The interesting part begins when words are missing
A second-language speaker wants to refer to an object but does not know its name. They may describe its shape, point, borrow a word from another language, ask the interlocutor for help or abandon that part of the message. The other person may slow down, simplify a question, offer a candidate word or check what was meant. Conversation continues through the work done around the missing form.
For a long time such moments could be treated mainly as evidence of deficiency: the learner had not acquired the required word or structure. Elaine Tarone’s 1980 article belongs to a research movement that made the response to difficulty interesting in its own right. The central object was no longer only the gap in knowledge, but the strategy and interaction through which people attempted to communicate despite it.
Three research traditions looking at similar events
Tarone compared three bodies of work that had developed different vocabularies. Research on communication strategies focused on what learners do when their available interlanguage cannot express an intended meaning directly. Research on foreigner talk examined how more proficient speakers modify their language when addressing non-native interlocutors. Research on repair examined how participants identify and resolve trouble in conversation.
Her argument was that these traditions often observed the same kind of phenomenon in interlanguage communication while their conceptual frameworks caused researchers to “see” different things in the data. One analyst might code a learner strategy, another an adjustment by the interlocutor and a third a repair sequence. The event itself belongs to the interaction among all of them.
Not every shortcut is a communication strategy
A major purpose of the paper was conceptual clarification. Tarone distinguished strategies of communication from strategies of production and learning. A production strategy helps a speaker use linguistic knowledge efficiently during normal formulation. A learning strategy is directed towards developing the language system. A communication strategy arises around a problem in expressing or negotiating a meaning with another person.
The distinction prevents the concept from expanding until every act of speaking becomes strategic. If a learner routinely produces a familiar grammatical pattern, that may be a production process rather than an attempt to solve a communicative difficulty. If the learner memorises vocabulary for later use, that is oriented towards learning. Communication strategies are defined by their role in the immediate attempt to reach shared meaning under limited resources.
Communication is jointly achieved
One of the paper’s most durable insights is that a strategy cannot always be understood by examining the learner alone. The interlocutor’s response changes what becomes possible. A vague description may succeed because the other person proposes the missing word; a grammatically accurate sentence may fail because the participants attach different meanings to it. Understanding is coordinated rather than transmitted intact from one mind to another.
This is why foreigner talk and repair belong beside learner strategies. Slower speech, repetition, confirmation checks and reformulation are not merely background conditions. They can become part of the route by which meaning is established. The unit of analysis expands from an isolated utterance to a sequence of actions by at least two people.
“The same difficulty can appear as a learner’s strategy, an interlocutor’s adjustment or a repair sequence—depending on where the researcher places the frame.”
Avoidance is also an outcome
Communication research naturally notices successful solutions: paraphrasing, requesting assistance or using another available resource. But a speaker can also reduce the goal, change the topic or abandon a message. These choices may keep interaction comfortable while making part of the intended meaning disappear. The absence of visible breakdown therefore does not always mean that the original communicative purpose was achieved.
This point matters for assessment. If we observe only grammatical errors, avoidance can look like clean performance because the difficult structure was never attempted. If we observe purpose and interaction, we can ask a different question: what did the person originally try to accomplish, and how much of that purpose survived the strategy used?
What kind of paper this is
Tarone’s article is primarily theoretical. It establishes a framework, proposes criteria and relates findings from neighbouring traditions. It does not test a teaching programme or estimate how frequently each strategy succeeds. Its value lies in reorganising the object of study: communicative trouble becomes a window into the relationship between a developing language system, an immediate purpose and collaborative interaction.
The terminology of interlanguage research has continued to develop since 1980. Later work has questioned how conscious strategies must be, how they should be classified and how social context shapes them. The article should therefore not be treated as a final taxonomy. It is better read as an important conceptual move: from cataloguing missing forms towards analysing what people do together when forms are missing.
The connection to Functional Speech Adaptation
Functional Speech Adaptation inherits this interest in the response to difficulty. A failed first formulation is not merely an error to score; it creates an opportunity to observe whether the person notices trouble, changes strategy, recruits contextual support and maintains the communicative purpose. The interlocutor is part of that event, not just a neutral recipient.
FSA adds a developmental and educational emphasis that is not Tarone’s claim. It asks how learners can become less dependent on protected conditions while preserving the ability to coordinate meaning in changing situations. Tarone’s paper supplies one strong foundation for that question: it shows why adaptation has to be studied in interaction and why a person’s available resources become visible most clearly when communication does not proceed exactly as planned.
Primary source
This is the paper on which the article is based. The link leads to its DOI or scientific publisher.
- Tarone, E. (1980). Communication strategies, foreigner talk, and repair in interlanguage.
A framework for communication strategies and repair in interaction involving a developing language system.
The text above is an interpretation by the Functional Speech Adaptation project; the cited authors do not necessarily use this term or framework.