Recently, universities and colleges around Taiwan have strived to promote English-only learning environment. By establishing such an environment, students are expected to achieve more English learning in the classroom. However, the students as the subjects of this research are mostly not high achievers in English proficiency in their past studies and usually have had no opportunity of getting immersed in an English-only environment due to pressures from various exams. Many of them even reveal that they have frequently experienced a certain level of learning anxiety when learning English themselves or sitting in the classroom. This study is therefore an attempt to explore learning effectiveness of students in intermediate and advanced-level English classes by providing both verbal and non-verbal communicative translation assistances from the perspectives of semiotics, cross-cultural studies and communicative language teaching. In this study, the researchers first introduce Jakobson's semiotic model of communication and definitions of translation in cross-cultural studies, and then review the research of communication strategies and learning anxiety in foreign language teaching. The research methods adopted were questionnaires, interviews and class observations. The results of this study are expected to provide teachers with insights to English-only education at colleges and other types of foreign language teaching.
