Communication Strategies of Indonesian Bilingual School Students: An Analysis in One Way Communication Context

Considerable bodies of the study reveal that communication strategies are very critical in the communication process. They functioned to solve the linguistics insufficiency or breakdowns in communication and to help learners communicate effectively. Besides, undoubtedly, these strategies contribute not only in two-way communications but also one-way communications. This study was, therefore, to investigate how Indonesian EFL students in a bilingual school utilize communication strategies in their speech in the public speaking training and the reason why they use those strategies. The participants were 4 students from a bilingual boarding school. All of them were female who used Javanese as their mother tongue. The data were collected by observations and interviews. The students' speech performances during the speech training program were video recorded and then transcribed and analyzed. The result revealed that students tended to use self-repair, fillers and hesitation devices in their speech. They used self-repair and filler mostly when they needed time to think what they wanted to say. However, self-repair was also used by students when they were aware of their mistakes, so they repeated their utterances. Furthermore, the students’ linguistic limitation also became problematic in the students’ speech process. The study revealed that students lacked vocabulary and understanding grammar became an obstacle in students' speech.