Hesitation Strategies in an Oral L2 Test among Iranian Students Shifted from EFL Context to EIL

Abstract

English as an international language emphasizes on learning different major dialect forms; in particular, it aims to equip students with the linguistic tools to communicate internationally. English is no longer merely used by native speakers but by all those who come to use it.The study reported in this paper was conducted in the population of Iranian students in the academic context of Malaysia who have learned English as a foreign language in their home country, but after immigrating to the multi lingual country of Malaysia have to use it as an International language to communicate not only with the academician but also with the common people. This shift of English language application had led them to a confusion, which reveals in in their performance, although they are not quite aware of the involving reasons.Therefore, this study examined this mismatch between EFL and EIL oral performance from the angle of hesitation, and investigated the hesitation strategies Iranian university students use while they are speaking English. It focused on the frequency and distribution of pauses, pauses and fillers, and fillers in the speech of 12 Persian speakers of English, students in a public university in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, participating in an oral test consisting of three parts to study whether the type of questions affect the hesitation strategies they employ or not. The data collected was collected and analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively, and the results indicated that Persian speakers of English follow different pausing conventions which varied by the change in the context of the questions.