THE COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES OF A 5-YEAR-OLD SINGAPOREAN CHILD : AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Abstract

The study explores the communicative strategies of a 5-year-old Singaporean preschool child in his use of English. It investigates in particular his abilities to sustain conversation with his peers, and with adults by means of linguistic. prosodic: and discourse devices. The different strategies employed by the informant with adults and peers are compared and described. The research reveals that the informant in his interactions with both adults and peers used strategies: to request for action and co-operation. to distract the co-participant. to ‘argue’. and to do talk repair. But with adults, he used strategies to request for information and to sustain the hearer" s interest. With his peers. he exploited the argumentative and persistence strategies. There were strategies which he used with both types of interactants but for different functions like the 'Okay' strategies and strategies to distract his co-participants. The 'Okay· strategies functioned as a form of consent in adult interaction, and as a frame-marker in peer interaction. Strategies to distract co-participants were found in both types of interaction, but in peer interaction, the distraction was done to exercise a particular choice in play. In adult interaction, however, the distraction was done to avoid doing homework. From all these findings, it was very apparent that the informant dominated the conversations with both adults and peers. He was also able to sustain conversations successfully with the different interactants. Work done on children's communicative skills, especially in Singapore, is rather scant. This dissertation aims to fill up some of this gap.