The Use of Communication Strategies in Different Speaking Tasks by English Major Students
King Mongkut’s University of Technology North Bangkok, Thailand
ABSTRACT
This study aims to investigate English major students’ use of communication strategies while performing different speaking tasks: one-way and two-way tasks. The participants were 30 third-year students majoring in English for career tracks at Naresuan University. They were randomly selected using the convenience sampling method. Data were collected by the observation form and transcribed data of two different tasks: a picture description task (one- way task) and a role-play task (two-way task). The frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation (SD), and Chi-square were employed to analyse the data. The results showed that the students used all 5 main types of communication strategies which included avoidance strategy, target language-based strategy, L1-based strategy, modification devices, and nonlinguistic strategy. The most frequently used type of communication strategies was modification devices and the least used type of communication strategies was avoidance strategy. The findings also showed that the students used various types of communication strategies while performing two different tasks.
KEYWORDS
Communication strategies, Speaking task