Communication Strategies: Deflection or Departure?

Abstract

This empirical study investigates the possibilities of enhancing the EFL students’ communicative competence and self-confidence through the teaching of communicative strategies. It was conducted in a 7 semester course of continuous work on various aspects of oral discourse. 24 students from La Universidad de Salamanca between 18 and 22 years old participated in the research. 12 of them were in their 1st year, and 12 in their 4th year. They all attended the classes designed for the research that had two principal phases: Preparing the ground for the investigation (confidence building and fluency or accuracy), and Teaching communicative strategies (interlanguage based strategies; cooperative strategies; time gaining strategies; maintenance strategies; structural strategies). To investigate the influence of the training on the students’ communicative competence and self-confidence, their performance on a post-training conversation was compared to their pre-training performance through multiple oral data collection procedures. The findings confirm that the teaching of communicative strategies enhances learners’ communicative skills and their self-confidence while communicating in English as well as their accuracy and fluency.