ROLE OF COMMUNICATIVE STRATEGIES FOR DEVELOPING ORAL COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Fouzia Jamal Goreja   and Fouzia Janjua 
ABSTRACT
This research paper focused on developing oral communication skills of English language learners of a private university in the capital city of Pakistan, who after studying English as a subject for fourteen years were unable to communicate fluently and were doing language course to improve their language proficiency.  Communicative strategies (CS) - conscious plans used by individuals to attain a communicative goal: employed through communicative tasks with the help of task-based language teaching methodology (TBLT) in an ESL language classroom for developing oral communication skills of language learners, making them proficient communicators in practical life. Oral communication skills are a set of aural and oral skills, so the study focuses only on learning of conversational routines, which aid the learners to acquire communicative proficiency academically and professionally. The study was experimental in nature, and the population selected was the students of advance diploma who joined the university after completing their graduation. The sample selected from population comprised of 45 learners who were selected through stratified sampling technique. Sample was further bifurcated into two groups: control and experimental groups, controlled group comprised of 22 subjects, while experimental group had 23 subjects. The subjects of experimental group were taught through the use of communicative strategies while doing certain tasks in the classroom in 12 weeks specifically designed ESL course. On the other hand, the control group was taught after consulting recommended textbooks of the university. Instruments used for data collection were achievement tests and structured observation sheet prepared by the researcher. The independent sample t-test was used by researcher to calculate the value of t with the help of recorded scores of achievement tests (pretest and posttest).  Besides, comparisons of the percentages of scores of pre-test and post-test of learners were also made. Observations and results reveal that the experimental group scored higher than control group after treatment. The study suggested integrating communicative strategies during task-based language teaching to accelerate the development of oral communication skills among advanced learners.
KEYWORDS: Communicative strategy, TBLT, communicative competence, ESL, oral communication.