In applied linguistics, we have three major types of strategies: teaching strategies, learning strategies and communication strategies.

“Teaching strategies” are the strategies made by the teacher, and they are four, according to Marton (1988). As for “learning strategies”, they can be “direct” or “indirect” for Brown (1987) and Oxford (1990), with sub-strategies for each type.

These “learning strategies” are very close to the third type (communication strategies), because they concern the learner more than the teacher. They are what is done by the learner to express his desire, especially when he can’t communicate well verbally (the use of gestures, for example).

These “communication strategies” occur in the acquisition (of the mother tongue or the second language) and in the learning (of the second language or the foreign language). They are verbal or non-verbal ( gestures, body language, repetition, paraphrases, simple sentences, asking for help or more explanation from the other, avoidance strategy, circumlocution, translation, imitation, omission, reduction… ). The above strategies are two categories in Faerch & Kasper (1984).