Communication strategies used by German-Swedish bilinguals when they have lexical difficulty are discussed. Findings indicate that in a language test situation, when attention is focused on words rather than topic, face-saving over a lexical gap seems to be of great importance to the speaker. When a communication strategy has led to a noticeable…

Three experiments from the late 1970s concerning second language communication strategies are studied for evidence supporting their classification as either avoidance or achievement strategies. The experiments had as subjects native English-speaking children in a French immersion program, adult second language learners of English who were native…