Investigating Oral Communication Strategies Used by Registrar’s Office Employees in an International University Context: A Case Study

The global spread of English has led to both the use of English as a lingua franca and as well as the emergence of new diversities of spoken English acknowledged as „World Englishes‟. This enlarging use of English in all domains of life including the higher education contexts necessitates mutual intelligibility among second language (L2) users for effective communication. In the pursuance of this aim, L2 users need to employ some oral communication strategies (OCSs). Given the fact that Eastern Mediterranean University (EMU) is an English-medium university which accommodates international students from 106 different countries, English is used as a lingua franca within the campus including the Registrar‟s Office (RO). However, there is no study conducted to investigate the strategies used by the employees to communicate with the non-Turkish speaking international students successfully. This study, then, aims to explore the oral communication strategies used by the RO employees to overcome oral communication breakdowns with the international non-Turkish speaking students at EMU. To achieve this goal, a mixed methods approach was followed to elicit data from 40 RO employee participants through Oral Communication Strategy Inventory (OCSI). In addition, 12 participants were interviewed to triangulate the findings obtained via the survey. After analyzing the collected data, the major findings of this study showed that RO employees mostly negotiated for meaning while speaking and listening. Findings of the study are justifiable as the RO employees have no other choice but maintaining successful communication with international non-Turkish speaking students in order to fulfill their needs. This study aims to fill the gap in the literature about oral communication breakdown in the English language taking place between the RO employees and the students in an international university context. The findings of this study can inform both the university administrators and syllabus designers to work in collaboration for designing an ESP course for the employees to improve their oral communication skills and strategies in English. Keywords: Oral communication strategies (OCSs), English as a lingua franca (EFL), oral communication breakdowns (OCBs), Registrar‟s Office (RO), English at workplace