From the above list and the appendix, we can generalize the similarities between Dornyei’s and Tarone’s
typologies of communication strategies. It is the seven types that they present in common, which include message
abandonment, topic avoidance, circumlocution, approximation, word coinage, literal translation and appealing for
help. Moreover, they explicate the application of the seven types in a similar way. To take an example, concerning
“approximation”, Tarone (1977) explains it as “the use of a single target language vocabulary item or structure,
which the learner knows is not correct, but which shares enough semantic features….” (cited in Bialystok, 1990:
40); and Dornyei’s definition is “using an alternative term which expresses the meaning of the target lexical item
as closely as possible” (Dornyei, 1995 cited in Brown, 2000: 128).