As suggested by Bialystok (1997), the most significant predictor of specific communication
strategy use is language proficiency. In his longitudinal study, Ellis (1984) found that high
proficiency learners were likely to employ language-based strategies or compensatory
strategies e.g. word coinage, approximation and generalization and low proficiency learners
resorted more to knowledge-based and repetition. However, some available studies suggest
the contrastive findings that that less proficiency learners used more compensatory strategies
than the advanced ones as the former ones have adequate linguistic competence to use oral
communication strategies to overcome their communication deficiencies.