Communication Strategies Used by Students of Speech Extracurricular in Islamic Boarding School for Girls.

This study focuses on observing the use of communication strategies by students of speech extracurricular in Islamic boarding school for girls. The objectives of this study are to investigate: 1) the types of communication strategies used by students, 2) the students' reason for using the strategies and, 3) the different uses of communication strategies between Junior Secondary School Students (MTs) and Senior Secondary School Students (MA). This research belongs to a qualitative research study, using conversation analysis approach. Eight students from both MTs and MA were chosen as they experienced in the public speaking contest. In order to collect the data, the researcher observed all of eight students‟ performance in speech. The researcher video recorded and voice recorded the students' speech performance in order to get the appropriate data on the students use of communication strategies. The interview using semi-structured interview was also conducted in order to know the students' reason for using communication strategies. The students' written speech concepts as documentation were also collected and analyzed by the researcher. This research revealed that students used compensatory strategies more than reduction or avoidance strategies. Students used 13 kinds of compensatory strategies and one of the avoidance strategies for only four times. This indicates that students tend to maintain the original message of the speech rather than change it when they encountered some difficulties in communication. Self repair or restructuring was the most dominant strategy applied by students in their speech followed by pause, using fillers and hesitation device as the second most strategy used by students. Both of these strategies were related to processing time pressure problem whereas student used these strategies in order to gain time to think or look for an appropriate phase. Overall the discussion revealed that students used most of the strategies due to their resource deficit problem, especially related to the limitation of the vocabularies. This problem should be considered by the teachers and boarding school‟s language department to improve some activities related to the students‟ vocabulary mastery. This activity should be planned for both MTs and MA students cause there were not many differences in the use of communication strategies of both group. They used the same kinds of communication strategies which indicated that they encountered the same problems during their speech. The difference is only in the quantity of the use of communication strategies. MTs students used more communication strategies than MA students