Communication Strategies in Question and Answer in Class Discussion of Second Semester Students at the English Education Section of Graduate Program of State University of Padang.

This research was observed about communication strategies employed by the students in asking question (audiences) and in asnwering question (presenters). The participants of the quantitative and qualitative research were the students of second semester of graduate program in State University of Padang in 2011/2012 Academic Year. The data are the students’ utterance containing their communication’s strategies. In collecting the data, the writer applied observation, recording and interview which was conducted to each of the students who asked questions and each of the students who answered the questions. Finally, the data were transcribed into verbatim and classified into the classification of communication strategies proposed by Celce-Murcia, Dornyei and Thurrel (1995). The findings shows that the students were employed all categories in communication strategies. Yet, the most frequent used by the students in asking question is stalling and time gaining strategy occured 163 times (65%). They employed the subcategory of fillers or gambit. This strategy was applied in order they can obtain some additional times to think in chosing a suitable term or word and in arranging the question made. Similar to that findings, the students answering the question employed all categories of communication strategies as well. Then, the most frequent used by them is also stalling and time gaining strategy occured 263 times (55%). This was employed by the students because they have to give more explanation to the audience, so that, they had to be carefull in giving it. in other word, they used it for taking time to think to make the listener understood In short, it can be concluded that most of the students of Graduate program in State University of Padang have the awareness of building the communication success by employing variations of communication strategies during the class discussion.