This study observed the communication strategies used by good and poor
students of speaking four in Faculty of Letters. It focused on kinds of types of
communication strategies produced by good students, kinds of types of
communication strategies produced by poor students, and the differences between
the good and poor students in using communication strategies in a conversation.
The data were taken from recording the conversation in which the topics were
made by the writer. The role-play was done by twenty students, ten of them are
good students and ten of them are poor students. The data were analyzed based on
the theory of communication strategies. The findings showed that the good
students used seven strategies; meanwhile the poor students used six strategies.
The number of using the strategies shows that the good students are more
successful than poor students in maintaining conversations.