The Effects Of Communication Strategies On Intermediate Iranian Efl Learners' Willingness To Communicate
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Date
2018-02
Authors
Samian, Hosein Vafadar
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
It is too frequently observed that students in EFL classes although motivated
to learn a language remain silent and do not initiate or engage in communication when
they are free to do so. Due to the importance of communication and language use in
language acquisition in the past decade, willingness to communicate (WTC) as the
construct to call such ambivalence to account is considered an essential concept in
language learning and teaching. Adopting mixed methods design, the present quasiexperimental
study investigated the differential effects of communication strategies
(CSs) on Intermediate Iranian EFL students' WTC based on participants’ amount of
speaking time on allocated discussion topics and number of speaking turns while
minimizing the teachers’ immediacy behaviors effects. Through a purposive sampling
from a pool of 245 intermediate EFL learners, 67 males and females with nearly equal
number of mixed high-willing, mid-willing, and low-willing to communicate
participants were randomly placed in the experimental (n = 36) and control group (n =
31). Both groups attended two preparatory sessions, two discussion sessions as the
pretest, and two discussion sessions as the posttest and all sessions were audio/video
recorded and observed. During five treatment sessions, the experimental group
received the explicit instruction of CSs adopted from Dörnyei and Scott’s (1995a,
1995b, as cited in Dörnyei & Scott, 1997) Inventory of Strategic Language Devices.
At the end, the stimulated-recall interviews were conducted in order to elicit data from
the participants in the experimental group. The control group, however, received no
treatment instead they followed their regular EFL curriculum. The results of
quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that the amount of participants’ speaking
time or WTC and taking turns in speaking for the experimental group were
significantly higher than the control group.
Description
Keywords
The effects of communication strategies , on intermediate iranian EFL learners