Giving effective instructions in EFL classrooms

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the positive effect of giving effective instructions on students’ achievement. A great number of teachers, nowadays, are dissatisfied with their students’ low achievement in learning English in Morocco. They claim that students are not interested at all in the learning process. However, research in teaching foreign languages reveals that there is a kind of stumbling block in the way of grasping the teacher’s instructions. Regardless of how much effort teachers make, students do not understand their ambiguous instructions and thereby failing to do the activity at hand. This article attempts to explore three research questions: (1) Does the poor level of students at learning English have any relationship with the way teachers of English give instructions? (2) What is the teachers of English perception of the effect of instructions on teaching? And (3) are teachers of English familiar with what research has revealed in giving effective instructions? The results show that students achieve less not because things are too difficult to understand, but because the way teachers deliver their instructions is ineffective. Teachers really need update in how to effectively give instructions; otherwise, the teaching process will be doomed to failure.