An Investigation of Classroom Communication Strategies Across Discipline

Abstract

In the classroom, communication is the defining factor for many things. It defines how well the class is organised. It also defines how well the teaching and learning have progressed. Effective communication keeps learners engaged in the activities. Therefore, the use of appropriate communication strategies is important in order for the conveyance of information to take place. This study is done to investigate the use of verbal and non-verbal strategies by engineering and social science students. The instrument used is a survey with 3 main sections. The first section contains items for the demographic profile. The second section has 9 items for verbal strategies and the third section has 17 items for non-verbal strategies. for verbal strategies, students from social sciences were more concerned with their audience before the verbal interactions. Students from engineering were more concerned with the audience’s reaction to what they said. Next, when it comes to non-verbal strategies, findings in this current study showed that the learners from social sciences used more fillers for communication when they do not know how to express what they wanted to convey. Students from social sciences used more verbal strategies than students from engineering. On the other hand, engineering used as many non-verbal strategies as social science students. The findings of this study have interesting pedagogical implications for the teaching and learning of communication strategies for students of various disciplines.