| Volume 5 Index July 2010 |

Full articles
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Title
Filipino College Freshman Students’ Oral Compensatory Strategies

Author
Zayda S. Asuncion

Abstract
This study aimed to determine the compensatory strategies most frequently used by 41 Filipino college freshman students in a private university and their relation to course, first language, type of high school graduated from and English 1a grade. Two oral tasks namely oral interview and picture-cued narration were used as the primary sources of data. The results indicate that from the seven ompensatory strategies namely switching to the mother tongue, getting help, using mime, selecting the topic, adjusting the message, coining words, avoiding communication partially or totally, and using circumlocution or synonym, the most frequently used was switching to mother tongue. When the compensatory strategies and the four identified variables were correlated, there was a negative relationship between compensatory strategies used and grade in English 1a. This implies the need to explicitly teach students these compensatory strategies for them to cope with their limitations in oral communication.

Key words: compensatory strategies, code-switching, approximating the message, getting help, using mime, avoiding communication partially or totally, selecting the topic, adjusting the message, coining words