This research represents a three month-long longitudinal study into the effects of communication strategy instruction on Japanese EFL university students' speaking proficiency.
Although substantial evidence (Kongsom, 2016; Rossiter, 2003; Teng, 2012) corroborates the teachability of communication strategies as well as their effectiveness in developing strategic competence, the order of their application, how they are systemised and the selective process behind the management of communication barriers remains less explored. The aim of the research is to investigate if strategic language employment is uniformly relied upon or do divergences in usage exist based on, for example, linguistic complexity of the constructs or related sociocultural influences. If so, what strategies are selected at the expense of others and which factors are prominent in the selection process for Japanese EFL learners. Clarifying Japanese learners' selection, employment, and reliance on communication strategies and the rationale behind their choice is the aim of this thesis.
