Related studies as evidence

researchers to support the idea in one way or another. Therefore, as evidence, it is necessary to demonstrate some of the findings from strategy training studies which remain small in the literature.

The study conducted by Dörnyei (1995) revealed positive effects of strategy training on 109 Hungarian secondary students in using three compensatory CSs, namely, avoidance, circumlocution and pause fillers. The scores in post-test showed that the students in

experimental group employed circumlocution more effectively in expressing their ideas and used a greater frequency of pause fillers and circumlocution than the control groups. His study made contribution to the view that instruction may alter students’ frequency and quality of strategy use.

Dadour and Robbins (1996) investigated the effectiveness of strategy instruction in oral communication classes for Egyptian EFL university students with explicit instruction in

using strategies. The study showed a significant effect on the experimental group’s speaking performance as well as their frequency of strategy use. Their results support the studies on the teachability issue.

Bejarano, Levine, Olshtain and Steiner’s (1997) examined whether training in interaction strategies increased the quality of communication amongst foreign language learners working together in small groups. They indicated that although the training did not reveal a statistically significant effect on overall participation, the change in the quality of participation in the experimental group was significantly more interactive as a result of the training. Their results were significant particularly in regard to the increased use of both Modified-Interaction and Social-Interaction Strategies by students in the experimental group.

Cohen, Weaver and Li (1996) investigated the effectiveness of explicit strategy instruction in foreign language classroom. They attributed the superior results of the

experimental group in overall speaking performance to the use of strategies, specifically on the city description task. Their study concluded that if strategies are introduced and reinforced systematically, strategy instruction helps students speak the target language more effectively with an increase in the use of certain strategies.

Nakatani (2005) focused on awareness-raising training in oral communication strategy (OCS) use and examined the participants’ current patterns of OCS use, to what degree these strategies can be taught explicitly, and the extent to which strategy use can lead to

improvements in oral communication ability. The findings revealed that the experimental group significantly improved their oral proficiency test scores and confirmed that the

participants' success was partly due to an increased general awareness of OCSs and to the use of specific OCSs, such as maintenance of fluency and negotiation of meaning to solve

interactional difficulties. With this study, Nakatani suggests that EFL learners should consciously use their interlanguage system to control their performance and to maintain

interaction, therefore; awareness-raising training is needed to develop learners' strategic competence and supervise specific strategy use.

In his study, Lam (2010) indicated that communication strategy instruction was associated with the low-proficiency students as they reported consistent increases in their frequency and variety of use of the target strategies and made greater improvements, especially in the English scores than the high-proficiency students. In general, his study indicates that strategy training seems to benefit low-proficiency students more than high-proficiency students. Regarding the findings pertinent to the low-high-proficiency students, his study sheds light on the implementation of strategy instruction in the junior secondary ESL oral classroom with the hope that it may help junior L2 learners to develop strategic

competence as a compensatory function in the language-learning experience when their linguistic competence is inadequate.

Aykaç (2010) aimed to improve communication skills of young learners -6th graders- through LLSs (related to listening and speaking skill) and concluded that participants

significantly improved their communication skills even though it was not valid for all participants. She stated the benefits of strategy training as making learners aware of specific strategies that they could use to improve their communication in English.

Teng (2012) investigated how CS instruction works in EFL classroom context. The study concluded that EFL college students employed significantly more strategies and communicated effectively after they received explicit instruction of CSs. With this study, the author has confirmed the facilitating effect of teaching CSs to EFL college students.

Koşar and Bedir (2014) examined whether explicit strategy training has an effect on improving speaking skills of adult EFL learners. After the intervention they concluded that the training group made a meaningful improvement in their speaking skill and increased their self-regulation in use of appropriate speaking strategies.

Gunning and Oxford (2014) conducted a study in the context of two 6th grade Quebec classrooms, where students study ESL by a prescribed curriculum integrating learning

strategies. The aim of the study was to investigate the effects of strategy instruction and use, and the relationship between strategy use and oral interaction task success. The findings showed evidence of the positive effects of strategy instruction on the development of children’s oral competency as well as enhanced awareness and strategy use.

Despite a number of studies yielding a positive impact of strategy training, there have been some studies depicting unfavourable results. For example, Salamone and Marsal (1997) provided two intermediate French classes with an experiment which aimed to investigate the effects of CS instruction. The treatment class received instruction in the use of circumlocution as well as strategies to cope with lexical difficulties. Both groups were given a written

circumlocution task, and while the control group was asked to use the terms in context, the experimental group focused on explaining them. Throughout the study, the experimental group was asked to circumlocute when they did not know a lexical item, but the control group was given no such encouragement. Although learners improved the quality of their

descriptions over time, the findings revealed no significant statistical differences between the two classes in written post-test. Since the tests administered in this study were written rather than oral, it threaded the validity of the study employing a written test to assess the impact of CSs for oral communication. Similar results to those of Salamone and Marsal (1997) were also provided by Scullen and Jourdain (2000).

The study conducted by Scullen and Jourdain (2000) aimed to investigate whether or not teaching specific circumlocution strategies would result in greater abilities to

circumlocute. The study involved undergraduate learners studying French as a foreign language. The control group only received practice with circumlocution, while the experimental group was given explicit instruction on specific strategies to aid in

circumlocution. Though the experimental group appeared to have been more successful in circumlocution, both groups showed marked improvements in successful identification over time, which also means the experimental group did not make clear gains in the specific strategies targeted for practice.

The findings of the studies above broadly show positive effect of speaking/

communication strategy instruction on strategy use. Taking into consideration the scarcity of work on investigating the effect of oral communication strategy instruction, the brief review of studies involving adult and adolescent learners provides a good motive for studies

involving young language learners. Gürsoy (2010) discusses that children learning a foreign or second language in classroom situations need learning opportunities and exposure provided by their teachers. Teachers can facilitate their learning process by learning about their current strategies and teaching new ones. Strategy use improves performance of the learners and leads them to regulate their own learning. This calls for research in strategy training involving young learners as well.

2.5.6. Proper approach for strategy instruction. In order to gain further insights into