穨Review. Pdf

Figure 4.2 Reactions to Others’ Silence 
.1.3.2 Reactions to One’s Own Silence  
In addition to the analysis of the students’ reactions to their partners’ silence, 
qualitative examinations on how students reacted to their own silence were also 
performed. The ability to fix the communication breakdown caused by one’s own 
silence is considered important in real life communication. Communication 
breakdown might happen very often when EFL learners are actually talking to 
foreigners due to the lack of vocabulary or problems in listening comprehension.
Therefore, in the evaluation of the participants’ strategic competence, this reaction 
strategy was taken as another important indicator of the acquisition of communicative 
competence. 
The analysis of this section was based on the students who paused longer than 
seven seconds, with 10 students in the control group and eight students in the 
experimental group. 
The comparisons of the strategic competence with regard to how one responded 
to one’s own silence were illustrated in Table 4.13. 

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Table 4.13 Reactions to One’s Own Silence 
Strategic competence II (unit: person) 
Reactions to one’s own silence 
Control(n= 10) 
Experimental(n= 8) 
A. Smiling and saying “I am 
sorry”
1 
6 
B. Smiling without saying 
anything
0 
1 
C. Looking nervously at their 
partner and saying nothing 
3 
1 
D. Looking at one’s feet without 
saying anything 
6 
0 
These four reactions were listed according to their appropriateness and the 
degree of effort to maintain the conversation. The best choice for these EFL learners 
at such beginning level seemed to be smiling and saying “I am sorry.” The second 
best choice was a simple smile as a sign of begging for forgiveness. The third 
alternative was looking at the partners without saying anything. The least desirable 
reaction was complete avoidance by lowering one’s head without saying anything.
The first three reactions still showed some signs of effort to maintain the 
communication. They varied in the degree of their appropriateness. The last one 
was a sign of total resignation to fix the conversation. The door of communication 
was entirely shut with the last reaction.
In the analysis of the eight students in the experimental group who caused 
communication breakdown during their conversation with their partners, Table 4.13 
showed that six of them said, “I am sorry,” to their partners with smiles. As a sharp 
contrast, there was only one student out of ten that managed to say, “I am sorry” in the 
control group. Three students looked at their partners nervously without saying 
anything. And six of them simply lowered their heads silently. These six students’ 
partners were the same six persons listed in Table 4.12 who gave up their task due to 
their partners’ silence.
Figure 4.3 showed the comparisons of the control group and the experimental 
group’s reactions to their own silence. 

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0
2
4
6
smiling &
apologizing
no eye contact
and no apology
reactions to one's own silence
control
experimental