Strategies of Thai undergraduates for dealing with oral communication problems

Abstract

      Nowadays, it is undeniable that communication strategies (CSs) play an important role in language teaching. Thus, in order to effectively cope with many of the difficulties associated with a conversation situation, students need to develop communicative competence. Language learners can improve their communicative competence by employing communication strategies which can help them to develop their ability in keeping a conversation going. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate how university students deal with face-to-face oral communication situations. A semi-structured interview was used for collecting data from 43 Thai students studying at Khon Kaen University. The obtained data were analyzed qualitatively.  The results showed that there were two main categories of communication strategies employed by the participants to deal with communication difficulties: 1) strategies for achieving communication, and 2) strategies for avoiding difficulties in communication. Furthermore, the students reported that they used the strategies in the first category, as a message sender or a message receiver, more frequently than the strategies in the second category. The strategies for avoiding difficulties in communication were employed when the students could not deal with the problems being faced.