Appeal for help

Appeal for help is the strategy where the students ask for assistance from the

interlocutor when they face communication problems (e.g., What do you call…?, How do you say…?). In using this strategy, the students may consult any source of

authority such as a native speaker, an experimenter, or a dictionary (Bialystok, 1990: 42). The examples of “appeal for help” taken from the recordings of the pre-and post- speaking tasks are presented below.

Students’ use of appeal for help prior to the CS instruction

Prior to the 12-week CS instruction, the results showed that the students hardly used an appeal for help strategy in their talk. There were only 2 instances of “appeal for help” used by the students in the pre-speaking task recordings. The following are the examples of students’ use of “appeal for help” taken from the pre-speaking task recordings.

Example 1 (Task 1: Oral Interview)

15 R: How about the places? The places?

16 D: The places? Uh…… (pause: 5 seconds) I don’t know the places. How 17 do you spell?

(Pre-speaking task 1, p.11)

In this task, Student D tried to answer the question but it seemed that she was unsure about the question. Therefore, she asked the researcher to spell the word again when she stated “How do you spell?” in lines 16 and 17. This direct asking made the listener understand what D wanted so she repeated her question again.

Another example of an appeal for help strategy is displayed in the following example. Student N tried to ask for assistance from the interlocutor in Task 3.

Example 2 (Task 3: Topic Description)

6 N: but…uh…slim {use his hands to show the word “slim”}.

7 And… (pause: 3seconds) have a …uh... What does it mean Prayote 8 in English?

9 R: Useful?

10 N: Yes. Useful for…uh…for health for….

(Pre-speaking task 3, p.27)

From the above utterances, Student N asked the researcher for assistance since he did not know the word “useful” in English. In lines 7 and 8, he switched to Thai word when he stated “What does it mean Prayote in English?” Although his question was unclear and grammatically wrong, he showed his attempt to ask for assistance. Finally, he could continue his talk with the interlocutor.

The above examples showed that prior to the CS instruction “appeal for help” was less frequently used by the students to solve their communication problems. It seemed that the students were not accustomed to asking for help and they were not proficient enough to ask the questions back when they did not know or did not understand the particular words.

Students’ use of appeal for help after the CS instruction

There was a total increase of 31 instances of “appeal for help” use in the post-speaking task recordings in comparison to “appeal for help” use in the pre-speaking task

recordings. The students tended to be more confident in using this strategy when they wanted to maintain their conversation with interlocutors. In addition, they tried to use more taught phrases in “appeal for help” when they faced a difficulty in getting their meaning across. The following are examples of “appeal for help” employed by the students after the CS instruction.

Example 1 (Task 1: Oral Interview) 87 R: OK. What does your mother do?

88 C: My mother, she’s …um…do something in my house about wash 89 clothes…um…cooking. Um…I don’t know how to call it.

90 R: Housewife? 91 C: Oh! Yes.

(Post-speaking task 1, p.11)

As seen in Example 1, C did not know the English word for “housewife” so he tried to express his ideas and then asked the interlocutor for help when he stated “I don’t know how to call it” in line 89. His effort of explanation and direct asking helped him to succeed in getting his messages across eventually.

Apart from C’s utterances, there was also some evidence of “appeal for help” used by other students, as seen in Example 2.

Example 2 (Task 2: Cartoon Description)

8 N: Um…uh…the man is a…um…what does it mean…uh… {use hands for 9 “crash”}?

10 R: Crash?

11 N: Crash. Yeah. The man is crash the truck but…uh…the one man he calls to 12 the hospital. Yes,…uh…and hospital car hospital comes to here

(Post-speaking task 2, p.34)

In Example 2, Student N described four cartoon pictures. However, he did not know the word “crash” in English. Therefore he asked the interlocutor for help when he asked “what does it mean…uh” (lines 8 and 9). Finally, he was successful in getting

the message across since the interlocutor understood what he meant and offered him assistance.

Interestingly, an appeal for help strategy tended to be accompanied by code-switching sometimes. That is, the students were likely to switch to Thai so that their interlocutors would know the words they did not have English vocabulary for, as seen in Example 3 below.

Example 3 (Task 3: Topic Description)

4 F: Uh…huh. Chinese Lent Festival don’t eat…uh…meat, milk…uh…huh… 5 eggs and them go to temple, Chinese Chinese temple. Uh…huh. Uh… and 6 them don’t…in Thai what would you call Pa Ti Bhat? (In English,

7 practice)

8 R: Pa Ti Bhat? Practice?

(Post-speaking task 3, pp.23-24)

From the above example, Student F asked the interlocutor for assistance when he did not have the English word for “practice”. He then asked the researcher for help when he said “what would you call Pa Ti Bhat?” in line 6. Since such a term seemed to be difficult to explain in English, he switched to Thai so that the researcher would know the word in English. Finally, he could get the meanings across and continued his talk.

To summarise, these findings showed that the students tended to be more accustomed to using direct asking since they increased their use of “appeal for help” after the CS instruction. They made more use of some taught direct asking in “appeal for help”, for example, “what would you call...” and “I don’t know how to call it”. It is possible that the teaching of “appeal for help” may give the students more confidence in speaking English. In addition, rather than giving up talking, they seemed to put more efforts to ask for assistance from the interlocutor and continued their talk.