Analysis of communication strategies used by students in business english classes at the faculty of economics and business, University of Lampung

Communication plays an important role in today's global environment because everyone will be inseparable from communication activities. Language is a communication tool used as a means to express and convey information, to learn about people and the world around them. This study describes the use of communication strategies in English classes in the Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Lampung (FEB Unila). This study aims to find out how the use of communication strategies by students during discussions in class and their speaking skills in using these communication strategies. This study used a case study approach to investigate the use of communication strategies at the perspective of language proficiency because the most significant predictor of the use of a particular communication strategy was language proficiency. The subjects of this study were taken purposively as much as 1 class with a total of 36 students with high and low proficiency levels. They are first-year students of the S1 Management Department at FEB Unila. In this study, researchers used several data sources, namely observation, interviews, and documentation. This is intended to answer research questions based on data triangulation so that the data obtained is more reliable. The results of this study show that there are nine communication strategies used by learners in speaking for discussion; message abandonment, approximation, stalling, literal translation, code switching, convoluted, begging for help, mime, and using versatile words. The study also found that the strategies used in learning influenced learning outcomes in English communication where strategies such as approximation, literal translation, stalling, convoluted, asking for help, and mime greatly helped learners to express their ideas in discussions and were shown to get good and excellent grades in almost all speaking performance criteria. Keywords: Communication Strategies, English Language Teaching, Business English