Abstract

This study examines the effects of communication strategies instruction on the ability to use English in an academic context. The participants were 28 students comprising 13 Thai students and 15 Cambodian students who enrolled at a Burapha university that used English as a lingua franca (ELF) in an academic context. The research instruments were pretest and posttest communication strategies tasks, communication strategies instruction, video recorder, observational field notes, and student reflections. Wilcoxon signed-rank test and coding method were used to analyze the data. The findings presented both quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data indicated that most of the students had higher scores after receiving communication strategies instruction. The qualitative data revealed that the students perceived better language use in the classroom after receiving communication strategies instruction. Moreover, they had more confidence to speak with their interlocutors. They also attempted to use communication strategies to help them overcome language difficulties. In addition, they had positive effects on this communication strategy instruction. The findings of this study suggest that English teachers play an important role in motivating low-proficiency students to speak English when implementing communication strategies.

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