The Impact Of Iraqi EFL Learners' English Proficiency Level On Their Use Of Communication Strategies

This study is aimed at investigating the impact of Iraqi EFL learners' proficiency level in English on their use of communication strategies (CSs) when they communicate orally in English. It employed a mixed-methods procedure to collect data. In this procedure, elicitation tasks and instruments were three oral tasks, stimulated recall interviews, and a self-reported questionnaire. The oral tasks were of two types: a one-way task (picture description), and two-way tasks (information-gap task and opinion-gap task). The participants were (56) undergraduate sophomores and (22) M.A. students in the Department of English-College of Education for Humanities-University of Mosul, during the academic year 2020-2021. The results revealed that Iraqi EFL learners face many communication problems when using English orally. They also revealed that English proficiency level has a significant impact on Iraqi EFL learners' use of CSs. The more proficient the learner was, the less CSs s/he used. It was found out that the difference in use of CSs is most obvious in reduction strategies. This is attributed to that beginners tended to use reduction strategies, i.e., leave their message unfinished, change the conversation topic, or switch to their mother tongue, Arabic, in preference to taking the risk, of using English, with their non-fully developed competence in English.