Coomunication Strategies Used by Students in Classroom Interactions: a Comparative Study of Gender Difference in Strategy Use in Focus of Students Learning English As a Foreign Language

This study was conducted in Ethiopia, particularly at Kotebe College of Teacher Education. It has been widely attested that every speaker, a foreign or nativelanguage speaker, gets difficulty to express ideas at some time while speaking. On such moments, speakers develope strategies, communication strategies, to fill in their communication gaps. Bearing this in mind, this study focused on the strategies language students use to express their ideas when they face problems while speaking in English. A list of communication stragegies identified by former researchers were presented to students in a questionnaire, and they were asked to mark how often they use the strategies. The information was also supplemented by classroom observations. In addition to idenfifying students' communication strategies, the study tried to see if any gender difference was available in type and frequency of communication strateg use among the students.