The purpose of this study was to investigate communication strategies usedrnby English major third year students at Debre Markos Univers ity. The studyrnspecifically tried to see the most and least commonly used strategies byrnstudents, and to examine the role of most commonly used strategies onrnstudents' communicative skill. The study involved 90 students.In order to meet these objectives, data were collected through questionnairernand classroom observation with the help of video recording. The data werernanalyzed using SPSS (Stati stical Package for Social Science).The results of the study s howed that students mos t frequently u sed sevenrnstrategies out of the seventeen. These were: Time gaining, Asking for help,rnSubstitution, Function and Form avoidance, Literal translation andrnDescription strategies. On the other hand, Message abandonment, Languagernswitching, Over Generalization and Word -coinage were the le a s t frequentlyrnused strategies.Besides, Time gaining, Asking for help, Literal translation and Functionrnavoidance were helpful strategies on students' communicative skill. On therncontrary, n e ither the classroom obse rvation nor the video-recorded data s h owrnthe role of Form avoidance, Substitution and Description strategies onrnstudents' communicative skill.On the basis of these results, it was recommended that Students s hould bernintroduced to various communication s trategies in different activities.rnStudents would benefit more if they u sed more Achievement strategies whichrnhe lp them to stay in communication and improve their communication skillrnwhile they speak in English rather than avoidance strategies. This isrnbecause in A'Joidance stategy, students avoid words or expressions. In suchrncases, students might ignore important events that might be expected byrntheir instructors. For example, in classroom presentation if students usernachievement strategies, they would see possible ways of expressing thosernideas.