Åaziye YAMAN, Pelin IRGIN, Mehtap KAVASOÄLU
Oral communication is an interactive process in which an individual alternately takes the roles of speaker and listener. Thus, rather than focusing on each skill separately, these skills should be considered integratedly. In order for students to overcome the burdens in listening and speaking skills, they need to develop communicative competence, especially strategic competence. With reference to speaking, strategic competence points out the ability to know how to keep a conversation going, how to terminate the conversation, and how to clear up communication breakdowns and comprehension problems (Shumin, 1994). Therefore, the aim of this quantitative study is to investigate both speaking and listening strategies (so called “communication strategies”) used by EFL students to cope with problems during communication so they can be integrated into language teaching in order to develop students’ strategic competence. Two hundred ninety-one Turkish EFL university students participated in this study. Researchers used the “Communication Strategy Inventory”, a 5 point Likert-type scale developed by Yaman, Irgin and Kavasoglu (2011). The findings of this study revealed that EFL students used negotiation for meaning, compensatory, and getting the gist strategies in communication. It also found that female students used communication strategies more than males and advanced level students.
