The oral communication strategies of south-western nigerian university engineering undergraduates: a quasi-experimental study

Despite the importance of English speaking competence at the workplace in the present era, poor spoken English performance among university undergraduate engineers is alarming, requiring scholarly attention. Therefore, this study was designed to explore the types of oral communication strategies employed by South-Western Nigerian university engineering undergraduates to compensate for communication breakdowns amidst verbal interactions, and to find out the impact of teaching oral communication strategies on learners’ strategic competence. A mixed method approach comprising four data collection instruments, namely questionnaire, interview questions, speaking task and observation checklist was employed. Derived from Tarone’s Traditional View, Tarone’s Interactional View, Dornyei’s Extended View and Dornyei’s Communication Strategy Instruction Model, the adopted theoretical framework paved way for the choice of communication strategies used and the strategy instruction in this study. An overall sample of 316 respondents were conveniently selected from four public universities in South-Western Nigeria to respond to an adapted questionnaire. To find out the impact of teaching oral communication strategies, a quasi-experiment was conducted on a sub-group of 43 participants who were further divided into two groups: experimental group and control group. An intervention in oral communication strategies was conducted with the experimental group, while the control group took part in a course known as ‘Use of English’. Following that, a semi-structured interview on students’ attitude towards strategy instruction was administered to twelve participants who were purposively chosen from the experimental group. The data were analysed through SPSS’s descriptive and inferential statistics and NVivo respectively. The experimental group demonstrated a significant increase in strategic competence post-intervention, while the control group did not. These findings are corroborated by the survey data in which participants of the experimental group reported a perceived post-intervention improvement. Moreover, students were also found with an overall positive attitude towards the idea of training in strategic competence. This study was concluded with contribution to language and linguistic knowledge, particularly in relation to English speaking competence and communication strategies. It also has pedagogical implications and recommendations aimed at informing ESL stakeholders and future researchers.