In this study, twenty-five high school English language learners were observed in their classrooms in a New York City public school while they worked in small groups. All observations were video recorded or done by the researcher while in the classrooms. The videos were then transcribed. Communication strategies that the participants used were then identified in the transcripts using Dornyei and Scott's (1995) taxonomy of communication strategies. It was found that of the 557 communication strategies identified by the researcher, the subcategory of interactional coping devices showed the most frequent use of communication strategies for a total of 47% of all communication strategies used by the participants; within this subcategory, the most frequently occurring were response: confirm, asking for clarification, and response: rephrase. Direct coping devices were also identified with mime, self-rephrasing, and other-repair being the most frequently observed types of communication strategies within this subcategory. Finally, indirect coping devices such as self-repetition, code-switching: L1 structure words, and other-repetition were also observed to be used by the participants. Overall, the findings show that small group work in language classrooms between students who do not share a common L1 provides students with opportunities to use communication strategies to negotiate meaning in an attempt to achieve a mutually comprehensible message. The following are appended: (1) A taxonomy used to identify communication strategies for this study (taken from Dornyei and Scott, 1995); and (2) Data for students who were observed to speak 50 or more words. (Contains 4 tables.)