THE USE OF COMMUNICATION STRATEGIES IN DIFFERENT SPEAKING TASKS BY THE FIRST YEAR STUDENTS AT THAI NGUYEN UNIVERSITY OF AGRICUTURE AND FORESTRY

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the use of communication strategies by the first-year students at Thai Nguyen University of Agriculture and Forestry (TUAF) while performing one-way and two-way speaking tasks. The participants were 30 first year students, major in Forestry. They were randomly selected by using the convenience sampling method. Data were collected by the observation form and transcribed data of two different tasks: a picture description task (a one-way task) and a role-play task (a two-way task). The frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation (SD), and Chi-square were employed to analyze the data. The results showed that the students used all 5 main types of communication strategies which included avoidance strategy, target language-based strategy, L1-based strategy, modification devices, and nonlinguistic strategy. The most frequently used type of communication strategies was modification devices and the least used type of communication strategies was avoidance strategy. The findings also showed that the students used various types of communication strategies while performing two different tasks.