DONT PANIC

One of our aims as teachers is to help develop our students communicative competences
and prepare them for those moments when communication fails, either for misunderstanding
or when they do not know the correct word or expression.
But what can we do to help our students to avoid and to successfully gain control over the
situation?
COMPENSATION STRATEGIES
Martin Bygate says that Compensation Strategies are strategies that learners can employ
when dealing with difficulties of expression, and Scott Thornbury & Diana Slade say that
they compensate for some deficiency in the linguistic system. To be more specific there
are strategies or techniques to overcome problems that arise in communication. And they
allow learners to achieve certain a degree of communicative effectiveness beyond the
linguistic means.
BENEFITS AND DANGERS IN TEACHING COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES.
BENEFITS: According to Thornbury Allows leaners to achieve a degree of communicative
effectiveness beyond their immediate linguistic means.
DANGERS: Over-reliance on these strategies might lead to fossilisation of the learners
interlanguage.
IMMEDIATE ADVANTAGES OF USING COMPENSATIONS STRATEGIES IN THE
CLASSROOM AND IN THE REAL WORLD
CLASSROOM: Students can have more practice in L2, promote the ability to continue
speaking despite difficulties.
OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM: Enable learners to use L2 for both comprehension and
production. In fact this is the most important benefit, prepare students to circumvent
problems outside the classroom.
STRATEGIES
A. - SAMPLE STRATEGIES:
1. - Getting help from another person asking questions such as: How do you say? or
another paralinguistic mean.
2. - Using mime or gesture to convey the meaning not to get assistance.
3. Approximating the message using an alternative expression or word similar than the
one we need.
4. Describing the object or the action (circumlocution).
But, how can we get our students to practice and use these strategies in the classroom?

B. - STRATEGIC PRACTICE:
1. - Teach them model phrases such as like this, like that, etc. accompanied with mime.

2. - Use guessing games instead of translation activities, provide students with opportunities
to quiz each other using activities. Teach them phrases for example: Its similar to, its the
same as, its the opposite of, it looks like, etc.
With advanced students are expected to be able to use these strategies effectively, but
sometimes we challenge them by restricting the language that they can use. taboo style
are affective activities at getting the students to use compensation strategies. For example,
we can give them cards with the picture of an object that they have to describe underneath
a few words that they cannot use.
3. - When students ask: How do you say...? we can give the other learners the opportunity
to answer, This might encourage them to ask for help rather than shouting down in real-life
situations.
4. - Teach expressions which are often used as part of compensation activities in lower
levels, for example: How do you say...? It is a thing that, Its a person who.., at higher
levels we can teach more colloquial expressions, for example: Its the sort of thing you,
Its when you, whats it called when?
5. - We can teach some topics as to practice compensation strategies instead of grammar,
relative clauses is a good example of it.
Mexicans have problems with separate words, so we can teach chunks rather than separate
words, such as: its the opposite of rather than the word opposite in isolation.
C. - STRATEGIC TECHNIQUES:
For learners is easy to become discourage and flustered when they do not know how to
express accurately. Here are some techniques
1. - Be encouraging with the students when they become stuck; try to get them to explain
using circumlocution.
2. - Teacher should praise students when they are able to convey the intended meaning,
but also give feedback and provide the other students the opportunity to provide the target
word or expressions, on the other hand they will fossilise this practice.
3. - Provide students with opportunities to reflect on how successful they were in completing
a task and increase the students awareness of the importance of this skill or strategy.
According to the level of the student.
4. - Provide opportunities for students to engage in meaningful discussions, is more likely
that the student try to express a difficult concept or expression.
We cannot pre-teach every lexical item our students, compensation strategies, but what we
can do is to teach compensation activities to help them become more independent and
confident in their ability to use English effectively.
QUESTIONS:
Which other techniques have you used to prepare your students for those moments
when communication breaks down?
Which techniques would you like to use with your students and why?