This paper will report the findings of a study that has investigated spoken English as a lingua franca (ELF) usage in Swedish higher education. The material comprises digital recordings of lectures and student group-work sessions, all being naturally occurring, authentic high-stakes spoken exchange, i.e. from non-language-teaching contexts. The aim of the present paper, which constitutes a part of a larger study, has been to investigate the role pragmatic strategies play in the communicative effectiveness of English as a lingua franca. The paper will document types of pragmatic strategies as well as point to important differences between the two speech event types and the implications of these differences for English-medium education. The findings show that lecturers in ELF settings make less frequent use of pragmatic strategies than students who deploy these strategies frequently in group-work sessions. Earlier stages of the present study (Björkman, 2008a, Björkman, 2008b and Björkman, 2009) showed that despite frequent non-standardness in the morphosyntax level, there is little overt disturbance in student group-work, and it is highly likely that a variety of pragmatic strategies that students deploy prevents some disturbance. It is reasonable to assume that, in the absence of appropriate pragmatic strategies used often in lectures, there is an increased risk for covert disturbance