An overview of key findings from data analysis of (a) more than 400 minutes of spoken ELF communication collected in 2019 via twenty recorded online interactions between Japanese university students and their foreign interlocutors of eight nationalities, and (b) semi-structured post-interviews with each of the participants were presented. Findings from additional classroom-based research investigating low-proficiency English learners’ views on their own communicative capabilities and attitudes toward communication strategy training and assessment in the language classroom were also examined. Findings suggest that communication strategy instruction for Japanese low-proficiency English learners may be beneficial in helping them repair and avert communication problems and develop their communicative confidence. The presentation concluded with an introduction to a corpus (ELFJ Corpus) developed as a result of the study, a demonstration of its features, and discussion on the potential for further development of the corpus.
