The Most Frequent Types of Communication Strategies in Iranian Efl Teachers’ Talk

Despite the existence of a large number of studies dealing with communication strategies (css) in the field of second/foreign language (l2) education, most of the empirical studies are based on the oral discourse of l2 learners. however, as css function as a bridge over the linguistic knowledge gap between interlocutors in the l2 teaching contexts, paying equal attention to the use of css by teachers is of considerable importance. thus, the purpose of the present study is, first, to identify the most frequent types of css used by iranian efl teachers in their classroom contexts and, second, to investigate the reasons behind their use. the participants were three efl teachers who were teaching general english courses in a private language institute in mashhad, northeastern iran. in order to collect the data of the present study, audio-recordings were made of three lessons of each teacher. the data, which included 13.5 hours of classroom talk, were analyzed by first transcribing the audio-recordings and then identifying the css. to get further insight into css, each teacher also participated in a single semi-structured interview. the results showed that approximation is the most frequently used type of cs. the higher frequency of approximation than the other types of css can be attributed to the fact that it helps teachers to be fast and short in the heat of conversation. the second most frequent type of cs in the present study is circumlocution which is justified by reference to high l2 proficiency of the teachers.