Oral Participation In English Class

Introduction:

Language learning acquisition has embedded different factors that contribute to its success, among them; personal matters such as the affective domain and willingness towards the learning process, in that regard, “there are a number of personality factors that have a direct impact on learners. Motivation, Self-Esteem, and Anxiety are the main psychological factors that have an effect on learners’ achievement in learning foreign languages”. (p6 the main psychological...); moreover, “The affective domain is a crucial element in learning because it may be one of the causes of success or failure since feelings shape learners’ attitudes and change them”. (the main psychological P.6). In that concern, this classroom-based research

This survey focuses on three main dimensions to identify the issue with oral participation in the English class, the first dimension was focused on the oral activities itself implemented in class, students were asked to provide their opinion regarding their attitude towards those activities and to give reasons. The second dimension was focused on the class environment and teacher, students had to state if both the classes and the teacher contribute or thwart their willingness to participate. The third dimension had to do with students’ personal matters and their attitude towards oral participation, as well as the main causes of their position regarding oral production and

Based on the surveys answered by the students and the observation checklists, students who do not participate in class are demotivated for different factors, one the factors that the majority of the students mentioned was the lack of proficiency, which lead them to struggle when producing in the target language. The most repeated answers from students who selected motivation in a multiple-choice question (question 11) were “I don’t know English; I don’t understand, then I don’t care, I don’t feel the need of doing it” (Students answers in the surveys, November 2nd). However, students who stated that they participate actively in the lessons said that it was because they felt motivated and wanted to learn in order to improve their language proficiency. Moreover, they demonstrated in their answers an understanding of the relevance that participation has in their learning process. In addition, in self-reports it was acknowledge that some students increased their levels of participation in some activities and techniques that were implemented during the process, for instance “when I make questions regarding the content, ask students to read out loud or propose activities that are related with oral language production, usually only few students answer by self-initiative. However, since I started making them to pick the next student to participate, I had observed that the number of students who engaged to this new dynamic