Frequency and Effectiveness of Communication Strategies among Iranian Students

Communication strategies (CS) have been generally defined as the means that speakers use to solve their communicative problems. It is understandable that there are various approaches to understanding CS according to the researchers’ general orientations towards language analysis. There has, however, been little research to explore and examine how CS instruction works in Iranian context. Therefore, the purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of teaching CS to Iranian students. The study adopted a pre-test post-test quasi-experimental design since it used two intact classes with no random assignment of the participants to the groups. A total of 31(16 female and 15 male) advanced-level English as a foreign language (EFL) students, whose age range was 15-18, participated in the study. Both experimental groups received instruction on communication strategies (CS) for 4 weeks. The results of the frequency analysis revealed that both male and female students improved in terms of frequency of CS use. Moreover, the results of the questionnaire showed that both groups believed CS training to be useful. The findings support the proposal that CS would serve as excellent means for EFL learners to have the tools to maintain conversation, resulting in the opportunity to receive more language input and improve their speaking ability.