Intellectual engagement is essential for international students' academic success. However, academic speaking challenges associated with communicative language anxiety and inadequate prior learning experience could impede students' academic communication abilities in foreign universities. Thus, students adopt academic speaking strategies to tackle these factors. Therefore, an explanatory sequential design was utilised to investigate students' academic speaking challenges and strategies used to counter these challenges in foreign universities. An online survey with 223 respondents was conducted, followed by 15 interviews and a focus group discussion. SPSS was used for quantitative data analysis. NVivo analyses of interviews and focus group discussions were performed to generate themes. It was found that communicative language anxiety and prior learning experience significantly affect academic speaking challenges and academic speaking strategies. Thus, stakeholders should consider international students' communication challenges caused by negative prior learning experiences to facilitate their overseas higher education.