EFL Students’ Communication Strategy in ESP Class at Universitas PGRI Ronggolawe Tuban

Abstract

In the process of communicating using English, when EFL students do not know how to say a word in English, nervous, and feel anxiety to speak, they can communicate by using their hands, imitating sounds, inventing new words, or describing what they mean to deliver their ideas and to overcome the problems. These ways of communicating are communication strategies (CSs). The objectives of the study in this research are to identify communication strategy used by EFL students, describe the most communication strategy
used EFL students, and the reasons of applying communication strategy. This study is designed as a qualitative research. The subjects of the study were the eighth semester students of English Language Education at Unirow Tuban representing high, medium, and low proficient students in their classes. The data are the communication strategies employed by the students when they had oral presentation for English for Specific Purposes (ESP) course. In this research, the researcher used three instruments:
observation, interview, and document. The results of the research reveal that high proficient students used nine types of communication strategies, medium proficient students also used nine types of communication strategies, and low proficient students used eleven types of communication strategies. The most frequently strategies used by the students from all levels of
proficiency were fillers and repetition strategy. It is also found that the high and medium proficient students used more linguistic means, while the low students used achievement or compensatory strategy. Finally, the students‘ reasons of using communication strategies were feeling nervous, hesitating, lacking of vocabularies, forgeting the words, and feeling afraid of making mistakes. In conclusion, communication strategies help the students to overcome their problems in communicating using L2.