穨Review. Pdf

partners. It seemed to me that they did not want to talk at all.
(Ms. Tsai) 
l Where did their smiles and feelings go? I felt that there was hardly 
any feeling in their voices and facial expressions. (Ms. Chu) 
As a sharp contrast to the dissatisfaction the raters expressed about the control 
group, they were excited about the display of the non-verbal features of the oral 
communicative competence that included eye contact, smile, and proper distance 
identified in the experimental group: 
l Their conversation was like real-life dialogue. Their facial 
expressions were so real and natural. Besides, the distance they 
kept from each other seemed more natural to me, not too far and not 
too close. If my memory served me well, I think they stood farther 
away from each other during the pre-test oral task. But this time, it 
seemed more natural to me. (Ms. Hsu) 
l They seemed to be more fluent and natural than last time. They 
looked at each other and smiled at each other like they were really 
talking to good friends. I like this kind of feelings. (Ms. Cheng) 
l Their conversation was full of life and emotion on the post-test.
(Ms. Wang) 
4.1.6.2 Strategic Competence 
Another category of comments they made on the experimental group belonged to 
the strategic competence, as defined in Chapter One. First of all, many of the raters 
were surprised at the students’ resigning attitude in the control group: 
l I was wondering how come so many students simply gave up the 

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whole task of oral performance whenever their partners forgot what 
to say? Why didn’t they at least try to give their partners some 
cues or some hints? Or at least they could have finished the task by 
themselves without their partners’ line. They just stood there and 
did nothing. The long silence during the oral performance really 
made me uncomfortable. I felt nervous for them. (Ms. Wang) 
l Wow! They just gave up like that? Did they care or not? (Ms. 
Chuang) 
In addition to the two quotes from Ms. Wang and Ms. Chuang, the other six 
raters also expressed the similar comments. These raters’ recollections on the 
performance of the control group were similar to the findings from the analyses 
presented in sections 4.1.3 and 4.1.4.
As a contrast, most of the raters were impressed with the students’ efforts to 
maintain the dialogues in spite of the uncomfortable silence:
l I saw them trying hard to rescue their partners who forgot what to 
say. They either murmured some lines for their partners, or even 
asked questions to remind their partners. I was impressed with 
their ability to solve problems whenever there was any during their 
performance. (Ms. Lee)
l I was touched when I saw some students who apologized when they 
forgot what to say. I think they must have learned some 
communication skills in the past two months. (Ms. Tsai) 
l I felt that these students were more persistent to complete their task.
Whenever there was trouble, I could see their efforts to maintain 
their talk. They did not give in to communication breakdown 
easily. (Ms. Cheng) 

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