Use of Oral Communication Strategies in English Language by Graduate Students in an International Context

Students studying in international universities usually experience some difficulties and challenges when communication in English with students and people coming from different cultural and ethnic background. Nevertheless, to cope with challenges students may use Oral Communication Strategies (OCSs) but studies addressing these strategies in the international contexts have been rare. As such, this study was set out to identify a) the oral communication strategies used by the international students when communicating in English; b) to identify any possible differences in the use of OCSs used by students from different ethnic backgrounds; c) any possible gender differences in the use of OCSs used by the international students. The context of the study was Eastern Mediterranean University, Northern Cyprus, and the participants were 32 graduate (master's and PhD) students majoring in English Language Teaching (ELT) who were selected by convenience sampling who fell in five nationality groups (Turkish, Iranian, African, Iraqi& Others). This study adopted a mixed-method approach to address the questions under investigation. On the one hand the Oral Communication Strategy Inventory, adopted from Nakatani, provided quantitative data, and on the other hand, the oral communication task and semistructured interview along with observation and the researcher's field notes were triangulated to provide qualitative data. The quantitative data was analyzed through SPSS software and descriptive statistics, t-test and ANOVA tests were performed to provide answer to the research questions. The findings of the current study indicated that social affective, negotiation for meaning while speaking and message reduction and alteration were the next most frequently reported speaking strategies and negotiation for meaning while listening and nonverbal strategies while listening were the most frequently reported listening strategies by the international students. Comparing OCSs across different nationality groups showed that OCSs were not statistically significant across different nationality groups. However, gender differences were significant in two speaking strategies: social affective and negotiating for meaning while speaking with the females obtaining higher means than the males. The study yielded some important implications for practitioners, teachers and researchers who investigate this field of inquiry. Keywords: Oral Communication Strategies (OCSs), English Language Teaching (ELT), Social Affective, negotiating for meaning