Communication Strategies Used by Papuan EFL Students

<p class="AbstractText">To fill the absence of research in the context of communication strategies used by Papuan EFL students, this research would present and fill this knowledge gap. This research aimed to determine the types and their reasons of communication strategies used by Papuan EFL students. It applied qualitative study. The researcher used observation and interview as the research instruments. It was found that Papuan EFL employed fillers, code-switching, self-repetition, self-repair, asking for clarification, asking for confirmation, and direct appeal for help. The reasons why Papuan EFL students do those communication strategies because of thinking time, anxiety, nervousness, doubt, worriedness, hesitation, lack of knowledge, lack of vocabulary, grammatical errors, and self-confidence.</p>

The effects of pre-task explicit instruction on L2 oral self-repair behaviour

The present study examines the effects of pre-task explicit instruction on second language (L2) oral self-repair behaviour while controlling for the effects of working memory. The participants were 121 Iranian learners of English at incipient levels of language proficiency. Their working memory was measured using an operation span task and then they were randomly assigned to a control and an experimental group. Both groups performed a picture story-retelling task that was preceded by five minutes of planning time. During the planning time, the experimental group also received a grammar handout that explained English relative clauses. The instances of self-repairs were identified through stimulated recall interviews that immediately followed performance on the oral task. They were then classified into categories of global form repairs (FG-repairs), local form repairs (FL-repairs), and content repairs (C-repairs). A series of one-way ANCOVAs were run, the results of which indicated pre-task explicit instruction had significant and beneficial effects on FL-repairs and adverse effects on C-repairs. The covariate was only associated with repairing the target structure. The findings are discussed in light of the Extended Trade-off Hypothesis and confirm the view that pre-task explicit instruction tends to foster a focus on form at the expense of meaning.

Room-Temperature Self-Healing Elastomer based on Van der Waals Forces in Air and under Water

With the development of flexible wearable electronic devices, researches on self-healing conductive materials have become prevalent. However, the self-healing performance of most conductive self-healing materials is commonly achieved by the external stimulus that may cause damage to the equipment. Pparticularly, these self-healing materials may lose the self-healing properties when exposed to a high-humidity environment. Here, we adopted two hydrophobic monomers (2-methoxyethyl acrylate and ethyl methacrylate) to obtain a self-healing elastomer that could display self-healing properties in air or under water though van der Waals forces. The quality and mechanical properties of the elastomer material could keep stable after stored under water for half a month. This elastomer material was capable of self-healing in different environments with self-repair efficiencies more than 50% in deionized water, strong acid solution and strong alkaline solution. The self-repair efficiencies were up to 77% at room temperature(T=25°C) and 64% at low temperature (T=-20°C) in air.