address this gap, a corpus of medically related sentences was developed. Word frequency, word familiarity, and sentence predictability, factors known to impact intelligibility of speech, were quantified. Nearly 700 words were selected from the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary. Word frequency was taken from Lexique, a 51-million-word corpus of American subtitles (Brysbaert & New, 2009). Word familiarity was rated by 41 monolingual listeners. The words were then used to construct 200 sentences. To determine sentence predictability, the sentences were presented to 48 participants with one word missing; their task was to fill in the missing word. Three 40 item sentence sets with different familiarity / frequency types (low/low, high/low, high/high) were selected, all with low predictability levels. These sentences and 40 standard speech perception sentences were recorded by two male and two female talkers. This corpus can be used to assess how hospital noise impacts intelligibility across listener populations. Brysbaert, M., & New, B. (2009). Moving beyond Kučera and Francis: A critical evaluation of current word frequency norms and the introduction of a new and improved word frequency measure for American English. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 977-990. doi:10.3758/BRM.41.4.977.