Exploring EFL Teachers’ and Students’ Perceptions in Iranian Universities and Institutes on the Feasibility of Teaching Communication Strategies

This study aimed at investigating the possibility of teaching communication strategies perceived by EFL teachers and students in their classrooms. The participants of the study included 20 pre-intermediate English language teachers and 110 of their students in three selected universities and one institute in Tabriz, Iran. The literature review shows that teaching communication strategies are still surrounded by controversy. In this mixed methods study, data were gathered from a modified questionnaire and a structured interview. Tiwaporn Kongsom's (2016) taxonomy was adapted in designing a questionnaire steered at eliciting students’ and teachers' perceptions about CSs teachability and teachers’ actual CSs teaching activities and practices. The results of the present study showed that after receiving 12 weeks communication strategy instruction and through comparing the results of the pre-test and post-test, it is obvious that students performed better on the post-test than the pre-test. Thus, strategy teaching was the factor of progress. The findings of the qualitative and quantitative phases revealed that teaching CSs are possible and teachers’ and students’ hold positive perception towards the possibility of teaching and usefulness of CSs and the instruction of specific CSs improved the students’ oral performance and engaged them in oral tasks.