The effect of communication strategy training on limited English proficiency learners’ strategic competence

Strategic competence is the ability to use communication strategies for oral interaction within the limits of linguistic competency. This paper looked into a communication strategy training that spanned over 13 sessions, with each session focusing on a different communication strategy. Data were collected through recordings of technical presentations and dialogues, later transcribed into 29,492 words. The analysis of the transcripts showed a reduction in the frequency of communication strategies used from 65.13 ptw to 51.43 ptw from the beginning to the end of the training. The findings of this study suggested that the communication strategy training had enabled the participants to maximise the use of their existing linguistic resources and develop their strategic competence independently. The reduction of the frequency of communication strategy represents the higher production of actual language use as shown in the increase of number of utterance from 2134 TWS to 2528 TWS