Teachers’ vs. learners’ communicative strategies in EFL classes

Abstract

Communicative competence and awareness of communicative strategies are vital factors in EFL learning. Due to their importance, this study aimed to investigate the strategies used by EFL teachers and learners. To this end, 10 teachers were randomly selected. One hundred fifty EFL learners attending these classes were also subjected to the study. The utterances produced by participants were recorded, transcribed, and coded based on Dornyei’s taxonomy (1995). A mixed-method approach entailing both qualitative and quantitative analysis was taken. The findings indicated that while compensatory strategy was the most frequently used strategy (54%) by EFL learners, stalling or time gaining strategy was the least frequently used one (19%) with the avoidance communicative strategy (27%) placed between them., EFL teachers, however, employed the strategy of stalling or time gaining most frequently (63%), while the strategy of avoidance was the least frequently used strategy (11%) by the EFL teachers after the compensatory communicative strategy (26%). Finally, in further analysis, the results of the chi-square test demonstrated a significant difference between teachers’ and learners’ strategy use frequency. Language teachers need to be aware of the type and frequency of effective communicative strategies used by their learners to raise their consciousness about the appropriate use of efficient strategies. Teacher trainers can help these teachers with the proper means of initiating and maintaining classroom interactions to foster the communicative and strategic competencies of their learners. Material developers need to take these findings into account in course content preparation to improve strategy use among language learners.