Developing research skills and academic literacy is essential for student success, yet their progression often varies across multilingual higher education systems. This study investigates these competencies among 692 bachelor’s and master’s students in Kazakhstan’s trilingual higher education context, where Kazakh, Russian, and English serve as languages of instruction. The contributions of multilingual academic practices, language of instruction, reading proficiency in three languages, peer collaboration, teacher facilitation, learner autonomy, and academic performance were examined using hierarchical regression and cumulative logit models. Results show that multilingual academic practices emerged as the strongest and most consistent predictor of both research skills (β = 0.56) and academic literacy (β = 0.69), explaining 38% and 49% of variance respectively and clearly outperforming medium of instruction, single-language reading proficiency, and programme level. Peer collaboration, teacher facilitation, and academic performance emerged as the most powerful predictors of students’ overall self-assessed research competence. The findings position multilingualism as both linguistic and cognitive resource, offering implications for curriculum design, staff training, and multilingual research-based learning in higher education. The study advances international scholarship on multilingual higher education.

This review article examines how research competencies function as a foundational basis for the formation of communication strategies in contemporary linguodidactic contexts. This study addresses the growing expectation for instructors and students in order to act as reflective practitioners who are able to conduct study, interpret results and adapt their communication strategies to academic and intercultural contexts. The aim of the review is to analyze and synthesize international approaches to the relationship between research competencies and the development of communication strategies in higher education. Methodologically, the study employs a narrative synthesis-based review approach. Peer-reviewed international literature from linguodidactics, education, second-language communication-strategy research, intercultural pedagogy, and studies of academic discourse. It is examined through thematic grouping, comparison of key conceptual positions, and integrative synthesis, which enables the identification of convergences, contradictions across different research traditions. This approach brings together diverse theoretical perspectives and empirical studies across different educational systems and multilingual contexts. The given review indicates that research competence is commonly described in the literature as a combination of methodological knowledge, procedural skills, and reflective attitudes. Within this framework, research competence supports communicators in identifying interactional challenges in the context of scientific communication, planning and justifying communicative choices, evaluating outcomes, and adapting their behavior to contextual conditions. Communication strategies are presented as context-dependent tools that can be developed through explicit instruction and reflective, inquiry-based practices. Within this synthesis intercultural competence is conceptualized as a complementary dimension of strategic reasoning, involving interpretive skills, attitudinal orientation, and cultural awareness, while academic communication is shown to be influenced by disciplinary conventions and digital environments that require strategic adaptation from both instructors and learners. The scientific contribution of the review lies in demonstrating that research competence functions as a higher-order regulatory capacity that supports the selection, application and evaluation of communication strategies.