Voices from the voiceless: Iranian EFL students' attitudes toward English

Abstract

Some recent research has focused on the students' silence and inviting more student voice. This paper investigated the reasons behind Iranian undergraduate students' silence in English classes and stepped further to give voice to those students' attitudes toward English with the belief that inviting and including student voice could improve the overall participation of silent students in English courses. One hundred freshmen and sophomore undergraduate students majoring at the University of Isfahan volunteered to take part in this study. From among them, 60 students who indicated they were silent in English classes were asked to complete a survey adopted from Life. In addition, 20 of the students were interviewed to pinpoint the intentions behind their silence. Thus, the paper took an in-depth look at the reasons for the Iranian English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students' silence, drawing from detailed examination of the students' own accounts, comparing and contrasting them. The results of this study explicitly states reasons behind the silence of the EFL students in English classes. It also put forth various solutions that could easily be implemented in pedagogical settings by English instructors to break the silence of EFL/English as a Second Language (ESL) students.