In ever changing world in which we live, the knowledge of different foreign languages is essential for everyone. One of the main objectives of teaching foreign languages is the development of the ability of oral communication. That a learner could feel capable of speaking a foreign language despite possible inconveniences (for example, inadequate knowledge or vocabulary) he can use different resources and techniques which are helpful in a conversation. These techniques are communicative strategies that obtained an important role in the teaching of foreign languages, especially with the appearance of communicative approaches which promote communicative tasks that reflect authentic communicative situations in a foreign language.
The main objective of the present master's thesis has been to investigate the knowledge and use of communication strategies among the students of Spanish Philology at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana. We have been interested in what communication strategies they are familiar with, which they use and how often, and what importance do they give to communication strategies. We have also investigated whether the number of foreign languages that one has learned has any influence on the knowledge and use of strategies and how the use of communication strategies is related to the level of knowledge of Spanish and the level of education.
One of the main findings of the present thesis is that although students do not know the communication strategies systematically, they know how to enumerate them after knowing what they are and use them when faced with difficulties in communication. It should also be emphasized that the students value knowledge about communicative strategies a lot, which we consider very important because not only the communicative strategies help maintain the conversation, communicative strategies also stimulate the inclusion of all the learners in communicative acts, including those that feel fear of anxiety of oral communication because of lack of knowledge in foreign language or lack of the specific vocabulary.
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